WCCUSD sued over teacher vacancies, building conditions

A lawsuit was filed late Friday against the West Contra Costa Unified School District for teacher vacancies and other alleged violations of student rights. 

This is the first lawsuit the district faces under the 2004 landmark Williams v. California case, which established students’ rights to books, qualified teachers and safe schools, among other things. It was filed in Contra Costa County court by San Francisco firms Public Advocates and Munger, Tolles & Olson, after the district failed to address issues raised by teachers a year ago and again in January, according to a Public Advocates’ news release. 

“We’re seeking essentially a court order to require the district to follow their responsibilities that are required through the Williams complaint process, which are statutorily required,” Karissa Provenza, a law fellow at Public Advocates, said in an interview Friday. 

In June 2023, Public Advocates presented WCCUSD with 50 complaints about facility issues at Stege Elementary School, including opaque and inoperable windows, broken floor tiles, and mold, the release noted. It followed up in January with three complaints, about teacher vacancies at Stege, Helms Middle School and Kennedy High School.

Provenza said the district failed to resolve the issues. And instead of filling vacancies, it has relied on long-term substitutes and shifting teachers daily, resulting in what Provenza called “classroom chaos and learning loss” for students in three of the district’s highest need schools. 

“We are seeing districts try to dodge these responsibilities. It’s very glaring in West Contra Costa, and that’s why we think at this point, after all of the many steps that we have taken with the district, this was the next step that we just needed, to get the courts involved here,” she said. 

In an emailed statement days after the lawsuit was filed, WCCUSD said, “The District cannot comment on this matter due to pending litigation. However, we are fully committed to addressing any and all concerns related to our students, staff, and schools.”

Contractors and period subs

In February, the WCCUSD school board accepted the annual report that the Contra Costa County Education Office is required to submit each year as part of the Williams legislation. Based on visits to schools during the start of the academic year, the Education Office found no conditions posing an urgent threat to health or safety. 

But the school board has heard many concerns from Stege staff and students about mold and the generally poor condition of the building, which dates to the 1940s. The school serves about 250 students from kindergarten to sixth grade and has the highest percentage of Black students among all the district’s elementary schools. 

The district is in the process of modernizing the school, putting it third on the list of priorities for a $575 million bond issue to improve buildings, behind Kennedy and Richmond high schools. A district spokesperson said in 2022 that WCCUSD had cleaned up mold when it was reported at Stege and was monitoring the school for it. 

WCCUSD also has been trying to address teacher vacancies at Stege and all schools, holding recruiting events and increasing salaries in the most recent teacher contract by 14.5%. Still, it has not been able to fill the ranks and began the 2023-24 school year with dozens of teacher vacancies. WCCUSD is not alone. Nationally, teachers are in short supply, and districts such as WCCUSD that primarily serve marginalized communities, are feeling the shortage more acutely. 

“As a lifelong member of the WCCUSD community, it saddens me to see what the educational experience of my students has become. Some have gone several years in a row being assigned to a class without a permanent, qualified teacher,” Helms Middle School teacher Jeremiah Romm, a petitioner in the lawsuit, said in the January complaint.

In recent years, WCCUSD has turned to contractors to fill some of the gaps. Last year, the board approved a $306,000 contract  with Scoot Education to place substitute teachers at Kennedy, Stege, Helms and Peres K-­8.

In addition, the district filled Spanish teacher vacancies with the software Edgenuity, which delivers pre-recorded instruction but no engagement with a teacher. 

“It’s easy to cheat, so a lot of students just use Google Translate on all their assignments,” a Kennedy 10th grader using Edgenuity told Richmond Confidential earlier this year. “We’re not learning anything.”

Mostly, the district has filled the void with “period subbing,” which is when teachers give up prep and grading time to fill in for absent teachers. Though period-subbing comes with extra pay for teachers, it often forces them to take work home and adds stress that can lead to burnout. 

This story was updated on July 26 to include the district’s response.

‘Where’s my teacher?’ Students and parents want to know why WCCUSD hasn’t filled dozens of teacher vacancies