Silicon Valley students say their teachers need better pay

Hundreds of Prospect High School students marched out of class this week chanting, “What do we want? Teacher’s pay!”

The walkout took place Tuesday across the Campbell Union High School District, a sea of students wearing red in support of their teachers’ demands for better pay and lower class sizes. The day of the walkout, teachers began “working to contract,” meaning they won’t work beyond their contracted hours until the teachers’ union and district reach an agreement. The actions come amid a stalled, monthslong negotiation process — leaving teachers without a contract about seven weeks into the school year.

“They do so much for us, not only in school, but after school too,” Madi Kumagai, a Prospect High School senior who participated in the walkout, told San José Spotlight. “The least we can do is pay them the amount that they deserve.”

The Campbell High School Teachers Association and the district have been under mediation since last spring, with the district offering a 3% raise for the 2024-25 school year on Sept 27. That’s higher than the 1% raise offered only if property tax goes up earlier this year. The district eventually took away that contingency, offering 1% before moving to 3%. The district serves roughly 8,600 students in Campbell, San Jose and Saratoga.

But Kim McCarthy, union president and a history teacher in the district for about 17 years, said teachers need more. She said the district needs to address the union’s requests for smaller math class sizes and teacher stipends for afterschool activities. The union’s last public counteroffer in April proposed a sliding scale over the next three years, starting at 6% then dropping to 5.5% and ultimately 5% in year three. Union offers are confidential once mediation starts.

McCarthy is glad the district upped its salary offer, but said the decisions are hard to understand when teachers see the budget. The Campbell Union High School District brought in about $140.6 million in unrestricted, unaudited revenue during the 2023-24 school year, the fund a large majority of teacher salaries come from, according to budget data.

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The district ended the 2023-24 school year with about $63.1 million of unaudited monies in both restricted and unrestricted funds, which McCarthy doesn’t think needs to sit in reserves — especially when she said the district’s surplus has grown for years, even when the district predicted deficits. She said teachers don’t want to work to contract, but want to make their voices heard.

“Teachers are not in it for the income. Typically, we’re in it because we love working with students,” she told San José Spotlight. “When we are at a point where we pull back from the unpaid work that we do to support our students, it’s challenging because our hearts are there with our students.”

Superintendent Robert Bravo said the district values its teachers, but has to navigate funding constraints. In a Sept. 30 letter to the community, he said over the past three years the district has increased teacher salaries 24%, adding that only one unnamed, similarly community-funded district outpaces that countywide. He did not address the reserves.

“Local school boards, including ours, are often tasked with making difficult decisions based on a system they have little control over,” Bravo told San José Spotlight. “While we are committed to advocating for our teachers, we also face limitations that are beyond our local authority.”

The district relies primarily on fluctuating property tax funding rather than receiving state funding based on student attendance — a common funding source for public schools statewide that gives more money per student, a district official said. The district saw a roughly 6.6% increase in tax revenue in the 2023-24 school year, according to a school revenue report from the Santa Clara County Assessor’s Office.

The Campbell Union High School District pays teachers less than some surrounding districts, with its salary schedule sitting near the median countywide, McCarthy said. Teacher salaries in the district started at about $75,815 annually last year, lower than similarly-sized Fremont Union High School District that serves students in Sunnyvale, Cupertino and San Jose, where salaries started at about $100,654. East Side Union High School District, which serves more than double the students of Campbell Union High School District, pays less with a starting salary of $71,473 this year. Santa Clara County’s median income for a single person is $129,000 annually, according to 2024 data .
The district has a history of lengthy negotiations. The last raise teachers received was 9.5% for the 2023-24 school year after a mediator stepped in. Prospect High School history teacher Stephen Smith, who is also on the union bargaining team, has experienced the past few years of negotiations and said it’s exhausting doing this year after year.

He makes roughly $105,000 annually and said while last school year’s raise was nice, the district needs to keep valuing its teachers. He said he loves his school, but negotiations have been difficult on morale.

“I have a hard time recommending to teachers to come work in this district, but I have no problem saying, ‘You can work at this school,'” Smith told San José Spotlight.

McCarthy said she’s already worried about the next negotiation cycle in February. She plans to retire at the end of 2026, but said each day is a struggle.

“Honestly every day I think about, could I retire after this year?” she said. “I’ll stay, but I worry about our young people (affording to live here).”

Contact Annalise Freimarck at annalise@sanjosespotlight.com or follow @annalise_ellen on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Editor’s note: Riya Minglani is a high school student journalist who collaborated with San José Spotlight on this story.

The post Silicon Valley students say their teachers need better pay appeared first on San José Spotlight .