South Bay Educators United

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To Our DCP Community:

For 20 years, DCP has been committed to sending first-generation students to and through college using our guiding values of Desire, Community, and Pride. As educators, we are passionate about this mission, and committed to making DCP the strongest organization that it can be. However, this is not without challenge; DCP has identified areas of growth in transparency and teacher retention, as well as the need to more explicitly explore a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion platform. These goals are crucial for the continued success of DCP, and we believe that the best way to work towards these goals is to create a recognized community of educators at DCP that are empowered to provide high quality education.

After careful consideration, the teachers at DCP have decided to form the South Bay Educators United teachers union affiliated with the California Teachers Association (CTA). A supermajority of DCP teachers have signed a petition to form our union, and we have filed it with the Public Employment Relations Board. This is a decision we take seriously and strongly believe is in the best interest of our students and schools in order to carry out DCP’s mission.

We acknowledge that there are varying opinions about unions across the field of education. Some believe that unions make it nearly impossible to remove ineffective teachers, or that they strain budgets. Others see them as the cause of tension on campuses, prioritizing teachers over students. This is not the spirit of our union. The educators on this committee and the educators supporting this union are the same human beings who embody DCP’s operating principles of service, passion, trust, optimism, humility, and students first mindset. We hope that this news is received with open hearts and minds; we believe in the strength of our community to come together, and see this as a vehicle to do just that.

One of the reasons we are enthusiastic about South Bay Educators United is because it creates a clear opportunity for “removing barriers that prevent full participation of team members and actively creating opportunities to invite team members to the table,” by creating a space to “achieve just policies, practices, protocols and procedures that disrupt historical and current inequities ... to ensure full participation of our community,” as stated in DCP’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion definitions. Rather than being adversarial to the work of DCP, we strongly believe that the creation of this union supports it.

Teachers who feel supported, who feel they have a true voice in support of the mission, stay. This supports DCP’s Key Result of teacher retention. In uncertain and unprecedented times, as we know these are, empowering teachers is crucial for student success. We are aware that DCP is facing many challenges in the coming years, including budget limitations and COVID-19 disruption, and we believe that we can work together as a community to navigate these hardships.

We are proud to be educators at DCP; we are members of this committee because we love our schools and want to see DCP and its students thrive. We call on DCP to respect our legally protected, collective decision; to not exercise influence or interference; and to work with us to make our schools the best possible places to teach and learn. We have set up an email address, southbayeducatorsunited@gmail.com, in order to keep you up-to-date and respond to questions and feedback. Please reach out!

Sincerely,

South Bay Educators United Organizing Committee