“Life-Changing” Teachers Union Deal OK’d

So this is great news for the teachers - what costs will be cut elsewhere in the city to avoid another tax increase?

MisstheNark...the answer to your question is NONE. And there is already a tax increase coming next year because of the phase in. My taxes in Westville went from $9600 to $10,600 this year and will go to $11,500 next.

Union contracts, particularly ones that have monster increases in salary and/or benefits are never "reviewed" by the BOA - either in committee or by the full board. They are rubberstamped. Of particular note, "it will be a stretch to afford..." is an understatement. The cost per student is among the highest in the nation. This will make it more and will guarantee tax increases which means higher mortgage payments, higher rent payments. And the band plays on.

Two other school budget issues: the Board of Alders is very concerned about our math and reading scores. Meanwhile, they approved a BOE budget last June that barely covered zero changes from 2021. Fund improvement for scores. They've funded Tier 1 instruction; now fund Tier 2 and Tier 3 instruction.

Issue #2: What's going on with the superintendent search? Will we be able to let Mayo continue his retirement in peace this time?

I get everyone’s concerns but besides adding more taxes I see possible school closures in order to fill in the gaps by many teachers that left and possibly take cuts from the other unions out there. It seems like the admin contract slid right through.

Hats off to the new union leadership for this great contract. For years, the old team cowed teachers into accepting scraps because, otherwise, it would be an "even worse" deal. Looks like Leslie has been able to do in one year what Dave couldn't do in 20.

As far as the city's financial woes are concerned: teachers getting the raise they deserve, finally, is far from the problem. Focus elsewhere and support our teachers!

This is good, but there are some concerns that may still leave our children without teachers. NHPS is not an easy place to be an educator and our lifers in the district are leaving quickly for better paying jobs. I wouldn’t ask someone to give up raises to serve our community. Seems like there is nothing else to be done.

NHI can you find out how many teachers did we loose in NHPS this year? I wonder how many will we lose come June? Seems like New Haven is in the business of training and professionally developing teachers and police so that other districts can steal them!

Teachers here in New Haven still have concerning working conditions! The hitting, verbally abuse, cursing, lack of motivation, professional abuse and neglect will still leave many of these positions in NHPS unfilled. Money can’t solve much!

Maybe teacher body cams can solve it so that parents can see what the students need supports with that teachers just can’t help them solve.

Or maybe downsizing the district buildings can save some money for the tax payers. There are like 7 plus high schools in the district WHY. The cost of lights, heat, admin, and other staff could be consolidated to make three large schools better like in the old days with Lee High, Hillhouse, and Cross. We stretch ourselves too thin.

Wish I could do poorly on every metric of my job performance and get a 15% raise. Hopefully with more attractive salaries we can now recruit teachers can actually teach kids to read and do math. The current crop has objectively failed.

Proud of the work our team did, and proud of teachers for showing up to not just vote, but to also apply pressure when it was needed. Now we start the work to continue creating a New Haven Public Schools we can all be proud of!

NOT BLAMING THE TEACHERS HERE.
The NHPS are dying. They're selling a bad product and the people buying the product (mostly low income families) are being pushed out of New Haven by higher rents.

Expect the number of students to continue to drop and schools to close.

By the way, how much do the raises impact the grossly underfunded pension liabilities?

My bad. Who cares, its paid by the State!!.

OK, 15% over 3 years. So that's the STARTING point for police and fire. I mean, you can't expect the people getting shot and running into burning buildings to get less.

Elm City Lover do you have a job that the people that are most needed for you to do your job was 43 percent absent from 5 days or more. Try teaching in that condition than I will even entertain your post. Or when over 50 percent of the kids had 18 and way more days missed from school last year. Where are the truency department.

15% increase in salaries from a broke city with its hand out to the taxpayers in the rest of the state

Cheap shot at former union president, John Tulin. Some may ask why teachers get a raise when student test scores are down, absences are up, violence is up. What are you being rewarded for ? Inflation? Proud of skinning the taxpayers of NH , who will be paying for this increase...?

Glad to see NHPS teachers get a contract with a fairer wage, bringing it closer to what teachers receive in other towns. The problem, as always, is that funding education mainly through property taxes has increasingly/real negative effects on the ever-burdened and strapped citizens,

Good for the teachers! Hopefully the better pay will attract more teachers and retain the ones we have. For all of those saying the teachers are doing a bad job just stop it. The teachers work hard, require more education/certification than other jobs that pay the same, and most people wouldn't be able to handle 1 week in a classroom. It's a challenging job with so many factors out of their control, the least we can do is pay teachers what they deserve.

