MODESTO, California — About 1,500 teachers in Modesto City Schools cast ballots on Thursday, November 5, in a strike authorization vote that could lead to the district's first walkout in more than four decades, after twelve months of contract negotiations and three failed mediation sessions ended without an agreement. The Modesto Teachers Association (MTA), which represents about 1,750 educators in this Central Valley city on Highway 99 in Stanislaus County, began tallying the ballots on Friday, November 6. The union has not yet publicly announced the result, and no strike date has been set.
Source: CBS News Sacramento via Wall Street Next
The turnout itself was the story union leaders pointed to. Teachers arrived after full school days to vote, many wearing union blue and MTA shirts, and traffic backed up for nearly a mile around the voting site, according to reporting cited by CBS News. MTA President Jennifer McGrath framed the vote as a last resort, telling reporters: 'Having everybody that volunteered to come out here after working all day long and do this, it tells you how important it is to them.'
Source: CBS News Sacramento
Twelve months of talks, an impasse, and three failed mediations
The dispute has been building for a year. Modesto City Schools and the MTA mutually declared an impasse after their July 31 bargaining session, which moved the talks into state-supervised mediation beginning September 9, according to the district's own negotiations FAQ. Three mediation sessions followed, and the final one ended on Friday, October 30, without a contract, The Modesto Bee reported. That failure triggered Thursday's strike vote, with a third-party fact-finding stage next in the legal process.
Source: EdSource, reporting The Modesto Bee
Teachers say this is the third year without a salary increase, that Modesto pay is not competitive with nearby school districts, and that class sizes need to come down. Union members have also raised rising healthcare costs and staffing shortages that have left classrooms overcrowded, with special education — where support services are stretched thinnest — a particular pressure point, according to the union's account of the dispute.
What each side is offering, and what each side says
The district says its latest proposal includes a 3 percent salary increase retroactive to July 2025 and a further 3 percent increase for the 2026-27 school year. Its earlier offers were smaller: a district FAQ published in September described a two-year proposal of 2.5 percent retroactive to July 1, 2025, another 2.5 percent from July 1, 2026, and a one-time payment equal to 2 percent of base salary in 2026-27 — a record of the district raising its offer several times across the eleven-month cycle without reaching agreement. In a statement to The Modesto Bee, Modesto City Schools said: 'We need to find agreement and reach a resolution to avoid unnecessary disruptions to student learning.'
Source: Modesto City Schools negotiations FAQ
McGrath has told The Bee by email that reaching an agreement out of the fact-finding recommendations 'is what we want' — a signal that the union's stated goal remains a settlement, with the strike authorization held as leverage if the process fails.
Why a Modesto strike would be harder to cover than most
One detail makes a Modesto walkout unusually disruptive: substitute teachers in Modesto are themselves part of the MTA bargaining unit. When Fresno Unified prepared for a possible strike in 2023, it planned to offer $500 a day — and districts elsewhere in California have paid $500 to $600 a day — to draw substitutes from across the region. Modesto cannot do the same. 'Because they are part of our bargaining unit,' McGrath said, 'the district does not have the ability to offer higher pay to fill classrooms.' If a strike comes, the district must decide whether schools stay open at all, and who would run them.
The Fresno comparison carries a second lesson. Fresno Unified's teachers came within less than 24 hours of what would have been their first strike in 45 years in 2023 before settling — and that settlement came more than a month after fact finding. Modesto is only now entering that same fact-finding stage, which is why both sides and education watchers say a walkout, if it happens, is still not in the near future.
What happens next
Under California's process, the parties now move to fact finding: union and district officials will present their cases to a neutral third party, who will issue a recommendation. Union officials have told EdSource the fact finder will most likely focus on salary and benefits rather than working conditions such as class size. Both sides may keep negotiating during fact finding, and may settle on the basis of the recommendations. If there is still no agreement ten days after the fact-finding report, the district must release the report publicly; at that point the district gains the option to impose a contract and the union gains the legal option to strike — but only if Thursday's authorization vote passed, which is what the tally that began Friday will confirm.
Modesto sits in the heart of California's Highway 99 corridor, where thousands of working families — including a large Punjabi community across Stanislaus County — depend on public schools for both education and daytime childcare. A walkout by 1,750 teachers would force parents in healthcare, agriculture, trucking and other essential jobs to find emergency childcare, and would be the district's first strike in more than forty years.
For now, classrooms remain open and the count continues. Awaaz Punjab will update this story when the MTA announces the result of the authorization vote and when a fact-finding date is set.