“I told the school board exactly our plan during my public comments,” says Travis Mougeotte, president of Rocklin Teachers Professional Association (RTPA). “I told them not only were we not going to follow the ( forced outing) policy, we were also going to file a complaint with PERB. And we did.”

A Rocklin school board meeting in September 2023 drew a crowd; the board went on to adopt an illegal forced-outing policy. Courtesy KCRA.

RTPA’s recent victory awarded by the state Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) was one of several recent wins statewide that protect our students, defend our members, uphold our contracts and respect our collective bargaining processes. From fighting back against extremist boards and their dangerous policies in Rocklin and
Temecula, to winning long battles for justice for wrongfully terminated members in Sacramento, to reversing more than 40 years of union busting in Clovis, CTA members are organizing in communities and winning historic victories for our students, members and public schools.

“It reiterates that our members really do hold the power, and we have an unstoppable voice — whether that’s for classroom and educational issues or student and social issues,” Mougeotte says.

In Rocklin, an extremist-controlled school board adopted an illegal forced-outing policy in late 2023 after a difficult public meeting where the vast majority of attendees spoke in opposition, only to see a quick discussion and vote of approval.Mougeotte says that RTPA immediately sprang into action, gathering information about the policy, engaging members to gauge opinions and contacting CTA locals in Southern California like Associated Chino Teachers to learn from their struggle on similar issues. He added that RTPA began a media campaign to broadcast what Rocklin teachers were seeing about the policy and where they thought it was headed.

Mougeotte says Rocklin educators showed up for their students and each other.

“Our members are very connected and always organizing. We’ve done a lot of work to keep our members engaged and informed, so when there’s a big ask, they’re ready to go,” says Mougeotte, a high school social studies teacher. “It was just a matter of educating our members about the situation and what we needed from them, and then the organizing fell into place.”

After reaching out to the superintendent and school board to slow down the process and work together (and receiving no response), RTPA issued a cease-and-desist notice and demanded the district bargain the change in working conditions. Later, RTPA leaders amended their complaint to say that the board’s policy was illegal, so they were not demanding to bargain the impacts — “We’re not putting our members’ credentials and livelihoods in jeopardy.” Mougeotte says he expected the district to back off the policy, but when it didn’t, RTPA turned to PERB.

“Every time somebody has told the district ‘no this is illegal,’ they refuse to accept it and find a new attorney or a new avenue to try,” he says. “They have a policy of ‘If you see something, say something.’ We saw something, we said something and they still did it anyway.”

In June, a PERB administrative law judge ruled in RTPA’s favor, ordering the forced-outing policy to be reversed and directing the school district to stop trying to circumvent the collective bargaining process. The district has appealed that ruling to the full PERB Board, but RTPA is confident that PERB will uphold its win. Mougeotte says they are thrilled with the initial victory, adding it to a list of recent wins Rocklin members have powered with their activism and using them as energy to keep up the momentum. He’s excited about what’s next for RTPA members.

“We spent a lot of energy and resources for the last few months,” Mougeotte says. “The beautiful thing about ‘next’ for our membership is that next is back in their classrooms, focused on their kids.”

Temecula Educators Win: PERB overturns extremist policies

“It was very clear to our members that this was an attack on our union and it was an attack on them as well. We are the union,” says Edgar Díaz, president of Temecula Valley Educators Association (TVEA). “You can’t say you love teachers and then try to nullify part of our contract.”

Temecula Valley EA educators and community at a Temecula school board meeting; the board adopted policies requiring educators to “out” their LGBTQ+ students and banned the display of flags in classrooms other than the U.S. and California flags. Courtesy Capital & Main

Temecula Valley Unified School District (TVUSD) garnered national attention in late 2023 when an extremist school board majority adopted illegal policies that violated the rights of Temecula students and educators and put them in danger. This is the same board that refused to approve a social studies textbook because it included a section on civil rights icon Harvey Milk — so Díaz said TVEA was familiar with their extremist antics when they adopted policies requiring educators to “out” their LGBTQ+ students, as well as banning the display of any flags in classrooms other than the United States and California flags.

Díaz says that when the school board made these decisions, it changed educators’ working conditions and unilaterally attempted to nullify part of their contract — and it immediately put some of the district’s most vulnerable students at risk.

“Part of any public school teacher’s DNA is that we accept any student that walks through our door. We care about them as students and also as individuals,” says Díaz, a 23-year teacher. “When policies are adopted that create division between students and teachers or that whittle away at the trust people have for educators — that creates distrust and makes it difficult to do our jobs.”

After an attempt at bargaining went fruitless, TVEA turned to PERB and filed an unfair practice charge over the district’s unilateral changes to members’ working conditions and the district’s restrictions on protected union speech.

“This allowed us to use the enforcement part of bargaining to tell people that the district was breaking the rules,” Díaz says. “As educators, this matters to us — fairness and being able to rely on rules.”

In October 2024, an administrative law judge found that the school district had indeed failed to bargain and infringed on the rights of educators with the ban on flags, ordering TVUSD to rescind both policies (which they had yet to do as of press time, Díaz says).

Díaz says TVEA members are ready to continue focusing on what matters — fighting for the schools all Temecula students deserve.

“We want to work with our community partners to improve the state of special education in our district and support students with IEPs to help them meet their goals,” Díaz says. “We want to help educators do their jobs without stress. Our big campaign is to get to issues that matter now.”

The lengthy and ongoing fight to defend their public schools from extremists means TVEA has an active and engaged membership willing to fight for each other and their students. Díaz says it’s important for local leaders to talk to their members and work toward wins that matter to them.

