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VOLUME 75 ISSUE 5
ARCHBISHOP RIORDAN HIGH SCHOOL
SERVING ARCHBISHOP RIORDAN HIGH SCHOOL SINCE 1949
Sports, Pages 16 - 19
April 2025 THE NEWSPAPER OF CRUSADER COUNTRY
Teachers’ union, Archdiocese at negotiation standstill By Angela Jia ’25
In the gleaming white building of the San Francisco Archdiocese, there is a conference room where teacher union negotiations are taking place. The Archdiocese’s negotiation team—composed of school administrators and Archdiocese’s leaders—sit on one side of the room. The teachers’ union—including the president and reps—sit on the other side. In a typical meeting, members will introduce proposals, ask questions, and caucus with their respective groups to discuss how each item would affect their membership. Several rounds of this occur in a single negotiation. As for how the process is coming along? “Negotiations are…going,” union rep Jackie Grealish said. “We have come to tentative agreements on several smaller items but we still face some big issues around salary and working conditions.” As a union rep, Grealish’s job is to understand the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) (a “massive” document outlining their contract) in order to best support union members through the highs and lows. She joined the union in 2021 when she witnessed the support and solidarity they offered to teachers, and two years later was nominated as a rep in the annual elections. And right now, during negotiations, Grealish is helping to spearhead that solidarity by advocating to improve the working conditions of her colleagues. A big part of that is, of course, salary. “We cannot share specific numbers but we’re hoping for a fair salary increase that supports teachers through times of unprecedented inflation…,” Grealish said. As of press time, prices are 23.3 percent higher than they were from before the COVID-19 pandemic, and the economy has become increasingly uncertain due to recent Trump administration policies–particularly his tariffs– and the volatile stock market. Grealish cites the extremely high cost of living in the Bay Area.
By Loghan Hwang ’27 Union representative Jackie Grealish gives a motivational speech during the teachers’ union gathering on April 9.
Additional items on the table include class size, personal/sick days, grading time, and event supervisions, “to name a few,” Grealish said. “It not only affects us teachers and counselors and librarians, but it also affects you guys [students] in the classroom. I had a class last semester at 31 kids in one block and [22] kids in my other one. They got very different experiences.” Ben Ekhaus ’25 said, “I do support the union because
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It not only affects us teachers and counselors and librarians, but it also affects you guys [students] in the classroom.
-Jackie Grealish, union rep teachers are essential workers and they deserve their rights and benefits the union brings.” With respect to a rapidly technologizing society, the issue of AI has become a significant negotiation point. Grealish explained how teachers are forced to take a significant amount of their time researching AI, running student work through AI checkers, documenting AI
responses to their own assignment prompts, comparing student work to AI answers, and more, all to make sure students are actually learning. That’s labor that deserves to be compensated, the union asserts. Ekhaus continued, “I feel like every teacher deserves to be paid well.” However, the Archdiocese’s negotiation team, which includes school administrators like president Tim Reardon, cite funding constraints. Like Grealish, who points to Bay Area costs as a major impetus for higher salary requests, Reardon uses the exact same concern to justify the school’s inability to meet their demands. A general wage increase can only be as high as every school in the union can afford. All schools are on the same pay scale, so individual schools cannot decide independently on teachers’ wages. Reardon said, “The main concern is sustainability… Some of the union’s proposals involve significant increases in compensation or benefits, which— if not carefully planned—could put pressure on school budgets or lead to tough choices down the line. The administration’s role is to ask, ‘Can we afford this, not just now, but five years from now?’”
Funding and money allocation inevitably brings up questions about recent campus renovations, which have cost millions upon millions. When asked whether such projects have affected negotiations, Reardon tied the issue back to long term finances. He said, “Not directly. Renovations and capital improvements are usually funded through a separate stream—either from fundraising, capital campaigns, or designated facilities budgets.” In addition, “That said, any large investment in facilities requires long-term financial planning…It’s all part of the same big picture: investing in the future of the school while also caring for the people who make that future possible.” The fact that the teachers’ union exists in a private Catholic setting is an anomaly in itself. Jeff Isola ’98 noted that the San Francisco Archdiocesan Federation (SFAF) (which encompasses Archbishop Riordan, Junipero Serra, Sacred Heart Cathedral, Marin Catholic, and Archbishop Mitty) is the only union in a Catholic secondary system west of the Mississippi. The claim is verified by the American Federation of Teachers.
Please see “Teachers’ union” on page 4