“Whenever we’re able to improve our working conditions as teachers, we’re able to improve our students’ learning conditions,” says Sacramento City Teachers Assn. (SCTA) President Nikki Davis Milevsky. “That’s been a guiding value for our union throughout our fights, which keeps us grounded in why we’re all here: to support all Sacramento students.” 

In late-June, SCTA won a historic contract that includes landmark language on artificial intelligence. 

David Fisher and Nikki Davis Milevsky, at the 2022 Sac City Strike

“It’s the first time in a generation that our successor contract was settled prior to the expiration of our current contract,” says Davis Milevsky, a school psychologist. “This victory was made possible by our deep organizing to build power at every site in the district.” 

Setting the standard for local chapters in our union’s We Can’t Wait campaign and beyond, the win includes an 8.5% pay increase over two years, contractual staffing ratios to ensure students have the access they need to school social workers, school psychologists and speech language pathologists, and other major contract improvements. In the spring of 2022, SCTA went on strike for eight days. Since then, wages have increased by 30%, with special education staff salaries increasing by 38% and speech language pathologists by 46%. Substitute teachers, who are also represented by SCTA, are the highest paid in the nation, earning more than $400 per day. 

It was the latest in a string of impressive wins for SCTA’s 3,000 members (2,300 full-time educators and 700 substitute teachers), their students and Sacramento public schools, which has transformed Sacramento City Unified School District (SCUSD) from a place that educators avoided to a real “destination district” – where SCTA has organized and won the highest educator pay in the county and a contractually guaranteed voice on nearly everything that impacts educators and students in SCUSD. The story of SCTA is a blueprint for locals on how to organize, build power and win real change that helps families and communities.  

“What union members and parents have won in Sacramento is a powerful testament to what our organizing can achieve,” Davis Milevsky says. “If we can do it, every CTA chapter can.” 

Sac City TA’s accomplishments over the past decade are a shining example of what educators can achieve together and a model for how our local associations can win the public schools our students and communities need. This decade of determination for SCTA was built through the collective efforts of Sac City educators, the belief that better was possible and the commitment to make it so in their union together, which permeated each of the following major milestones. 

How SCTA Members Built Their Power 

The foundation of SCTA’s success is a strong, well-tested site structure that ensures members are informed about important issues across the district and guarantees their voices are heard and valued at a union leadership level when important decisions are being made that impact everyone. This took shape in 2014 when Davis Milevsky and David Fisher were first elected as president and vice president of SCTA, respectively, bringing an organizing mindset to the union and willingness to do things differently. 

Up to this point, the SCTA Bargaining Team always had around five people at the table representing the voices of about 2,500 members. For the wage reopener bargain in 2015-16, Davis Milevsky and Fisher successfully proposed expanding the team to 20, inviting the executive board to join.  

“This was a new approach, but we knew that having more people on the bargaining team would build our union,” Fisher says. “It increased representation and transparency in our bargaining process, and built trust among our membership, which has been the bedrock for all our progress.” 

The bigger bargaining team was a success, with members feeling informed and heard, and even more members wanting to join the team and be at the table. When SCTA went into bargaining in 2016-17, the team had expanded to 70 members – one from almost every school site in the district. This helped create a structure where every site had a member who was on the bargaining team, connected to union leadership and part of the decision-making process, and could keep members at the site informed about important news and asks. 

“It was the kind of structure we needed as we prepared to go on strike in 2017,” Fisher said. “And it helped create the energy and build the power we needed for the major fights ahead.” 

When Superintendent Jorge Aguilar arrived in SCUSD in the 2016-17 school year with a lot of big words and lofty ideas, educators and the community were hopeful for some stable leadership the district desperately needed. Instead, it was the start of a turbulent time where educators and community would go toe-to-toe with the superintendent, school board, mayor and the Sacramento political establishment to fight for the schools their students deserved. 

SCTA organized as though they were going to go on strike from the very beginning of bargaining, creating strike teams and building kits to distribute to school sites. Up to that point, educators in Sac City were paid below average, while benefits were above average, compared to nearby school districts. When they went into bargaining, SCTA brought a lot to the table – including reducing class sizes, making staffing improvements and investing in special education – eventually winning a restructured salary schedule to address recruitment and retention issues, as well as a historic agreement that allows the union to prevent the district from requiring any testing of students not required by law. 

“We have eliminated unnecessary testing – there’s no agreement like this anywhere in the country,” says Davis Milevsky.  

