5/13 Negotiations Update

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We are blown away by the support demonstrated at walk-ins this morning. THREE HUNDRED MEMBERS turned out across EVERY SCHOOL SITE to demonstrate our commitment to our contract proposals. We also had multiple members come and share testimony at last week’s rescheduled school committee meeting, attend the AFT MA State Convention, and help plan these successful walk-ins. THIS WORK IS VALUABLE AND SHOWS OUR COMMITMENT TO OUR VALUES AND EACH OTHER!

Unfortunately, the district is not yet recognizing this commitment at the bargaining table. They have stalled out at only 10 days of paid parental leave for all parents, and have made no movement on class sizes and caseload caps for educators or coverage pay for clerks. We need your support to get them moving again! Help us plan our next steps at our membership meeting on Wednesday 5/15 at 3:15 pm. We will also provide more details about the district’s response at this meeting, including stipends for paras and the length of the school day. In the meantime, please feel free to talk to negotiating team members and silent reps about what they heard today!

Immediate Next Steps

  1. Like and comment on our CTU social media @chelseateachersunion1340. 
  1. Register for the membership meeting on 5/15 at 3:15 pm to come in person (Browne 316) or on Zoom (we’ll have CTU hats for those who come in person!).
  1. RSVP for our Contract Rally on June 3rd, our final day of negotiations this school year! We also want to have monster silent rep numbers on June 3rd to show the district we are standing together in support of our contract proposals! RSVP to be a silent rep here!

The district has said repeatedly that they want to settle this contract. We need to see the wages and working conditions our staff and students deserve in order to get there.

4/29 Negotiations Update

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What Happened

We were very pleased to see Ana Hernandez at the table, the chair of the School Committee. We’ve come to agreement on many items, including adjustments to funeral leave, personal leave, commencement leave, and religious leave, an alumni hiring incentive, snow days and PD for clerks, paid prep time for paras and educators working together, para leads, and many housekeeping provisions. We’ve also seen movement on a multilingual stipend and a toileting stipend. This is thanks to the incredible work of our negotiating team, our CAT team, and our membership at large.

We still have the furthest to move on several important priorities, including paid parental and family medical leave, class size and caseload caps, coverage pay for clerks, and wages, particularly for our paraprofessionals and clerks. The district’s current wage proposal for paraprofessionals would result in a starting wage of $26,410 annually at the end of the contract. That is not a living wage in the city of Chelsea, and our paras deserve to afford to live in the city where they work.

Our full response package can be found here. You can see our presentation from tonight, highlighting comparisons with surrounding districts here. We continue to propose 12 weeks of paid parental and family medical leave, separate stipends for paras who are toileting students and working in sub-separate classrooms, class size and caseload caps, and competitive wages. To note, after reviewing the surrounding districts’ contracts and schedules, we found that contractual and student time at CPS is consistently lower than surrounding districts, and meeting time is on the high end. Therefore, part of our response included asking for a 30 minute lunch, the elimination of 2 PD days, eliminating department meetings, and lengthening the school day by five minutes at the ELC, and ten minutes at all other schools. Basically, more time with students for more pay, bringing us in line with surrounding districts.

Our time finished with the district providing some information about the budget and finances for next year. We look forward to seeing their full responses at our next session on May 13th.

Next Steps

We need our members to continue showing their support as we continue to fight for paid leave, living and competitive wages, and the working conditions we need to create the schools our students deserve. 

So…. how can you help? 

  1. Like and comment on our CTU social media.
  1. We are looking to continue increasing our silent rep numbers and for members to be ready to provide testimony for class size and caseload caps and toileting and sub-separate para differentials. Please sign up for that here!
  1. We also want to make sure the community is aware of our contract proposals. You can sign up to speak at the May School Committee meeting happening THIS THURSDAY AT 7 PM here!
  1. Show support with another district walk-in on May 13th! RSVP here!

In solidarity,

CTU Negotiating Team

4/8 Negotiations Update

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Hello CTU!

I’m writing with the follow up to our negotiation session with the district on 4/8.

The district has made movement on a variety of topics, but unfortunately little movement on the things that matter most to our members and our students, like paid leave, wages, and class size and caseload caps. For example, the district began with a proposal for two weeks of paid parental leave, a raise of 54 cents per hour for our step 1 paraprofessionals, which would bring their starting salary to $24,189.63 per year, and rejected class size and caseload caps without acknowledgement. We find this an unacceptable starting place for a district in crisis. Our members and our students deserve more. 

We will need member support to win the changes we need for our schools. We want to pack the negotiation room with silent reps when we present our counter proposal package on April 29th and let school committee know what is happening in negotiations on May 2nd. Sign up at those links. If you’re interested in larger participation, please scroll to the next steps at the bottom!  

What Happened

Because of our efforts and organizing, the district changed their approach at the negotiation table. This time, nearly every member of the district’s negotiating team spoke about why they were making their various proposals. They also responded to all of our proposals, demonstrating an increased seriousness on their side of the table.

