San Diego Unified says it will close schools Feb. 26 for one day after teachers authorized what would be their first strike in decades over special education workloads — part of a statewide union push for schools to boost staffing. The action comes as the county’s largest school district and its teachers union work to negotiate a new contract, even as contract talks have stalled in other California districts, including one in San Diego County. In San Diego Unified, bargaining is still ongoing. School board President Richard Barrera said he was optimistic that progress would be made before the strike date. District leaders have been pushing for more money for special education, last month urging Congress to fully fund the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act. That more than 50-year-old federal law, intended to fund special education, has never been fully funded.  But Kyle Weinberg, president of the San Diego Education Association, said Thursday that yearslong underfunding of education by the state and federal government makes local investment even more important. “Contract violations are not an acceptable funding strategy,” he said at a news conference. In an unfair labor practice charge filed with the California Public Employment Relations Board on Dec. 17, the union said special education teachers had been assigned caseloads higher than their contract allows, many of them for more than two weeks at a time. The union also said the district has a history of such violations and has denied it access to class-size data. The next day, union members voted to authorize a one-day strike over it. Weinberg thinks a broader nationwide shortage of special education teachers is a factor, but he doesn’t think the district is doing everything it can to staff positions. The school district has refuted some of the union’s claims on a webpage that declares “We support our educators.”  “The district has currently filled 97% of special education teacher positions using the contractual 20 to 1 caseload ratio, which is 8 students below the state maximum,” it says. Superintendent Fabiola Bagula said in a statement that families should start finding other arrangements for their children on Feb. 26 and promised to protect instructional time. The makeup date will be March 9, previously scheduled as a non-instructional day.  Bagula also pointed to what she said were the district’s generous pay and benefits and its class-size ratios, which she called some of the lowest in the region. “We have put concrete solutions on the table that remain under consideration, and we remain committed to bargaining in good faith and reaching an agreement that keeps students at the center,” she said. The SDEA has been in bargaining for a new contract for about a year. Its most recent three-year contract expired at the end of June. “I think it’s important for the union to be organized and to create a strong voice among its members, and I think that’s happening now,” Barrera said Thursday evening. The SDEA push is part of a statewide campaign, dubbed “We Can’t Wait,” by the California Teachers Association. More than a dozen teachers unions around the state have declared an impasse in their own contract talks, EdSource reported Tuesday. One of those is South Bay Union School District, where the Southwest Teachers Association reached an impasse in June, union officials said Thursday. ...read more read less