Trona Teachers Ass’n: Teachers Who Resigned Before Contract Approval Were Owed the Retroactive Raise

If you taught under a California school district’s salary schedule and resigned before a new contract with retroactive raises was approved, you can still be owed those raises for the time you worked. In Trona Teachers Ass’n v. Board of Trustees of the Trona Joint Unified School District, No. D087158 (Cal. Ct. App. Oct. 26, 2026), the court held that a district violated the teacher-pay uniformity rule by paying the retroactive increases only to teachers still employed when the contract was approved. The key limit: the contract said nothing about continued employment. The court distinguished an earlier case in which the agreement expressly limited a payment to current unit members and retirees.

The Fourth Appellate District, Division One, certified the opinion for publication. It reversed a San Bernardino County Superior Court judgment.

Six teachers worked the year, then resigned before the vote

The Trona Teachers Association and the Trona Joint Unified School District reached a 2022–2024 collective bargaining agreement. The district approved it in August 2023, but the agreement said it was “to run retroactive from July 1, 2022 through June 30, 2024.” Its appendix contained two salary schedules based on experience and education, one “effective 7/1/2022” and one “effective 1/1/2023,” and each listed a $2,000 stipend for an earned master’s degree.

Six teachers worked for the district for the whole period from July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023, then resigned before the August 2023 approval. The district refused them the retroactive increases, worth about $5,000 to $9,000 per teacher. The association and the six teachers petitioned for a writ of mandate, a court order compelling a public agency to perform a legal duty.

The district argued that the agreement covered current employees and former employees who were laid off or retired, but not those who resigned. It added that the union never told it during bargaining that the raises would reach teachers who had resigned. The trial court agreed: the teachers had been paid the same as their peers while employed, and the agreement gave the retroactive increase only to active employees. Because the material facts were undisputed, the appellate court decided the statute and contract questions de novo, without deferring to the trial court.

The uniform salary rule and its bargained exception

Education Code section 45028, subdivision (a)(1), requires that each certificated employee, except those in positions requiring administrative or supervisory credentials, be classified on the salary schedule “on the basis of uniform allowance for years of training and years of experience.” The exception applies only if the district and the union “negotiate and mutually agree” to a schedule based on other criteria. Government Code section 3543.2, subdivisions (d) and (e), supplies the bargaining route for additional compensation or a salary schedule based on other criteria.

The court contrasted two lines of cases. In Adair v. Stockton Unified School Dist. (2008) 162 Cal.App.4th 1436 and George v. Susanville Elementary School Dist. (2024) 103 Cal.App.5th 349, as Trona describes them, districts violated the rule by placing some teachers below their experience or denying a rehired teacher experience credit others received; a district’s motive, or a bargaining agreement’s silence, did not create an exception. In California Teachers Assn. v. Governing Bd. of Hilmar Unified School Dist. (2002) 95 Cal.App.4th 183, the agreement expressly limited a payment to “current unit members” and retirees, and, as Trona describes it, Hilmar held that this negotiated condition, on what it treated as “additional compensation,” not salary, satisfied the bargaining exception.

Nothing in the contract limited the raise to current employees

Article 20.1 of the agreement added a 5% increase effective July 1, 2022 and another 5% effective January 1, 2023. Article 20.2 said “[t]he newly agreed upon salary amount will be retroactive to July 1 of that year.” Article 20.3 placed unit members “in the appropriate column and step according to years of service and educational preparation.” The agreement had no language conditioning the retroactive payments on employment when it was approved, and no evidence showed the parties ever negotiated such a condition.

Because the six teachers worked during the period the parties agreed the new schedules were “effective,” section 45028 required the district to pay them the same uniform allowance for training and experience that it paid teachers who stayed. Its failure to pay them, and to make the related retirement contributions, meant the trial court erred in denying the writ.

Why the district’s arguments failed

“Unit member” status. The district said the resigned teachers were not “Unit Members” because the union no longer represented them. That proved only that representation ended with their employment, the court answered, not that they were outside the unit during the retroactive period. Even assuming some contract terms, such as fringe benefits, applied only to current employees, the court said that did not let the district disregard section 45028 for the salary and stipend provisions.

“Current” employees. The district read the statute to require uniform pay only among teachers employed when the agreement became operative. The court found no such limit in the phrase “each person employed by a school district,” which reaches whoever a salary schedule governs during the period it covers. A retroactive schedule therefore requires uniform pay for everyone it covered.

The Hilmar comparison. Hilmar involved express “current unit members” language. Here, the court said, the pay disparity came only from the district’s “misapplication” of the agreement, not from any provision in it.

Gift of public funds and procedure. Because the teachers were statutorily entitled to the payments, paying them would not be an unlawful gift of public funds. In footnotes, the court rejected the district’s cursory challenge to the association’s standing and found its arbitration argument forfeited.

What the trial court must now order

The court reversed. It directed the trial court to issue a writ compelling the district to pay the six teachers the 2022–2023 retroactive salary adjustments and master’s degree stipends, “together with any associated employer contributions and any other appropriate relief.” On remand, the trial court may hold further proceedings to fix the precise amounts, and the teachers recover their appeal costs.

Who can use this decision

The ruling speaks to certificated teachers paid under a salary schedule governed by section 45028; the statute itself excludes substitute teachers and teachers of certain special day and evening classes. Its reasoning depends on two things: an agreement that made the new schedule effective for a period the teacher worked, and the absence of any negotiated condition tying payment to later employment. One question remains open. The district pointed to other contract benefits limited to current employees, but the plaintiffs did not claim them, so the court said it would not decide how those provisions apply to former teachers.

In our reading, a teacher who left before ratification should compare the agreement’s duration clause and the effective dates on each salary schedule with any language limiting retroactive pay to current members or retirees. The court looked at both that text and the bargaining record, and here it found no evidence that either side negotiated a continued-employment condition.