Unfortunately, a lot of those responses are inadequate and disappointing. In addition to only two weeks of pay for parental leave, their opening proposals for wages for clerks and paraprofessionals in particular are far below where we need to be, offering only a 10% raise over the life of the contract. The district also remains committed to their sick leave and sick bank proposals, again asking for monthly accrual of sick time and taking a day every year in order to access the sick bank.

The union is not impressed by where they are starting on these proposals, and we will address this in our counter proposals. 

The district has agreed to some language around alumni hiring incentives, multilingual stipends, and paraprofessional diapering differentials. They are looking to phase in the multilingual and paraprofessional stipends. We will also be addressing these in our counter proposals.

After we caucused, we shared testimony that members submitted about our lack of paid parental leave. This testimony was extremely powerful and I am incredibly grateful for the bravery and vulnerability that went into sharing it. THANK YOU to those who submitted. It made a visible impact on the district’s team. 

We finished by presenting our opening wage proposals to the district and emphasizing the ongoing disparity with surrounding districts. You can see those proposals here. 

We need our members to continue showing their support as we continue to fight for paid leave, living and competitive wages, and the working conditions we need to create the schools our students deserve.

Next Steps

So…. how can you help?

Like and comment on our CTU social media. The district is noticing this, which helps build our power!

We are also looking to increase our silent rep numbers and for members to testify about the need for more competitive wages and class size and caseload caps at our next session. Please sign up for that or to be a silent rep here!

We also want to make sure the community is aware of our contract proposals. You can sign up to speak at the May School Committee meeting here!

In solidarity,

CTU Negotiating Team

Negotiations Update 3/25

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The district put forward very few proposals, so negotiations will be tough and we will need member support to win the changes we need for our schools. Join us at district wide walk-ins before school on April 8th! Sign up here. If you’re interested in larger participation, please scroll to the next steps at the bottom! We also still need some information from the membership. Complete that survey here! (3 easy questions, should take one minute! Don’t do it again if you’ve already done it!)

What Happened

We began by presenting our remaining proposals and the rationale behind them. This week’s proposals were focused on 1) creating equitable working conditions across our three units around things like personal days, funeral leave, and lunch time; and 2) developing competitive salaries that will help recruit and retain diverse, high-quality clerks, paras, and educators. We presented comparisons between Chelsea’s current salaries and those of surrounding districts; you can see those numbers for educators and paras. Clerks’ unionization structures make comparisons more difficult but we’re working on compiling these. We expressed that we are looking for a restructuring that brings us closer to a competitive wage, and are eager to see what the district can offer to make this possible.

Then the district presented their proposals and rationale. 

For the educators’ contract they are proposing: 

  1. adding additional faculty meetings (one hour faculty meeting every Tuesday, mentor meetings would be an additional meeting each month, no more department meetings)
  2. changing accrual of sick time so that we would get 1.5 days per month (rather than 15 days for the year)
  3. changing sick bank participation and structure so that 
    • sick bank participants would have to donate one day per year (rather than just one day at enrollment time)
    • there would be a joint management and union committee approving sick bank applications (rather than CTU only approval or denial)
    • sick bank would become opt-out rather than opt-in

For the paras’ contract they are proposing:

  1. changing accrual of sick time so that we would get 1.5 days per month (rather than 15 days for the year)
  2. changing sick bank participation and structure so that 
    • sick bank participants would have to donate one day per year (rather than just one day at enrollment time)
    • there would be a joint management and union committee approving sick bank applications (rather than CTU only approval or denial)
    • sick bank would become opt-out rather than opt-in
  3. three housekeeping proposals

For the clerks’ contract they are proposing:

  1. adding Juneteenth as a holiday (CTU proposed this in housekeeping at our previous session)
  2. changing accrual of sick time so that we would get 1.5 days per month (rather than 15 days for the year)
  3. changing sick bank participation and structure so that 
    • sick bank participants would have to donate one day per year (rather than just one day at enrollment time)
    • there would be a joint management and union committee approving sick bank applications (rather than CTU only approval or denial)
    • sick bank would become opt-out rather than opt-in
  4. three housekeeping proposals

Overall, the negotiating team and the silent reps were surprised by the very few proposals that the district has brought to the table. CTU worked for months to develop a robust set of proposals that demonstrate the important shifts we need to see to make education a sustainable career post-COVID. We put forward 48 proposals across 8 buckets of priorities (not including 16 housekeeping proposals). The district has brought 8 proposals that are focused on a punitive response to attendance difficulties. When we asked what proposals the district has brought forward that will proactively work to create a more sustainable, positive environment in which to work, the district response was 1) wages (the same wages that lag behind most surrounding districts); 2) coaches (while adding a caveat that coaches may not exist if our district’s financial future changes. This is not enough for CTU members, and it’s not enough for our students. The negotiating team alone, though, won’t be enough to win.

Next Steps

So…. how can you help?

As a union we will be doing district-wide walk-ins before school on April 8th, the day of our next negotiation session. Please sign up to attend here! 

We are also looking to increase our silent rep numbers and for members to testify about the need for Paid Parental and Medical Leave and the need for more competitive wages at our next session. Please sign up for that or to be a silent rep here!

We want to keep building community! Please RSVP to come to our March Madness social at Night Shift in Everett on Wednesday!