Kids' needs should take priority

With SFUSD school support employees working under an expired contract and threatening to strike, there’s talk about using funds from Prop. H (city money approved by voters to support schools) to cover pay raises, the Examiner says.

An article by Bonnie Eslinger in the Aug. 7 Examiner reported:

“Unions representing teachers and service employees for the district suggested that some of the funds be used for pay raises.”

This may be legal, but it’s clearly not what the voters intended when they approved Prop. H. The portion of Prop. H that could be legitimately used that way was billed as supporting resources for students, such as nurses and counselors — not providing raises for existing staff. That pits adults’ interests directly against kids’ needs. Diverting funds this way is likely to anger voters who intended to support kids, and creating ill will toward SFUSD will hurt students and adult employees in the long run.

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While I sympathize with any workers trying to survive in the Bay Area on a salary, school support staffers — such as custodians and lunch ladies — also aren’t suffering the same plight as teachers. Teachers are chronically underpaid professionals (with extensive educational credentials prerequisite for employment) who are expected to work impossible miracles daily — especially those who teach many disadvantaged kids. And they're constantly bashed, attacked and undermined. It's harder and harder to get and keep qualified teachers as the demands and attacks on them increase.

Custodians and lunch ladies do important jobs, but it's misleading to lump their situation together with teachers’.

The lunch ladies are paid from the Student Nutrition Services (SNS) budget, and the more they're paid, the more that encroaches on the quality of the food served in the lunch line. For example, SFUSD can't afford cut-up fruit, which would be a kid-friendly and popular way to offer fresh produce. A salad-bar pilot at K-5 Harvey Milk is amazingly successful with the kids, but SFUSD can’t afford to extend it to other schools and may have to scrap it entirely. Although the district offers a daily vegetarian option, it always includes cheese; parents have asked for plant-based vegetarian choices, but the district can't afford to purchase them.

SFUSD’s SNS budget has encroached for years on the district's general fund. When it runs a deficit, that comes from kids’ classroom needs. SNS is supposed to be self-supporting, covering its operating costs with government reimbursements for meals for low-income students, and from food sales to higher-income kids. Most school food services nationwide operate in the black; SFUSD’s SNS runs a deficit because of the relatively high wages paid to cafeteria staff — higher even than pay in wealthy Bay Area suburbs. (See below.)

SNS has been working to increase revenue and decrease the deficit, and has been pretty successful. Two years ago, the department ran a deficit of $1.3 million. For the 2003-'04 school year, that dropped to about $753,000. For the '04-'05 school year, the deficit is expected to be less than $600,000.

(Interestingly, these savings have been achieved at the same time that the district has discontinued the sale of soda, chips, snack cakes, corn dogs and other carnival-type junk food in its middle and high school cafeterias, replacing them with more nutritious items, and has upgraded the quality of the federally subsidized meals in the breakfast and lunch lines.)

However, SNS is under orders to break even or run at a profit for the '05-'06 school year, as the tight budget climate allows no general-fund money to subsidize SNS operations. The only way to increase the amount of money available to pay for labor is to reduce the amount of money spent on food for the kids &mdash that is, serve cheaper and less wholesome food.

When the quality of school meals suffers, it’s the poorest children and the youngest children who suffer the most harm, since they have no other options.

SFUSD has to balance two priorities — the need for higher-quality food for the students against increased pay for the caf workers. What should be take precedence — feeding the kids better or paying the workers more? It's either-or.

It’s also troubling that the SEIU has publicly taken a stand opposing this coming year's Grab 'n' Go breakfast pilot at Balboa High School. The pilot is intended to test whether a quicker, more convenient meal than the traditional hot breakfast (which requires kids to arrive at school some 45 minutes early) will result in better-nourished kids. Currently, a huge percentage of the largely-disadvantaged Bal student population arrives at school with no breakfast or with a soda-chips corner-market breakfast.

Grab 'n' Go is a pilot intended as a test, not a done deal districtwide. The goal is to improve kids’ health and nutrition. I hope that SEIU has seen the light on this issue. Its opposition was a classic case of putting adults’ concerns ahead of kids’ needs.

How cafeteria workers are paid

There are three categories of caf workers — permanent civil service (PCS), permanent exempt (PEX), and “as needed.”

“As needed” employees receive the lowest pay: $15.19/hour for a first-step employee. This does not include any benefits. Still, a position in the San Mateo Union High School District pays only $12.65/hour for first step (here called “step A.”)

The SFUSD lunch ladies who run the elementary school cafeterias heat up the lunches, serve, collect payment and record the free/reduced lunches served, and clean up. They are all either PCS or PEX, at the top (fifth) step, and their base pay is $18.39 (as listed on the district website as the top step pay for a 2615 “school lunchroom helper”). This doesn’t include benefits. A comparable position in Berkeley pays about $700 per month less.

Note that the SFUSD website lists pay in both hourly terms ($18.39) and also biweekly ($1,472, which equates to about $2,944 monthly), whereas the Berkeley position lists pay monthly only, at $2,243 for a top-step employee.

In reality, most 2615s at the top step in SFUSD (which is just about all of them) earn even more than $2,944 monthly. This is because employees with 10 years’ experience (which is most of them) get additional longevity pay. In addition, those who serve as employee-in-charge (the person running the caf, which at the elementary level is the sole employee) get an extra 10% of salary differential. The largest group of cafeteria workers falls into this category.

Then there are cooks (2630), at base pay of $20.23/hour, and cook/managers (2634), at base $23.77/hour. Most earn more because of longevity pay, and some also receive the employee-in-charge differential, bringing the top-paid employees in these categories to about $21/hour for a 2630 cook and $24.67/hour for a cook/manager. Again, this does not include benefits.

A comparable cook’s position in the San Mateo Union School District pays, at the top step, $15.39/hour (not including benefits).

According to this outdated ('02-'03) but still relevant salary schedule from the San Rafael High School District, the highest-paid caf worker there is paid less than SFUSD’s lowest-paid "as needed" worker. San Rafael’s gets $12.10 at first step, where SFUSD’s gets $15.19 at first step.

Again, I would never say any worker surviving on a salary in the Bay Area is adequately paid. But this is a case where the adults’ interests conflict directly with the kids’, and as I say, these workers’ situation is not analogous to teachers’. So simply calling for raises has complex and troubling implications.
— Caroline