I agree Owen. NHPS needs to consolidate. Maybe stop interdistrict kids, close schools, cut coaches, admin jobs from downtown. Etc etc. As much as the raise is welcome because I have been in the district for 22 years and seen freezes and step loses - there needs to be a better plan and might start with fully funded schools from the state and consolidation.

CityYankee2,

No inflation and war under Trump? The US didn’t leave Afghanistan until August of 2021. Biden assumed the Presidency in January 2021. Trump did negotiate an end to that war, but didn’t withdraw from that country, and negotiated a withdrawal plan that turned out to be disastrous for America and American allies in that country.

And inflation began at the end of Trump’s term. Not to mention a haphazard management of a pandemic, the strengthening of Russia and North Korea, a stupid economic war with China and Europe which hurt businesses here in the US, and the inspiration for a violent attack of our Capital complex. Yeah, I’ll mention Trump all the time when discussing the performance of our government leaders.

Red Alert I don’t know what planet you live on, but “get concessions from other unions” as a member from local 884, we proudly serve the community even though we have not had any increases in 10 years, we have no benefits and if you literally go to the next town over you get paid 25% more. We should all stop working for a day or two, grind the city and all its services to a halt and see how belittled and Ignored we have been by the current administration and then watch them say “I didn’t know” make concessions… there’s nothing left to give! 3 out of 4 city employees are currently seeking jobs elswhere… Literally everywhere else pays more.

Congratulations to the teachers. They deserve the raises. Low test scores are not the fault of the teachers, it is the fault of the parents. Teachers teach 6 hours a day 5 days a week, the parents are responsible for the rest. Until parents take education seriously kids will continue to have low test scores.
I’m all for teacher body cam so these parents can see how their little angels act all day. Bring back the nun and the paddle. That’s what these kids need!

At Rocks we gave back 4 million dollars a few years back under Dave C. There are over 19,000 kids in New Haven and not enough teachers. I am sorry about your contract but if mine didn’t make a huge difference I would of left and find work elsewhere. We always have a choice. I think I read a few months back a police officer made over 300,000 in salary and overtime. Good for him. I would never spew hate at someone working hard and getting paid what they deserve. The cities main problem is the amount of money they pay a group of four to hold a pencil. Consolidation is needed.

Proud to be a member of this union, where we understand that our working conditions are student learning conditions. Grateful to all members of our New Haven community who see this as progress for all of us.

5 percent a year seems like a lot when everyone else gets 3% and under! That being said who ever is in charge of negotiating the contract on the teacher side must be a great negotiator, or who ever is the lead negotiator on the city side is extremely dumb, or in bed with the union.
Hmm.... maybe all of the above.

If this contract was not in line with other districts you would of saw a mass exodus like no other from NHPS. We needed a contract to keep teachers in the district as well as bring in new teachers and keep them here. Now it is time to work on the working conditions at our schools. Time to bring in stronger leaders like they did when bringing Carolina to Cross. We need to be able to adapt every school to have the ability and have a reset room/in school suspension area to allow our students to keep being educated as well as making them responsible for their actions. When a student is send home they are sent to an empty house where parents need to work. We need to be able to bring in more wrap around services for our children in need. This is the work along with intervention that needs to be done and now.

As a former NHPS student, teachers were mostly really hardworking, caring and innovative factors in my education. But I was a student both before and after the school systems started mainstreaming special needs students with behavioral issues into regular classrooms, with the false promise that every classroom that had a special needs students, whether physical, emotional or behavioral, would have a paraprofessional or assistant teacher to help make that possible in a classroom of 21+ students. It is impossible to expect teachers to handle every social ill and now on top of the conditions that existed pre-pandemic, we are asking them to solve the pandemic related impacts on students without any additional support.
The NHPS is too heavy with administrators, but the school system needs more teachers, and less pencil pushers micromanaging them.
Larger schools and reducing the number of small high schools is not the answer. Small high schools save many students from dropping out, failing, getting lost in the system, and reduce the stresses of larger, more impersonal schools. In my small high school, we had students who fled larger schools, or were thrown out of them, who thrived and graduated from the small school with by far fewer fights or behavioral issues, or students being allowed to fall through the cracks, than at the larger schools. What you might save in money, would pale in comparison with the escalation of students dropping out, more fights, and more behavioral incidents, and more anxiety, depression, and failing grades due to some students inability to handle large, impersonal and institutional style high schools.

