The Pasadena Unified School District and United Teachers of Pasadena are set to return to the negotiation table today as they work toward a contract for the next three years.

While the two parties find common ground in certain areas, key differences remain over United Teachers of Pasadena’s, or UTP, proposal to reduce class sizes and increase staffing, a move the district officials described as posing “substantial, ongoing expenses.”

The teacher’s union, meanwhile, said their priority is making sure that the district focuses their spending on students and sticks to “the basic minimum levels of funding” for classrooms.

“We want our teaching and care for our students to be efficient, effective, that we have enough time to do what we need to do, and that every effort is being made to compensate our teachers and professional educators, as close to the top quartile as they can,” Jonathan Gardner, president of UTP, which represents around 850 members, said Wednesday.

PUSD Spokesperson Hilda Ramirez Horvath said Thursday, “we’re looking forward to meeting and continuing negotiations tomorrow,” but declined to comment further, citing the ongoing nature of the discussions.

In an Oct. 30 bargaining update, the district’s bargaining team members said that while PUSD is committed to “maintaining reasonable and manageable class sizes across schools,” meeting the union’s requests would result in significant budgetary constraints.

PUSD’s three-year Multi Year Projection (MYP), a legally required document that assesses the district’s financial health, forecasts a $47 million negative ending balance by 2026-2027, despite significant budget cuts and layoffs in the spring of 2024.

“To address this anticipated negative ending balance and ensure fiscal sustainability, the district has convened a Superintendent’s Budget Advisory Committee (SBAC),” district officials said in the update. “The SBAC, composed of district staff, labor partners, community members, parents and students, is tasked with analyzing PUSD’s fiscal situation and exploring ongoing financial reductions.”

On top of that, UTP’s proposal to increase the number of teachers, counselors, nurses and librarians through capping class sizes and lowering staffing ratios would cost the district an estimated minimum of $6 million per year, if approved.

But Gardner disagreed with the district’s projections, arguing that the proposal could be implemented with far less expense.

“We’re basing our numbers on our current staffing, and we believe it’s very much achievable with minimal cost,” he said. “We get it that it might cost a little bit, but it’s nowhere near the $6 million they’re talking about.”

Gardner also said PUSD has been underspending on classrooms compared to similar districts.

“Just for reference, when I talked about the 5% more of the budget that they really need to be spending in the classroom, that involves shifting about $15 million dollars of their budget,” he said. “While they could accomplish everything we’re asking for without spending money, they really should be considering ways that they can make sure that the classroom is prioritized.”

In order to improve the quality of education, the union has proposed specific class size limits to address inequities in student distribution across classes.

Along the same lines, UTP suggests adjusting instructional minutes to reduce excessive class hours, particularly in elementary and middle schools, which would allow teachers more preparation time and benefit students’ participation in extracurricular activities.

Currently, PUSD teachers are teaching about 8% more than the state requirement, a model that Gardner argues keeps students in class longer than necessary and is not efficient.

PUSD officials, on the other hand, maintained that the average class sizes in the district’s elementary schools are within recommended standards and below the ratios and cap sizes of neighboring districts. However, it does recognize that more work is needed to balance enrollments across individual classrooms.

Gardner also said that while the PUSD announced hundreds of layoffs earlier this year, only dozens of employees were ultimately affected, due to factors such as retirements, voluntary resignations and other staff turnover. However, these layoffs led to a loss of trained staff, many of whom did not return to the district.

As a result, the union is proposing that the district avoid laying off any teachers through 2027, rely instead on attrition to naturally reduce staffing levels as needed. Moreover, UTP suggested that the district work collaboratively with teachers to address any staffing imbalances in a way that benefits students.

“Let’s say we have extra teachers for some reason in certain areas,” he said, “we could work collaboratively to make sure that they are most effectively able to meet student needs.”

Special education is another area that plays an important role in this negotiation. UTP wants a dedicated contract article for special education, which would address class sizes, caseloads and ensure training for teachers to meet diverse student needs, especially in neurodiverse populations.

From the district’s standpoint, however, the union’s new proposals — including the special education article, would add further ongoing cost to the estimated $6 million annual impact already anticipated from capping class sizes and increasing staffing levels.

“These combined proposals pose potential challenges to PUSD’s goals of maintaining fiscal solvency and long-term stability,” district officials said in the bargaining update.

Despite these concerns, officials said they remain optimistic about the negotiations.

“The district remains confident that, while the current budgetary challenges are complex and will require difficult decisions, we can arrive at sustainable solutions through collaboration with all of our labor partners, including UTP,” they said.

So far, the two sides have already met four times to negotiate this contract, with sessions held on April 12, May 24, Oct. 10 and Oct. 30.