As of March, the Palo Alto Educators Association has been renegotiating a contract with the Palo Alto Unified School District in an unprecedented push for higher pay.
For more than a decade, PAEA members have been advocating for higher salaries, citing the pay gap with neighboring districts and long commute times due to Palo Alto’s unaffordable housing relative to educators’ current wages. In a 2024 interview with the Campanile, Gunn High School math teacher Kathy Hawes — a veteran teacher who has been with the district for more than 30 years — revealed that she would be making an additional $37,000 annually working at the Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District.
Due to wage discussions taking place during school hours, teacher advocates like Palo Alto High School math teacher and PAEA union negotiator Daniel Nguyen are often absent during instructional periods. For students, this means missing hands-on, in-person guidance for difficult courses that are deliberately designed to have a teacher present.
While Verde acknowledges that a lack of instructional direction can be detrimental to a student’s education, we believe that this is a fair compromise to be made in order for our educators to obtain the pay equal to their teaching quality. Such a resolution would not only benefit educators, but their students as well, as fair wages would act as an incentive for teachers to maintain PAUSD’s standard of high-quality education. As such, we applaud Nguyen and other advocates for their dedication to bettering the district as a whole, and we urge the district to approve the PAEA’s proposed wage increases as soon as possible.
For Nguyen, missing instructional periods is undoubtedly a concern, and he has taken measures to minimize its impact on learning quality as much as possible.
“We schedule tests so that they’re not on the same day as when I’m gone,” Nguyen said. “There’s days where we get ahead of the lesson so that when I’m gone, students can just work on assignments. If I’m gone and material needs to be presented, I’ll record a video making sure I deliver the content to students.”
In addition, Nguyen believes that increased wages would allow teachers to pursue outside interests and attend to personal issues without fear of financial insecurity.
“A lot of teachers have side jobs over the summer,” Nguyen said. “Teachers only have so much time. If a teacher needs to go pick up a shift somewhere so that they can feed their family or put a roof over their head, that’s less time that they can, say, attend a drama performance or a sporting event. [Higher pay will make] educators more financially comfortable so that they don’t have to worry about what’s going to happen with the next paycheck.”
The current impasse between teachers and the district lies in the district’s reserve rate, especially when compared to neighboring districts.
“A reserve rate is basically how much a district has in reserves compared to how much they spend,” Nguyen said. “Mountain View-Los Altos’ reserve rate is about 15%, which means that any excess money they get, they invest in teachers and other places. Our reserve rate is double that at 30%, meaning that instead of investing extra money in students and educators, the district is putting it in a bank account where it’s just earning interest.”
PAUSD’s highest salary for teachers is less than $170,000 per year. In comparison, MVLA’s highest salary is over $200,000.
Quality comes at a cost. If PAUSD wishes to maintain the high academic standards it has come to expect, it’s imperative to give the outstanding teachers it employs their deserved compensation.
Editors’ note: In recognition of the influence teacher advisors typically have over the writing process, our teacher advisor, Paul Kandell, had limited involvement in the development of this editorial to avoid any potential bias.