During sometimes-contentious bargaining, then-Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg inserted himself into the process, helping to mediate the final deal on the eve of SCTA members going on strike (full story captured in this video). Just when it seemed like things might be turning the corner for Sac City Unified, his buddy Superintendent Aguilar refused to honor the agreement he had just signed, with the school board closing ranks around their superintendent and the county office of education threatening to get involved. Suddenly, the power of the Sacramento political establishment was aimed at SCTA, and union educators organized to fight back. 

“We were always on the defensive before, but we knew we had to go on the offensive to win,” Davis Milevsky says. “The next four years were trench warfare.” 

Superintendent Aguilar’s continued belligerent behavior, enabled by a complicit school board, resulted in repeated violations of SCTA’s contract and other agreements. The situation got so bad that Sac City educators held a one-day unfair labor practice strike in April 2019 to call attention to the ongoing violations of the contract and bad faith bargaining by Aguilar and the school board and call on them to obey the law. 

“Honor our contract that provides resources and smaller class sizes for our students. That’s what we want,” Fisher said during the one-day strike. “We mutually agreed to a contract that meets the needs of our students. Aguilar, with the support of the board, is trying to break that agreement. We won’t break our promise to our students.” 

The strike was featured on the national CBS Evening News that night, and the successful action was a good test of their structure, the commitment of their members and SCTA’s ability to turn out community allies and supporters. 

“This unfair labor practice strike in the middle of our contract showed the power we have when we rise together for each other, our students and families, and for what’s right,” Fisher says. “This one-day strike helped us to realize our strength and focused our preparations to strike again for longer, if needed.” 

SCTA leaders quickly realized they could only get so far with Superintendent Aguilar and a school board that refused to hold him accountable, so they turned to the power of the ballot box to elect community leaders to the board who valued public schools and the educators who make them special. SCTA started in earnest with the 2018 school board election, which ended unsuccessfully but gave them important foundational experience they would lean into in 2020 when educators supported a challenger to the long-serving school board president (who was openly antagonistic to SCTA). To support the effort, the local voted to raise the contributions to their political fund from $1 per member per month to $4.50 (later increased to $9). 

The well-funded war chest from Sacramento’s political establishment was no match for the grassroots effort of 2,500 SCTA educators and community – the latter pulled off a shocking upset on Election Night with challenger Lavinia Grace Phillips winning by more than 14%. Also elected that night: SCTA-endorsed candidate Chinua Rhodes, a community activist who had worked cooperatively with SCTA in the past. SCTA members won a satisfying taste of political victory and had built a successful structure to create positive change for all Sacramento students. 

“This started the shift on the school board,” Fisher says. “Virtually every Sacramento political establishment figure was against us, including the Sacramento Bee, and we won anyway. It was a real moment of consciousness about our collective power and just how much we could accomplish together for our schools and students.” 

The fight between SCTA and Superintendent Aguilar for the soul of Sac City Unified came to a head when educators walked out of their classrooms and onto picket lines for eight days of powerful solidarity. With Aguilar and district admin refusing to address a staffing crisis that saw 10,000 SCUSD students without a permanent teacher in their classroom every day, SCTA and SEIU Local 1021, representing the school district’s education support professionals, went on strike in Spring 2022.  

The strike made national headlines, with massive marches in the streets of the state capital, a rousing appearance in the pouring rain by legendary organizer Dolores Huerta and the occupation of the superintendent’s office at district headquarters by parents demanding that Aguilar and admin negotiate in good faith with teachers to end the strike. 

Through the power of the strike, educators won agreements that continue to help the district attract and retain the educators and school staff that Sacramento’s public school students need for success. 

“From start to finish, our members have been united in the belief that schools should be adequately staffed with a teacher in front of every classroom,” Fisher said when SCTA won the tentative agreement. “We stayed strong, and as a result we now have a contract that will help us attract and retain staff and provide our members with modest raises.” 

The contract win, negotiated by SCTA’s then-150-member strong bargaining team, rejected the district’s proposed takeaways on health insurance and included on-schedule raises for educators, off-schedule payments and health and safety improvements. The strike built a lively movement for public schools in communities throughout Sacramento, with parents in some neighborhoods taking active roles at daily pickets and in lobbying their school board members to support educators – including local leaders in the making Jasjit Singh and Taylor Kayatta. 

Jasjit Singh, Tara Jeane and Taylor Kayatta showing support for educators during the 2022 strike

Powered by the inspiring victory of #SacCitySolidarity in the strike, Singh and Kayatta decided to run against two incumbents on the Sac City School Board that fall. Along with educator and CTA member Tara Jeane, the three challengers had the potential to shift the power structure on the school board, and SCTA members put in the effort to make it so – walking every precinct and knocking on more than 44,000 doors in the three board districts to make sure voters knew that Jeane, Kayatta and Singh were the choice of Sacramento educators.  

