This spring, the Alameda Unified School District (AUSD) engaged in a comprehensive review of our budget. Our goal was to identify our educational priorities and then find ways to realign the budget in order to direct more funding to employee salaries, which are about 10 percent less than the county average.
Our effort was partially successful: in April, the Board of Education approved $2.7 million in program cuts to use toward employee salaries. That amount allows us to offer about a 4.5 percent raise to our teachers for their contract beginning next year. We are hopeful that AUSD and the teachers union will come to agreement on these contract negotiations in the next few months, but clearly there’s further to go.