After over a year without a contract, FUDTA’s decision to accept the district’s “final offer” was met with mixed reactions
Muhammed A. Ali & Daniel Davis II
Staff Writers
On April 30th, FUSD and the Fremont Unified District Teachers Association (FUDTA) reached a settlement for next year’s district-union contract. After twenty-seven bargaining sessions, the union accepted the recommended deal from a state-appointed factfinder two weeks after the district approved the deal.
The tentative deal includes an immediate 2% salary increase, a yearly $1,000 contribution to health care coverage, dental coverage, class size limits for grades K-5th, and 1% and 2% wage increases effective on July 1, 2025 and July 1, 2026 respectively—applicable to the over 3,000 FUSD teachers and staff spread over 43 schools.
“There’s a lot of frustration [among teachers] because we are very confident that we could have gotten more,” said Mr. Howard, an English teacher and Union Site Representative at AHS.
“There’s a lot of things that go into play [in forming a contract],” said FUDTA President Victoria Chon. “It really came down to what we were losing and what we were gaining, and our gains weren’t going to be more than what we lost [if we went on strike]. We have to think about 2,000 people and the 30,000 students that would have been affected.”
Despite FUDTA’s reasoning, the decision not to go through with the anticipated strike came as a shock to many teachers at AHS.
“The big [teacher] reaction was confusion because there was a 93% vote among union members in favor of authorizing the strike [prior to the deal announcement],” said Mr. Elam, a history and Gaming Concepts teacher, as well as Strike Captain at AHS.
Functionally, a strike captain guides union members at their school after receiving information from the union in preparation for a potential strike.
“There was a strike captain training where [union leadership] said, ‘We’re not telling you [the strike] is happening Thursday, but it’s almost definitely going to happen Thursday,” Elam said, describing the situation following spring break. “They gave us immediate action items to communicate to staff. Then, at the last minute, we had to send everyone an email that said, ‘Actually, just kidding. We are no longer striking.’ I think what we have seen is a lack of transparency and really poor communication from the executive board.”
A mother sits with her son amidst a FUDTA protest in full swing (Photo Credit: Muhammed A. Ali (12)).
“It’s not the goal to go on strike,” said Chon. The goal is to reach a tentative agreement, but we prepare for a strike if necessary. As disappointing as this is to say, we do not feel that [the district’s] priorities are for our students. We were [prepared to strike] but we also had to come to that hard realization of where we were at.” Chon explained that the union’s next steps involve ensuring that the Board of Education consists of people who support students and have goals aligning with that of the union.
FUDTA’s Community Update email delivered this information to the public, stating, “In the last few weeks of negotiations, district leadership has repeatedly shown itself to be out of touch with the priorities we have laid out for FUSD. In our final fight for class caps it became clear that the superintendent was not receiving any clear direction to negotiate with us from our elected board [of education].”
“I audibly laughed,” said Mr. Elam, who received the message at the same time as non-union members. “A union has one big strength which is unity among lots of people. They have one powerful, last-ditch effort to achieve something, and that’s striking. They didn’t even try, and that’s really frustrating.”
Frustrations about the deal itself mainly center around the lack of class size caps for high school classes. Definitive class size caps were only instituted for elementary schools, while high schools are provided a class size recommendation instead.
“I think that there is an inequitable amount of representation in the executive board—and union leadership in general—that is heavily elementary school-favored,” said Elam. “Listening to the opinions of secondary teachers, it’s clear that the priorities of the two groups are vastly different, and that you can walk away from the same agreement with very different feelings. That creates this dissonance within the union, and has definitely created a lot of tension.”
“Our executive board is entirely elected. So whoever chooses to run [can be elected],” said Chon. “We have three elementary directors and two high school directors because that’s reflective of the number of members we have.”
While union representation is a source of dissatisfaction among high school teachers, included in the role of union leadership is the obligation to assure all the members of the union feel that they are accurately represented.
“Everything comes through a bargaining survey in which every member has an equal voice,” said Chon. “There are things that might be focused more in elementary or in secondary, but a lot of things that we fight for affect everybody. Salary, healthcare, and [counselor] caseloads affect everybody.”
“I think our current campaign, which we’re wrapping up in this tentative agreement, was done in good faith,” said Mr. Howard, who recently joined the union executive board as Secretary following the tentative deal. “Sometimes campaigns don’t go the way that you want.”
On April 7th, FUDTA members protested outside of the FUDTA office on Paseo Padre Parkway. “Mr. Savoie and Ms. Wilkinson have really stepped up in the last couple of years,” said strike captain Mr. Elam. “Seeing kind of a new enthusiasm for Union leadership here, I realized that even if I am frustrated by how the district-wide union leads itself, I think that there are good things that I can do here” (Photo Credit: Muhammed A. Ali (12)).
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