During the FUSD Board of Education meeting on December 10, 2025, negotiations between FUSD and the Fremont Unified District Teachers Association (FUDTA) entered the sunshine phase, the initial stage when each side presents opening proposals at a public meeting to ensure transparency. The development comes after a months-long impasse between FUSD and FUDTA ended in April of 2025, when negotiation teams came to a tentative agreement for the terms of Article 12: Class Size, Article 23: Fringe Benefits, Article 24: Salary — with provisions for an immediate 2% increase in salary, and staggered 1% and 2% increases for the 2025-2026 and 2026-2027 school years — and Article 36: Special Education.
At the December meeting, proposals were presented to reopen Article 24: Salary and Article 38: Counselors, marking the beginning of another negotiation period. The FUDTA bargaining team, chaired by Elizabeth Long, expressed emerging concerns about the high workload of counselors and continued overall dissatisfaction with compensation. In its sunshine proposal, FUSD’s bargaining team responded to FUDTA demands by offering a commitment to reaching a “reasonable” compromise, emphasizing the necessity of balancing fiscal constraints with improvements in salary and working conditions.
The role of a counselor, to meet students’ academic, career, personal, social, and emotional needs, is time-intensive. To ensure delivery of comprehensive services across different domains of well-being, the American School Counselor Association recommends a student-to-counselor ratio of 250 to 1. Irvington counselor Ms. Mintey shared that caseloads across FUSD are “currently close to double” that recommendation — in part because, as of now, counselor contracts contain no caps to the number of student cases that can be taken on. At Irvington, for example, Ms. Mintey is one of only 5 counselors for a student body of over 2,000.
With such high numbers of students, counselors are forced to prioritize urgent cases, inhibiting their ability to be proactive and build meaningful relationships with their students. FUSD is not alone in facing this issue; according to National Education Association Today, shortages of funding, exacerbated by the end of pandemic-relief funding, across America have led to spikes in counselor-to-student ratios. As a study by researchers Daniel Sparks and Christine Mulhern, published in Economics of Education Review, concluded, there is no way to simultaneously reduce counselors’ caseloads and maintain the quality of school counseling without increasing funding. Therefore, when addressing these demands, FUSD’s limited budget is a major obstacle.
On December 15, 2025, FUSD and FUDTA teams met to prepare for negotiations in the year ahead, establishing review processes and having a “healthy discussion” about funding for counselors. On January 13, they had their first meeting of 2026, during which FUSD shared an expected decrease in estimated cost of living adjustment (COLA) for 2026-27, from 3.02% to 2.41%. COLA is state funding intended to help districts maintain purchasing power as inflation occurs. However, Michael Fine, the CEO of Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, an agency that works with public schools’ to support financial and business practices, has estimated that California schools experience a 5-6% increase in cost every year. This means that the projected decrease in COLA funding for FUSD will present a challenge to cover rising costs. During the meeting, discussion continued, but formal proposals were not made. As FUSD navigates its finances for the next school year, counselors’ needs remain on the table.
Having teachers and counselors who are readily available and fairly compensated correlates with a higher quality educational experience, with higher graduation rates and improved mental health observed in such circumstances. For Irvington students, the outcome of the current negotiations will shape the resources and on-campus support available to them.
Writer’s Note: The Voice is monitoring developments. Updates are also available on the district website: fremontunified.org/news/negotiations-update-fusd-fudta/.