Election Day 2022 was a massive victory for SCTA and Sacramento public schools, grounded in the structures and organizing culture built over the previous seven years, with all three candidates winning election to the school board. This meant that SCTA had helped elect a majority of the school board and shifted power in the district. Superintendent Aguilar was out of a job by the middle of the next year. 

SCTA-supported SCUSD School Board members Tara Jeane, Jasjit Singh, Lavinia Grace Phillips, Taylor Kayatta and Chinua Rhodes, after election day victory in 2022

“Flipping the board was a big moment of change for our district and a huge victory for our Sac City Unified community,” says Vanessa Cudabac, the SCTA member (and now second vice president) who led the union’s political field operation. “Voters had finally had enough of a school board that rubber stamped an unpopular and ineffective superintendent, and they joined us in making the change our district needed. It was time to close the book on that chapter and re-center our students and families in SCUSD’s decisions.” 

SCTA flexed its powerful organizing and political muscles again in 2024, supporting four candidates (Jose Navarro, April Ybarra, Chinua Rhodes and Michael Benjamin) for school board and winning all four – meaning that every current member of the SCUSD School Board is now supported by local educators, who worked hard to make their successful elections a reality.  

“These victories were only possible through the efforts of the entire SCTA membership, who have been willing to make financial contributions to give educators a powerful voice in electing and holding accountable the leaders of our school district,” Davis Milevsky says. “So many members knocked on doors, made phone calls, wrote letters, attended meetings and did the hard work to help our candidates win – these wins belong to all of us.” 

On the heels of a 2023 contract victory that lowered class sizes, increased teacher pay and improved special education staffing, SCTA continued the progress made following the 2022 strike, reaching agreement after five months of negotiations and before the previous contract expired for the first time in decades. 

Major victories include: 

• Wage increases that make Sac City educators the highest paid in the county and are intended to attract speech language pathologists, school nurses, school psychologists and other specialists. 

• Contractual staffing ratios and overages for school social workers, school psychologists and school nurses. 

• Additional staff for Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) implementation at 10 elementary schools. 

• Contractual guarantee that SCTA must approve any use of outside contractors to do any credentialed bargaining unit work. 

• Addition of at least one reading intervention teacher at every elementary school and two at schools with more than 250 students. 

Additionally, the union won landmark language on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in Sac City public schools – a contractual guarantee that AI “may not be used to replace bargaining unit work or perform bargaining unit work without the expressed written agreement of SCTA,” perhaps the first such contract victory for teachers unions nationwide and definitely the strongest.  

“The contracting-out win doubled the amount of school nurses we have and reduced outside contracts by about $25 million, which went back into the bargaining unit,” Fisher says. “Every victory has come with impacts that helped build our union. Our wins in ratios and caseloads for service providers meet national standards, ensuring our students have access to the services they need, provided by permanent Sac City educators who are invested in the success of every student in our district.” 

“Our struggle persists for the resources and services all Sacramento students deserve,” Davis Milevsky continues. “With so many threats to our public schools, students and families, we must continue organizing and fighting to protect our communities and defend public education – at the bargaining table and in the streets, when necessary.” 

Keep up with SCTA by following their website at sacteachers.org or on Facebook/Instagram at @SacTeachers. 

By the Numbers 

Sac City Teachers Association wins 

30%: Amount educator wages have increased since the 2022 strike. 

$137,839: Base pay for K-12 educator in SCUSD with 20 years experience. 

7 of 7: Number of SCUSD school board members endorsed by SCTA. 

500-to-1: Ratio of students to school psychologists, school nurses and school social workers by 2027-28. 

$90: Daily overage penalty if ratios exceed 500-to-1 for the above service providers. 

$418: Daily pay for SCTA substitute teachers by end of contract (99% of sub assignments filled districtwide). 

83: Number of reading intervention teachers added in district elementary schools in accordance with SCTA’s demands in fallout from 2022 strike. 

$9: Amount donated per SCTA member per month to the local’s political fund, which supports their extensive electoral efforts. 

24: Class size limit for SCUSD K-3 classes; intermediate classes are capped at 30 students; and core classes at the secondary level are limited to 32 students, by contract. 

15: Caseload limit for elementary special day class (SDC) mild/moderate teachers. Secondary SDC mild/moderate limit is set at 16, while SDC moderate/severe is capped at 16. 

2: CTA Human Rights Awards won over the past decade by SCTA, for their work to make SCUSD a Safe Haven District and efforts to promote civil and human rights awareness throughout the school district.