Teachers Contract With Pay Freeze Advances

A new teachers union contract that would trade a pay freeze this year for no layoffs or medical premium increases over the next three years advanced towards a final full Board of Alders vote later this month.

On Monday night, the alders on the Finance Committee took no action on the proposed new three-year collective bargaining agreement between the New Haven Board of Education and the New Haven Federation of Teachers, Local 933.

That lack of a vote — a common committee outcome for labor agreements that must be approved or rejected within 30 days of submission to the local legislature —speeds up the approval process. It allows for the full Board of Alders to discharge the item from committee and take an expedited final vote during its next meeting.

If approved, the new contract will run from July 1, 2020 to June 30, 2023.

Teachers union members approved the new prospective contract in early August with 970 — or roughly 80 percent—voting in favor, and 246 voting against. The Board of Education unanimously backed the proposed labor accord several days later. Click here to read an article with teachers’ takes on the contract extension.

Monday’s virtual aldermanic committee meeting took place online via Zoom and YouTube Live.

“We worked on a very abbreviated negotiation process where we mostly focused on salary items, in particular looking at it from a ​‘step’ perspective,” New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) Chief Operating Officer Phillip Penn told the alders Monday night. He said the Board of Education and the teachers union sought to ​“come up with something that would avoid going to mediation or arbitration if it didn’t need to.”

The resulting three-year labor agreement would add roughly $9.3 million to the union’s current $129.7 million contract, representing a roughly 7.18 percent increase, Penn said. That’s roughly on par with other comparable teachers union settlements statewide, Penn said, which average a total increase of 8.23 percent across a three-year term.

While the first year of the New Haven contract would have a ​“hard zero” — that is, no increase at all to teachers’ salaries — the second year would include a step increase, including $2,000 added to the top step, and the third year would include another step increase, with $1,000 added to the top step.

The new contract would also freeze employee healthcare contributions at the current levels for the next three years.

“We also agreed that we would not do any layoffs during the period of the contract,” Penn added. But, he continued, ​“we certainly would be looking at things from an attrition standpoint going forward.”

He said that the ​“hard zero” of the salary freeze in the contract’s first year saved the Board of Education around $4.5 million in salary increases.

“This sounds like mostly it’s about wages with very few other changes to the existing contract?” Westville Alder and Finance Committee Vice-Chair Adam Marchand asked.

That’s correct, Penn replied. ​“We went through decidedly very limited negotiations specifically for that reason.”

And why exactly did the Board of Education and the teachers union agree to negotiate on such relatively narrow terms? Board of Alders President and West River Alder Tyisha Walker-Myers asked. Did the Covid-19 pandemic influence that decision?

“It was a joint decision between us and the leadership of the union,” Penn said. ​“We wanted to make this process as brief as possible. If we unpacked every issue in the contracted, we’d probably still be negotiating.”

Are there any changes that refer to the terms of the workplace environment? Hill Alder Evelyn Rodriguez asked. Since all classes are online only for the foreseeable future, do those remote realities of public school education affect the contract in any way?

“I would say that there are no specific changes in this contract with regard to working conditions,” Penn said. ​“But there is ongoing dialogue between the administration and union leadership as we’ve evolved along the path of this pandemic. He said the administration and the Board of Education have ​“tried to be as receptive as possible to concerns [teachers] have raised around building conditions, personal protective equipment, and safety protocols.”

According to the city’s October monthly financial report, the Board of Education is currently projecting a $2.7 million surplus for the fiscal year that ends June 30, 2021.

New Software Pitched As Boon For Minority Teacher Recruitment

Also on Monday night, committee alders voted unanimously in support of the Board of Education’s proposed new four-year contract with the software provider Frontline Technologies Group LLC.

The agreement would extend from Oct. 1, 2020 through June 30, 2024, and would cost the school district roughly $322,000 in total.

Penn explained that the agreement would allow the local school system to use two additional modules in the AppliTrack human resources system.

The first, he said, would reduce the physical paper currently used for onboarding new employees by converting all of that process to an electronic system.

No longer will new hires have to fill out a stack of papers ​“three-and-a-half inches thick” in order to be integrated into the school system’s benefits, payroll, and security systems.

“All those forms will be digitized,” Penn said. ​“The electronic is a fillable PDF that can be forwarded very quickly.”

The second module, he said, would allow the school system to search among the ​“several million” teachers nationwide who have registered profiles in the AppliTrack system.

Penn said that the school system currently relies on prospective candidates responding to job postings on CTREAP and LinkedIn. This would flip the script, he said, and let the school system proactively reach out to candidates who have expertise in areas NHPS is looking to hire in, like chemistry, physics, and literacy.

In addition to targeting by expertise, Penn said, this system should allow NHPS to boost minority teacher hires by recruiting prospective teachers who have graduated from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).

“Will there be an intentional focus on trying to recruit teachers with HBCU backgrounds?” Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison asked.

Absolutely, Penn replied. ​“I don’t intend to buy a piece of software and not leverage it to its fullest capabilities.”

“New Haven is such a beautiful community because of all of its diversity,” Morrison said towards the end of the meeting before casting her vote in support of the proposed contract. ​“And our teachers and personnel definitely need to look like the students in the school buildings. We really, really need to be intentional about making this happen.”