Unionized interpreters leave Clovis Unified amid stalled contract negotiations
More than a dozen American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters in Clovis Unified have left for better-paying jobs in neighboring districts amid stalled negotiations over their first collective bargaining agreement.
According to ASL interpreters in Clovis Unified, who filed for unionization in August 2024, the team has lost a total of 16 members, mostly pre-certified interpreters, in the last two years due to low pay and repeated setbacks in their contract negotiations with the school district.
Clovis Unified, the 11th largest school district in California with a total of 43,254 students, is known as the largest school district west of the Mississippi River without a fully established teachers union — a distinction rooted in the anti-union sentiment that has existed since the tenure of its founding superintendent, Dr. Floyd Buchanan.
In August 2024, the team of 28 interpreters filed for unionization with the goal of fighting for a better package as a group, so interpreters can serve Deaf and hard-of-hearing students in the long term.
The team had told Clovis Unified administrators that the district’s package is not attractive enough to them. The maximum salary for interpreters in Clovis is equal to the starting pay in the neighboring districts, said Brandon Scovill, a local organizer for the California Teachers Association.
“That was a mass exodus,” said Shonda Harrar, an interpreter on the bargaining team. “The reason they left was that they were not being paid enough.”
Since the 2024-25 school year, Clovis Unified has offered fully certified interpreters with an hourly wage ranging from $34.11 to $41.41, according to the district’s salary schedule.
In previous interviews with The Bee, Clovis Unified officials have claimed that this rate is near the top of the district’s salary schedule, representing an annual salary of $78,000 for a full-time employee.
Harrar said interpreters’ work hours are limited to 6.5 hours per school day in secondary schools, or 6 hours in elementary schools, and there are only 181 or 182 instructional days per school year, which means a fully certified interpreter can only earn an annual salary up to $47,000.
Madera Unified pays interpreters an hourly rate from $42.11 to $54.85, while Fresno Unified’s rates range between $42.56 and $51.86, according to the districts’ salary schedules.
For pre-certified interpreters, the starting hourly rate is $20, and they do not qualify for health benefits because Clovis Unified caps their workload at 5.9 hours, Harrar said.
Interpreters told The Bee that with the limited team members and the capped working hours, they are unable to meet the students’ needs and often have to leave early, even before the bell rings and while the teacher is still lecturing.
“At Thursdays, they would say, ‘You can be up here until lunch,’ so I’d be leaving a whole seventh period, leaving students without coverage,” said Kamryn Hermosillo, a newly certified interpreter. “I’ve had a lot of students be like, ‘Oh, are you leaving today?’ ‘Are you gonna be here today?’ Like, ‘I don’t know when I’m gonna have an interpreter.’”
Hermosillo said that teachers have sent messages to the lead interpreter, stating that some students in their classes needed the services but no interpreters had shown up.
“There’s nothing we can do. There’s no coverage,” Hermosillo said.
Under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, deaf and hard-of-hearing students must have interpreting services provided to them. As part of the requirement, interpreters should be available to provide support for classes, rallies, sporting events, field trips, concerts and other occasions. Interpreters also sit at the front of board meetings and interpret for parents and the broader community.
Due to the severe shortage of interpreters, Clovis Unified had explored the option of hiring contractors and providing remote interpreting services to students through iPads. That led to the ASL interpreters’ union to file a charge against the school district in spring 2025, in which they accused the district of violating interpreters’ bargaining rights by not communicating the use of outside contractors.
Clovis Unified signed a semester-long contract of up to $332,000 for the remote interpreting services, paying a total weekly rate of $10,535 for three contractors, each working 35 hours a week, according to Harrar. A district-employed interpreter at the top of the pay scale, for comparison, makes less than $1,500 per week.
The interpreter bargaining team told The Bee that they have proposed a 13% increase from their current wages, but Clovis Unified rejected their proposal and is only willing to provide a 3.5% cost-of-living adjustment, an increase that all district employees received last year. Interpreters said they did not receive that raise because of the ongoing contract negotiations.
In an emailed response to The Bee, Clovis Unified said the district conducted two third-party analyses of compensation structure and salary schedules, the results of which showed that Clovis Unified’s salaries are competitive and appropriate.
Kelly Avants, the district’s spokesperson, defended Clovis Unified’s pay scale and said there is an ongoing shortage of interpreters impacting school districts in the region and nation.
“I went to edjoin.org where districts and county offices post openings and searched on the words ‘deaf’ and ‘interpreter.’ I found more than 150 current openings in California,” Avants said.
The bargaining team said they are disappointed by the district’s response.
“That response to us sounds more like, ‘well, everybody needs people, so we’re not even going to compete. We’re going to take our ball and go home,’” Harrar said. “It reads as if it’s not a priority to them.”
