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New Haven teachers are scheduled to vote late this week on whether to freeze their salaries at their current level for a year in exchange for three years of relief on other concerns.
The New Haven Federation of Teachers put a proposal out to teachers on Thursday to start a new contract early. The union leadership has not voted to approve the new contract, just that teachers should get to see and vote on the proposal.
“We think it’s a good package and worthy to present to teachers. But at the end of the day, I don’t decide, the teachers do. They decide whether they like it or they don’t like it with their vote,” said NHFT President David Cicarella.
The Tradeoff
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Dave Cicarella: Trying to avoid layoffs.
Teachers are scheduled to get raises starting in September, where each teacher would move up one step on their salary schedule. With 1800 teachers, these raises would collectively cost New Haven Public Schools $4.5 million.
The union is currently in negotiations with the city for a three-year contract that would start in the 2021 – 2022 school year. The city is staring down a $13 million deficit worsened by lost revenues from building permits, parking tickets and more during the economic shutdown.
At the same time, the Board of Education has given school administrators a thumbs up to balance the school budget with some measures that are unpopular among teachers. Cicarella said that he has gotten plenty of calls about the idea of pushing certain school start times later, for example.
Cicarella said that the city has explained in negotiations that one of their biggest problems is the scheduled raises this year. They asked the union whether they could do anything about that obligation, Cicarella said.
“There are two responses: nope, or we can make this perhaps a win-win,” Cicarella said.
The potential win-win? Teachers could vote to fold this year into a new three-year contract. September would start teachers off at the same salary as last September and they would get one-step raises each of the following two years.
With that leverage, the union could get promises that the district would not layoff any teachers or transfer them between positions without their consent. There would be no furlough days. Medical costs would stay the same in dollars for three years. Retiring teachers would get to stay on the city’s medical plan for free.
“There’s stuff for new teachers. There’s something in there for veteran teachers. There are things in there that help everyone,” Cicarella said.
Cicarella said that the pay freeze would likely happen anyway in a later year, particularly if the city and the union cannot agree on a contract and it goes into formal arbitration. At that point, the arbitrator is legally bound to decide whether the city can pay, which usually results in one or more years of pay freezes, Cicarella explained.
If teachers do not like the package, they can vote against it — electronically this year, per Covid-19 public health restrictions. In the case of a no vote, teachers would get their raises starting in September.
What worries Cicarella is what may come after that. How will Covid-19 affect future school budgets? What cuts will the school system need to take and what kind of bargaining position will the union be in then?
“There is limited talk of layoffs right now,” Cicarella said. “If I’m a first or second year teacher, with this package, I know I’m not getting laid off for three years. My job is secured. That is any union’s biggest responsibility to members — to ensure their employment.”
The Voters
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Leslie Blatteau: Undecided.
Metropolitan Business Academy social studies teacher Leslie Blatteau has not decided what her vote will be yet.
“I am obviously excited by the guarantee of no layoffs, no furlough days and no forced transfers,” Blatteau said.
The fixed healthcare costs are a good idea too, she said.
Yet the decision to forego a scheduled raise seems unsettling to Blatteau. She said that she has heard about bad fiscal situations and the consequences of arbitration during each of the last two contract negotiations.
“It is always a bad economy and now it really is,” Blatteau said. “What’s to say that this won’t happen again in 2022 when we’re negotiating for 2023? Where is our reassurance?”
Cicarella’s response is that the decision is always up to the union members. They will never be forced into following a precedent because they always get to vote, he said.
Elm City Montessori teacher David Weinreb did not have a position on the big monetary decisions in the contract. He focused instead on two concessions union leadership secured on behalf of teachers that he does not think are good ideas at all.
The new contract would halve the number of staff meetings teachers would need to go to. It would also eliminates a scheduled 15-minute increase to teachers’ workdays.
Weinreb said that he sees staff meetings as a chance to train and strategize, particularly around challenges like racism, homophobia and Covid-19. When Weinreb posted this perspective on Facebook, plenty of other teachers disagreed and argued that staff meetings are largely a waste of time.
“I feel really excited about the opportunity to strengthen the meetings in schools,” Weinreb said. “Are teachers given the opportunity to provide anonymous feedback on how time was used during the meeting? Are teachers allowed to take the lead on organizing them? What training have we done districtwide for administrators on how effective meetings work?”
Similarly, Weinreb sees the extra 15 minutes teachers would need to stay at school as a chance to be accessible to families and hear what they might need.
“I think the union should advocate for what serves our mission. To me, negotiating down our collaborative time does not sound like vision-oriented work,” Weinreb said.
Blatteau agreed that she values staff meetings as time to collaborate. She said that if teachers see them as a waste of time, the union can help fix how meetings are used.
Union members usually meet at Wilbur Cross High School to discuss contracts and vote by ballot box.
This year, the union will host a videoconference instead. Cicarella said that he would send a notice to union members a few days in advance of the virtual meeting. He said that the meeting would likely take place by Friday, July 31 and teachers would be able to vote electronically for a few days after that.
Blatteau said that she is looking forward to hearing a presentation and getting to ask questions at the virtual meeting. She sees that as key to democracy within a union, she said.
“The work that our union does is very important to me. I am pro-union,” she said.
No one will stop Mr. Weinreb from staying after as many minutes as he wants to do as he wants. Most teachers do, even if the mandatory 15 minutes more is not there. With a pay freeze, asking 15 minutes every day amounts to even more of a pay cut. The step freeze does hurt teachers permanently as the years pile up. My worry is that NH will come back for another pound of flesh very soon.
I also would not vote YES unless administrators were ALSO GETTING A PAY/STEP FREEZE AND THEY ARE NOT> THAT IS UNFAIR.
Most staff meetings are wastes of time. One meeting a month means the planners better be sure that what they want to do is really important. Anything that could be done by a memo; should be. Most teachers can read and should be able to figure out minutiae of housekeeping with a memo.
Teachers have a lot of educating to do in their subject area. Social emotional and other PC goals have already been taught as good as thev're gonna. Can teachers just teach; please! They can save the world after COVID settles down.