NEW UNION REPRESENTS SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS IN S.D., CHULA VISTA

For the past 13 years, there has only been one union in San Diego County that represents school principals and other school supervisors and administrators, at San Diego Unified School District.

That is until last month, when Chula Vista Elementary School District became the second district to have a school administrators union.

Both San Diego Unified’s

and Chula Vista’s administrator unions will fall under the umbrella of a new organization formed this year called United Administrators of Southern California, or UASC. It is essentially school administrators’ equivalent of the California Teachers Association, said Donis Coronel, executive director of UASC. Coronel has been the longtime director of the San Diego Unified administrators union, which began in 2009 and has about 570 members.

UASC formed this year with the purpose of helping to create more school administrator unions, rarities in Southern California. The only other administrator union in the region besides San Diego and Chula Vista is at Los Angeles Unified, according to Coronel.

Administrators are small in number, so it’s difficult for them to muster enough resources to form a union. Chula Vista, for example, has more than 3,300 employees but only 55 school administrators.

UASC is hoping to cultivate more administrator unions in more school districts by offering the overhead services administrators need to organize. For instance, it will offer collective bargaining and backoffice services in return for a portion of union members’ dues.

“It gives them the opportunity to have a collective voice with the board and superintendent and to have collective bargaining agreements so there is an understanding of what benefits and salary they’re entitled to,” Coronel said of UASC. “It gives them an opportunity to be part of something bigger.”

The pandemic dealt principals some of the most stressful working conditions of their careers. They were in charge of leading each school’s COVID operations, from contact tracing to organizing COVID testing to enforcing sometimes-contentious mask rules. The tasks were on top of their typical duties, such as coordinating instruction and talking with parents, staff and district administration.

“It’s been a very challenging two years for any principal,” Coronel said. “A lot of their job was the operational side of COVID, and they would love to get back to being an instructional leader.”