Compare the increase to all the other city unions, complain about mil rates, but in 2020 when the Alders struggled with the city budget, the TEACHERS union was the only one to take a pay freeze. None of our unions deserve a freeze, but teachers supported the city with a pay freeze that year.

Also, teachers have no control over the curricula they are supposed to teach, or the behavior in the buildings, or the state of our buildings. Do not blame test scores or student behaviors on teachers.

Also, stop blaming the pandemic closing of schools on teachers. Teachers pushed for it and the BOE made the final decision. Turns out the teachers were right, even though Tracey went to the press with a story about how schools were ready. An independent HVAC audit closed 2 schools and found issues with the HVAC systems in all schools. Teachers can't change the filters and maintain the HVAC systems. Yes, being remote was bad for all students. However, teachers were not to blame for the closing of schools.

Stop blaming teachers for all the ills of New Haven Schools. Teachers can only teach students in the room. New Haven's teachers go above and beyond to teach students who are learning English for the first time, who have intense special education needs, who have outrageous behavior issues.

It's simplistic and ignorant to place blame on teachers' heads for everything wrong with New Haven's schools. The fish stinks from the head (or heads in this case).

Congrats to the teachers union. I sure hope this means that our police department will be getting at least 15%, if not more, for risking their lives every day. The police union president needs to start fighting for their contract that is already expired.

3144 is almost 2 years and 6 months behind on our union negotiation, but this contract was ratified 8 months ahead of the current contract completion date. Do we extend the same care and concern for our city's librarians and other 3144 departments? We are asking for a similar negotiation and it seems only fair since we are educators of the public in its own right.

In my opinion, teachers should be paid even more than15% - this is ONLY getting teachers paid what they need as a minimum while they are WORTH much more.

Our contract is likely for FIVE years and the mayor has not expedited a consensus on our behalf. Are we not also a priority? Our adult population is hurting, too... This all feels like optics. Maybe we should consider cut backs on superfluous spending so as to not hurt taxpayers in doing this. I'm sure the taxpayer concern would be lessened if there was some kind of tangible outcome from their payment to the city.

The city needs to step up and invest in its employees. There is no time to wait, we are bleeding out NOW.

A prediction and a warning, this won't solve the recruitment and retention problem. If the NH school system can't maintain staff under the old contract, the problem isn't compensation. It's something else, and my thought is that it's organizational. Not just here but everywhere.

I'm not trying to disparage the teachers getting a bigger chunk of the pie. More power to you. I hope this makes things better.

But. Here's a synopsis of the situation under the old contract. Roughly $45K right out of college with a Bachelor's in a job environment that's actively hiring. Job stability - your employer is never going to go bankrupt, out of business, or be outsourced. There may be reductions but it's never going to be 20 to 100% of staff or even close. You have a defined path over 15 to 16 years to making more than the median household income in Connecticut, a defined benefit pension program, Medical, dental and other benefits, union protections. The list is extensive.

That there is a staffing problem at all speaks to there being an unacknowledged factor. Public education tends to produce rigidly hierarchical, siloed organizations, and teachers are at or near the absolute bottom. Every teacher has multiple bosses with infinite often conflicting demands. Teachers are treated as just another voice rather than the adult in the room with students. Requests for what should be available resources from across the organization are treated like favors to be doled out or not from various lords of respective empires. And all the while you're forced to advance a large fraction of your students who haven't "Gotten it" this year. No one up the food chain cares because the reality just won't look good.

Teaching is an art, a craft, a trade learned and polished through years of experience. Where that art isn't valued, you can't pay people enough to take it up. Maybe it's time to treat teachers like the real value adders here instead of an infinitely malleable resource.

Good for the teacher about time they advocate for them selves and everybody else that don't like o well.the children our future and everybody was given funding.if nobody likes it then go talk to our governor that got billions just sitting there and our state looks horrible the roads we look like new york...the ones that talk negatively on the site then go do something for your union.like speak up and demand what you think is right.not sit here and cry about advocate or protest ..like really grow up..our kids need teachers to stay in new haven and there behind so it is what is.hello we a pandemic here...

to the people blaming the unions and blue collar workers for financial woes where is your anger towards the bigger fish

real estate jumping all over under assessed properties

alders giving away property to yale for pennies

religious insititutions with a stranglehold on the city despite tax exemption (hello irs)

alder sweetheart tax brake deals

and the annual lawsuit that drains the city dry from there usual negligence from following there own procedures or being too arrogent to care about the rules

dont let the city hall cronys gaslight you