Dear High Tech High Family:

As a community, we are committed to ensuring that we create a learning environment where young people feel loved, seen and do meaningful work that matters to them. In order to make this happen, we must create the proper conditions for the adults who build deep relational connections within the classroom, across each campus, and in the community.

As we demonstrated earlier this year (February 2023), HTH and the union leadership agreed to our first-ever Collective Bargaining Agreement (“CBA”) that provides competitive salaries and benefits for our teachers. This contract ensures smaller class sizes in our schools and promotes teacher input in how we evaluate and support our teachers.

Within our CBA, we’ve proactively included a provision to revisit our teachers’ wages annually. This is a direct response to dynamic & uncertain nature of state funding for schools, which often becomes clearer following the Governor’s budget announcements in May and June. It’s worth noting that charter schools, like ours, navigate a distinct financial landscape–an unequal playing field–compared to school districts.

Despite these unique challenges, we recommit to paying our teachers in a way that is smart, balanced, and financially prudent. We will ensure we pay teachers and all staff members appropriately while also maintaining our broader responsibility to sustain our network of 16 charter schools next year and each subsequent year that follows. This includes not only salaries for both teaching and support staff, but also accounting for essential expenses like the rise in utility costs, the rise in facility maintenance costs, increases to HTH’s contributions to the teachers’ retirement system and health benefits, increasing substitute staffing costs, special education services, student programs, and more.

While so many things are more expensive today, our fiduciary obligation is to balance these needs effectively and stay within our budget. As we move forward, we will not err in making unsustainable financial decisions and we believe that we can do that.

Thank you for being a valued part of our community and we will continue to provide you with regular updates.

Sincerely,

Board Chair Gary E. Jacobs
Interim Chief Executive Officer Dr. Kaleb Rashad