Piedmont Educators wholeheartedly support Measure P and believe the additional annual $2.6 million in funding it will provide is urgently needed by our schools and by our students to keep our programs thriving, and to attract and retain the best teachers for our classrooms.
Many community members have been asking Piedmont teachers if Measure P will help with the long-standing problem of making educator salaries in PUSD more competitive with surrounding districts. The answer is YES! Measure P will ensure the district can give a much-needed 4.5% salary increase in 2025-2026, and do so without making any further cuts to the district budget.
If Measure P does not pass, the district will be forced to make even more cuts–perhaps as much as two million dollars in cuts–in order to meet its obligations for 2025-26. The hard cuts of the last several years already have us operating on an extremely lean budget, with the sacrifice of a full-time teaching librarian at secondary, cuts to technical education and services, cuts to administrative services, and increased class sizes at our middle and high schools. As educators, we honestly do not know where we can cut more. We don’t know how the quality of education Piedmont is renowned for can possibly be maintained in the face of another round of budget cuts.
Meanwhile, the state of California is asking us to do more and more for students, expanding our Transitional Kindergarten program, providing free meals for all students, and adding two new graduation requirements–Financial Literacy and Ethnic Studies–that will have to be provided starting with the cohort that enters high school in just two years. All of these are good things, but our current state funding does not cover their cost.
We believe that the extraordinary schools in the Piedmont Unified School District enhance life in this city not only for our amazing students and their families, but for everyone who is proud to live in a place that values education so deeply.
As educators, we urge everyone in Piedmont to please vote YES on Measure P!