Published January 18, 2024 3:15pm PST

On Wednesday, January 18th, hundreds of Pomona Unified School District (PUSD) teachers rallied in front of the District offices, for a variety of reasons, but the number one reason was low pay. At this time. PUSD’s teacher union, Associated Pomona Teachers (APT), is asking for a 12% raise, but so far, the District has simply returned with a low-ball counter-offer of 5%.

Associated Pomona Teachers (APT), states that the low pay makes it difficult for the District to retain teachers, and that this often causes positions to go unfilled. They maintain that too often students end up in classes conducted by a series of multiple long term substitutes. In particular, PUSD is having a difficult time filling its Special Education positions.

The APTbargaining team states that the District is more than able to pay this salary increase due to the fact that the District is carrying $140 million over from the previous year, as it has for many previous years. APT asserts that holding this much money in reserve deprives students of services that they deserve. 

Actions like this are taking place in California’s 1000 public school districts across the state. Teachers’ pay, low to begin with, has not kept pace with the high cost of living, inflation and increased demands of the job. That said, Pomona teachers, in particular, suffer from low pay. A quick comparison of teacher salaries in other districts exposes the fact that Pomona teachers are coming up short. 

A Claremont Unified School District teacher who had been teaching for ten years with an MA degree now earns $96,557. A Chaffey Unified School District teacher who has been teaching for ten years with an MA degree now earns $111,706.

Last year, a Pomona Unified School District teacher who taught for ten years with an MA degree earned $88,922. Pomona USD teachers have been asking for a significant pay raise for some time now. This time round will they receive the kind of raise that would put them on even ground with other teachers in neighboring districts?

Julian Lucas is a traditional darkroom photographer, a purveyor of books, and writer, but mostly a photographer. But don’t ever ask him to take photos of weddings, quinceñeras, birthdays. He’ll charge you 100,000,000

Julian is also the owner and founder of Mirrored Society Book Shop, BOOK-STORE, and publisher of The Pomonan.