Three generations of Pearl West’s family attended Esparza Elementary School in the Northside Independent School District, where she has spent the last seven years as a manager in the Child Nutrition Department.
Two weeks ago, she resigned from her position.
The resignation comes after more than a year of fighting, alongside the Northside American Federation of Teachers union, for raises given only to select employees as part of a raise proposal passed last January.
Positions with high vacancy rates were prioritized for the raises and those with high retention rates left out.
Meanwhile, positions with few vacancies, like the one West was in and other supervisory roles, didn’t receive those raises despite being in the same departments. District officials at the time argued that a more comprehensive raise would be too costly.
The union filed a grievance against the district over the selective raises last year and has spent months navigating the various steps of the district’s grievance process.
That culminated in a hearing Tuesday, where board members defended their actions and peppered union president Melina Espiritu-Azocar with questions about what the board and district could have done differently given a tight financial situation.
After a brief discussion in the executive session, the board voted 5-2 to deny the grievance, with union-backed Trustee David Salcido and Trustee Karla Duran voting against the motion.
West rallied in Austin last year with other educators and school staff, demanding more funding — an ask that was never met with action.
“It felt like a kick while I was down,” West said. “I was proud for my ladies, they deserved what they got and even more. But so did the rest of [us].”
After seven years of service, West said she only made $21,000 a year, making her eligible for government assistance, which she applied for at the beginning of each year.
“I was ready to retire with Northside,” she said. “But it was no longer worth it.”
Union leaders disputed the district’s characterization of finances, saying that more funds are available for raises than they are letting on.
Raises and vacancies
Much of the discussion in the hearing echoed a board meeting in January 2023 when the pay proposal was unanimously approved by trustees present after being proposed by former Superintendent Brian Woods.
Woods said during the meeting that the recommendation was necessary due to a tight labor market and shifting compensation in the nonprofessional job market.
“School districts used to be in the habit of looking at compensation once a year as we adopted a budget,” he said during the meeting. “Those days, at least temporarily, seem to be gone.”
That led the district to analyze vacancy rates and compare compensation in those positions to market value, Woods said. Using those two analyses, they came up with a list of under-market jobs with high vacancy rates, prompting the recommendation for raises.
Paige Kyle, an attorney representing the district in the hearing, said the plan has worked. Bus driver vacancy rates, for example, went from 22% when the proposal was passed to 9%.
However, with employees making less than $15 an hour and not receiving that raise, Espiritu-Azocar told the San Antonio Report before the hearing that explanation was unacceptable.
“What we’re wanting is to ensure that there’s an equitable pay increase for all of the support staff in our district,” she said. “We’ve been fighting for well over several years now for just the basic cost of living wage for our support staff.”
The union also argued in its complaint that the reasoning was not clearly explained to board members or to affected employees. They were told to ask supervisors if they had questions about the differing pay raises within the same departments — only to get no answers when they did ask, according to the complaint.
Trustee Carol Harle took issue with those portions of the complaint.
“I think I have a different interpretation of transparency,” she said during the hearing. “I think there was some misunderstanding or an opportunity to communicate using different language.”
Union leaders said after the meeting that they had exhausted all options, with the grievance ending after the vote. Espiritu-Azocar also said they would continue fighting for fair wages for all employees.
While the board denied the remedies sought in the grievance, members did vote to direct Superintendent John Kraft, who was not in place when the recommendations were made, to explore ways to communicate future compensation changes to employees to avoid confusion.
Both the union president and Kyle, the attorney representing the district, agreed that employees need to be valued.
“There is not a person in the administration who disagrees that they want to value and respect all of your employees,” Kyle said. “And they spent a lot of time studying this on your behalf so that they can make the decision and make recommendations to the board.”
Sitting in the audience, watching board members shuffle in after deliberating, West said she doesn’t feel that way.
“Our auxiliary staff are the bones, the soul, the stomach and the heart of each campus,” she said. “If providing them a livable wage is not doable, maybe we shouldn’t be expanding so much and spreading ourselves so thin over an amount of campuses where a livable wage isn’t possible.”
Starting Tuesday, the board begins discussions about the budget for next year, which could include raises for those left out last year, as well as other employees.
