San Diego Teachers Union Passes No Confidence Resolution for Prez 

The board of the San Diego Unified teachers union voted overwhelmingly to approve a resolution of no confidence in its embattled president on Wednesday evening.  

The resolution, which passed 11 to one with three abstentions, charged President Kyle Weinberg with engaging in “a pattern of decisions being made without required board approval, undermining the authority of this board.”  

It’s just the latest political firework that’s erupted for the San Diego Education Association, the district’s teachers union.  

The long-simmering turmoil spilled into the open after the recent announcement that the district would be eliminating hundreds of classified positions in the face of a serious budget crunch. Despite the deficit, teachers negotiated a contract that granted them sizable raises and a no-layoff clause. 

To his detractors in SDEA, and the heads of the unions hit with layoffs, that’s because Weinberg left classified staff out to dry in negotiations.  

 “It’s not just that there hasn’t been solidarity, it’s that what [Weinberg has] done has hurt our members,” Dawn Basques, the president of the district’s Office-Technical and Business Services union told me. 

That conflict helped inspire a slew of candidates to challenge Weinberg in the union’s recent leadership election. Matthew Schneck, the board member who proposed the no confidence resolution, is one of those challengers.  

Schneck said that while there had been talks of votes of no confidence in the past, they’d all fizzled. Testimony at Wednesday’s night’s board meeting, though, pushed them to finally move forward.  

A district teacher told the board that Weinberg had asked her to help count ballots, without consulting board members. That teacher claimed that she’d explicitly asked Weinberg if he’d gotten approval from the board and that he said he had.  

Union guidelines require people taking part in election activities to either be members of its election committee or be explicitly approved by the board.  

“This is not focusing on Kyle as a person, it’s about how governance is supposed to work. It’s not acceptable for him as a president to be behaving this way,” Schneck said. 

While some of his allies have raised alarms about the integrity of the union’s election process, Schneck stressed that he didn’t feel the recent incident brought the vote  into question. But, he said, it was just one example of Weinberg’s cavalier approach to governance. 

“When the board is asked to approve decisions after the fact instead of before, it raises serious concerns about accountability,” Schneck said. “The vote represents a breakdown in trust between the board and the current president.” 

Weinberg, however, waved off the vote as being politically motivated.  

“I’ve always attempted to operate according to our SDEA governance documents that require that we are a democratic union and that I act as president in a transparent and inclusive manner,” Weinberg said. “While I do make mistakes, I own those mistakes and try to rectify them.” 

The timing of the vote may very well have political consequences.  

Weinberg is currently in a run-off for the presidency with current Vice President Monique Barrett, an ally of Schneck’s. Schneck is also in a run-off for vice president against longtime Lincoln High teacher Kiki Ochoa, an ally of Weinberg’s. 

While there are still weeks to go before the leadership run-off will conclude, an early indication of how they may go could come with the results of a related election slated to drop any day now – the vote to ratify the teachers’ controversial contract. An overwhelming vote to ratify the contract could be read as an approval of the results Weinberg has secured, even if not of his conduct. Those results include nearly 20 percent in pay raises in the past half decade, avoiding layoffs despite massive deficits and wins on programs like community schools.  

“We want to keep that progress going and the results of our contract ratification vote are going to demonstrate that our membership believe in this vision,” Weinberg said. 

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