CAUSE ADVISORY
CUSD’s Efforts to Evade Accountability Fail
SB Superior Court Rules in favor of the Union
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CUSD Employees, Families, & Community Members,
Another win for CAUSE and District employees:
After approximately a year and half, SB Superior Court has forced CUSD to arbitrate several outstanding grievances. As we said at the School Board meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025, “District officials can run, and they can crawl, and at great cost, they can hide behind their lawyers, but they will not escape the slow grinding gears of justice. Fortunately, CUSD’s officials will be held accountable for the violations and unlawful behavior they have subjected District employees to endure. Unfortunately, the accountability District officials attempted to evade and the extraordinary legal costs of defending their unlawful behavior, will be funded by the tax-payers and borne by District students and families.”
Background:
In August of 2024, CAUSE filed three grievances, two pertaining to the District’s conduct during new-employee orientation meetings with new classified and certificated employees, and one pertaining to the District’s decision to reassign a faculty member. CAUSE and the District were unable to resolve these grievances informally, in part, because the District refused to even acknowledge contractual obligations to participate in the process. In September, 2024, CAUSE demanded that the District arbitrate each grievance. The District refused to take the necessary steps to submit these grievances to an arbitrator, attempting to further evade accountability for their senior District administrators and the CMS Principal.
As a result the Union was forced to file a petition in Santa Barbara Superior Court to compel the District to arbitrate these grievances. The arbitrator’s decision & remedy is binding. This ensures that an external party reviews and confirms the legality of the District’s behavior. Since the Union filed the petition, the District has maintained (in filings with the court) that it was willing to arbitrate these disputes. Despite this, in the intervening year the District failed to take any of the actions required under the CLASSIFIED & CERTIFICATED CBAs to allow these arbitrations to proceed. And yes, this is a routine practice for the District; to say one thing on paper, and do exactly the opposite in practice.
Fortunately, on Monday, December 8, 2025, The court conducted a hearing on this petition. The Santa Barbara Superior Court ruled in favor of the Union and granted CAUSE the petition. Now, if the District continues to refuse to submit these grievances to arbitration, it will be subject to penalties for violating a court order.
In the coming days, the Union’s attorneys will contact the District to select arbitrators and set hearing dates. We will provide updates as the arbitration process develops.
In Unity,
~ CAUSE Leadership
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