Palo Alto educators are urging for a more transparent school board surrounding leadership and budgets following a contentious school board meeting Tuesday.
During the meeting, the school board announced Superintendent Trent Bahadursingh’s mutual separation from Palo Alto Unified School District.
According to Tom Culbertson, president of the Palo Alto Educators Association, the last eight years in the district have been shaped by a lack of truth and transparency — not only surrounding negotiations.
“We aren’t just talking about budget lines or policy shifts — we’re talking about the erosion of professional respect,” Culbertson said. “We look forward to working alongside this community to ensure … a foundation of transparency that can never be dismantled again.”
Meb Steiner, president of the California School Employees Association, said that the district should take special care in future decisions regarding district leadership.
“This is my 13th year as president of this chapter, and in my 13-year tenure, I’ve had five superintendents — now soon to be more,” Steiner said. “This is one of the most important decisions the board makes, and I urge you to take your time to think, be deliberate, to involve all the voices.”
Daniel Nguyen, a Palo Alto High School math teacher and the chair of negotiations for PAEA, said that the district has been growing its reserves while neglecting to invest in better pay for teachers.
“We want to make sure that our students have the best teachers here, and that requires that we pay our teachers competitively,” Nguyen said. “We’re sixth in the county in terms of highest salary. The second part of it is the district has been building their bank accounts — they keep bringing in, on average, $1 million per month that’s not being invested in students.”
According to Palo Alto High School chemistry and AP Research teacher Samuel Howles-Banerji, transparency and trust has especially deteriorated throughout recent PAEA salary negotiations with the district.
“Every budget and estimate that PAUSD staff presents grossly misrepresents costs, grossly overrepresents the costs and underrepresents our revenues,” Howles-Banerji said. “If district staff believe that their numbers are accurate, they’re incompetent. If they don’t believe their numbers are accurate, then they’re deliberately misleading the public. Either is unacceptable.”
Following earlier salary negotiations between PAUSD and PAEA in February, the district posted an update describing PAEA’s proposals as “unprecedented” and “unsustainable.”
“The current PAEA proposal represents over $42.5 million in new ongoing costs, the equivalent of approximately a 28% increase when salary, benefits and associated structural changes are fully accounted for,” the district wrote.
However, according to a response from PAEA’s official Instagram, PAUSD’s $42.5 million estimate is inaccurate. They said the district disregarded calculating healthcare benefits and special education improvements properly.
“PAEA’s compensation and benefits proposal is only about half of what management’s messaging implies,” the union wrote. “Sound public budgeting data depends on accurate presentation of data. Given the current leadership transitions and opportunity for a broad cultural reset, it is vital that this opportunity to rebuild trust is fully embraced by management.”
Steiner said the community must be involved in future leadership decisions and salary negotiations.
“We [CSEA] firmly believe that the way to achieve our mission statement of improving the lives of our members, students and communities is to work together. It does not work any other way. I urge the board to be really, really transparent. I urge you to go back to a more regular order. I urge the board to give direction and guidance on negotiations.”
