There has been ongoing tension among teachers and administration about teacher pay.

In a way to express that frustration. Edison Chemistry and Avid teacher Maikou Vang sent an email to all teachers in Stockton Unified on Thursday, March 7, asking teachers to come to ¨A couple upcoming Board Meetings and Surround the place just to show our unity, Organization, Communication and ability to mobilize.¨ 

Vang continues, writing that ¨If we timed it right, we could literally stand there for like 10-20 minutes and then leave.  It would send an immensely impressive and powerful message.¨ 

Different teachers have expressed their opinions on the situation. Chris Rothrock is a social science teacher at Stagg. He said ¨If there were to ever have a strike I would immediately walk out.”  

Anthony Lee is a World History teacher at Stagg. Lee believes in strength in numbers and all the teachers showing up will show solidarity. Lee is a member of the Teacher union STA and that if it were to come to a strike he would walk out and go because they are a team. ¨If it got to the point in that, we’re all doing it together, it’s not where one teacher is left behind, it’s something that we have to have a Unison and solidarity.¨

Justin McGehee is a Sophomore English Teacher at Stagg who also works as the chair of the STA negotiations team. He is tasked as the chair to make sure things get done and that they make a decision as a team.  McGehee explained that over the years, they have built this system that’s referred to as Management and Labor. According to McGehee, there is some tension between them now, but a couple years back things were kind of balanced. After COVID-19, there were some real concerns. 

¨People had a lot of reasons to be scared, hurt or have no reason to trust anything,¨ said McGehee. There were some concerns about a large amount of money missing. 

McGehee wanted to be clear that teachers didn’t want to cause huge disruptions. ¨We don’t want [to] come in screaming, demanding twice as much as like, we don’t wanna do that. That’s not reasonable, it’s not fair.¨

During the Board meeting on March 12th, around 300 STA employees showed up peacefully. ¨There was no damaging anything, there was no scaring anyone, there was no bullying anyone.¨ Teachers like McGehee don’t want to make huge distractions, they just want to be paid fairly, and that depends on what the school board agrees to. ¨We want to keep people here but it’s up to the district. We want to keep people here, but we can only afford this.¨