Teachers at Palo Alto High School will be gathering on campus tomorrow at 8:30 a.m. to rally for higher pay, calling for an increase in their annual salaries.
The rally is scheduled from 8:30 a.m. to 8:50 a.m. and will take place at two campus entrances: the Churchill road entrance by the Earl Hansen football field and the Embarcadero road entrance.
The upcoming rally follows several contentious district board meetings between the School Board and the Palo Alto Educators Association regarding the flaws with the current annual teacher salaries and transparency between administrators and teachers.
According to math teacher and PAEA union negotiator Daniel Nguyen, teacher salaries at Palo Alto Unified School District are falling behind those of other nearby school districts.
“I want the flyers we [the teachers union] pass out to cause members of our community to engage with the information more and become aware of the fact that our salaries are falling behind neighboring districts and as a result, we’re losing teachers to other districts,” Nguyen said. “At the same time, we [PAUSD] have a lot of financial ability to reverse that trend, and so it’s important we do so.”
Paly English teacher Erin Angell said that she hopes the rally will encourage negotiations between the districts and teachers.
“The goal of the rally is to help draw attention to the things that teachers are really interested in,” Angell said. “We [PAEA] are interested in emphasizing that we would like to work together with the district to align what we perceive as being best practices for students with spending practices in the district.”
According to Nguyen, many participants are expected to be attending the rally.
“We’re calling all teachers to come out,” Nguyen said. “We did this about two years ago and basically every teacher came out, so we are expecting lots of people to show up this time.”
According to junior Krish Aggarwal, teachers have a major impact on students’ success, so fair pay is important to support both educators and the quality of education.
“Teachers deserve better pay in general, and they do so much for like our community and our school,” Aggarwal said. That’s why I’m going to be going to support them. I feel like our whole district is on the verge of corruption. We [PAUSD] need to put our money where it’s being spent wisely. A lot of teachers have made so much impact on like students’ lives and their ability to do better in life in their college.”