“We’ve been focusing on bargaining and working conditions and developing our site reps so we can represent our members,” he says. “The site conditions matter the most and if you’re making a difference at the sites, members will be more likely to join your efforts on an association level.”

A Marathon for Justice: Sac City teachers win big after five years

“It was a long journey, and it means a lot,” says Nikki Milevsky, president of Sacramento City Teachers Association (SCTA). “Our evil superintendent tried to decimate our child development department, and we caught him.” SCTA leaders were persistent about the fight for justice for members who were wrongfully terminated five years ago, winning a massive settlement in September 2024 for 18 teachers: $50,000 each for a total of $900,000. A 2021 PERB ruling found Sacramento City Unified School District (SCUSD) had illegally laid off child development teachers and replaced them with employees from another public agency, directing the district to negotiate with SCTA over back pay.

In 2019, Sacramento City TA organized with parents and the community to save the child development teachers’ jobs, then turned to PERB, which found the district had acted illegally.

In 2019, SCTA organized with community partners to save the laid-off teachers, pleading with the school board to change their minds.

“We organized members, parents and students to come to school board meetings. We brought a lot of things to light during that process, but it still took the legal action through PERB that got it reversed,” Milevsky says. “We were able to get 10 layoffs rescinded through organizing and fighting with the district, but that didn’t help everyone who got laid off. So, we had to go to PERB.”

Milevsky says the former SCUSD superintendent made a deal to cut the child development educators before any information went to the school board and without bargaining with SCTA. The PERB complaint was part of a multi-pronged attack to force the district to do the right thing. Milevsky says it’s rewarding to finally get the issue settled and right the long-standing wrong.

“Fifty thousand dollars is a good chunk of money,” she says. “Some members entered very rough times getting laid off. We were and still are the highest-paid child development department in the area so even if they got another job, it was less pay — so this really helps.”

This settlement is another in a string of historic victories by SCTA members, including a clean sweep of their supported school board candidates in the November election. Milevsky credits deep organizing and a membership that stepped up to work together to overcome obstacles and persist through disappointment to win for each other, their students and the Sacramento community.

“Every victory was a group effort and took a lot of involvement and empowering of our members,” she says. “We won an eight-day strike, but we still had the same lame superintendent for another year. It’s a marathon with a lot of hills.

Ending a Culture of Union-Busting: Clovis educators continue fight

“No matter what happens, we have laid a foundation of change in this district,” says Amy Kilburn, president of the Association of Clovis Educators (ACE). “It is now up to our colleagues and fellow educators to figure out what they want to do with this path of change.”

The ongoing struggle by Clovis educators against a half-century of union-busting culture got a huge boost in June 2024 when PERB ruled that Clovis Unified School District’s (CUSD) Faculty Senate was an illegal employer-supported organization (under the guise of a legitimate venue for educator concerns) and ordered that it be disestablished. The agency further acknowledged that the district had been interfering with the ongoing ACE unionization campaign for the district’s more than 2,000 classroom teachers and ordered all union-busting to cease.

ACE members’ organizing work was validated by a June 2024 PERB ruling that mandated an end to the district’s union busting. Work continues to organize classroom educators into ACE.

The ruling shows what ACE organizers have been saying during their historic organizing campaign: Clovis Unified has been breaking the law for a long time to keep educators from forming a union, creating a culture that was openly hostile to educators seeking to unite their voices on behalf of each other and their students.

Kilburn says the PERB victory is validating and means that she and other ACE leaders can exhale and continue collecting signatures on union petitions, so that every educator in Clovis has the security of a union contract. In 2021, ACE made history when Clovis Unified’s school psychologists and mental health support professionals voted to unionize. This year, the district’s American Sign Language interpreters and naturalist educators voted to join ACE as well.

Kristin Heimerdinger, ACE vice president, says the PERB win is so encouraging because the district is finally being held accountable for its actions — checks and balances for an administration that has acted with impunity for so long.

“It just felt so empowering because, yes, the district can be held accountable, be expected to follow the law and do the right thing,” she says. “It is our goal to have a collaborative working relationship with our admin and school board. The work is much better and easier if we can do it together. But it’s been hard getting them to understand Clovis was breaking the law, and we have to work on a better way to move forward collaboratively.”

Initially, a PERB administrative law judge ruled that CUSD must acknowledge that their union busting was unlawful in a written notice posting (as is typically done). But ACE appealed to the full PERB Board and asked for the statement to be read by the superintendent on video instead, which was upheld (Clovis Unified is appealing this part of the decision). PERB ordered the superintendent to record an uninterrupted verbatim reading of the order. Kilburn says that this will ensure that every Clovis educator sees and hears the same message, along with other requirements including an ACE representative must be given the opportunity to be in the room when the video is shown

“This is vital to allow Clovis educators to make their own decisions on how they want to move forward,” Kilburn says. “Because Clovis Unified was breaking the law for 40 years,” Heimerdinger adds.

ACE organizers are hard at work visiting school sites and talking to educators to try to turn victory at PERB into signatures on union petitions. Kilburn says it starts by normalizing conversations with fellow educators about working, teaching and learning conditions on campus, developing a collective consciousness that there is opportunity to create change, and breaking down a culture of fear and silence to build the schools their students deserve.

“I want educators to realize it is normal for them to have a say in teaching and learning conditions,” Heimerdinger says. “I want to continue to change the culture at this district and I want educators to realize that while their work is noble, that doesn’t mean they should be exploited for it.”