Dear Colleagues,
This week's EBulletin includes:
an "explainer" on step increases, which includes a brief bargaining history of how we changed the anniversary date;
an invitation to participate in "union skills" training this winter with the MTA;
a Mass Child announcement';
another reminder that you have to turn in your papers this month to qualify for the full $1,000 of retirement notification incentive;
action steps you can take to support two important pension reform bills, one at the state level, one at the national;
a reminder to keep your licensure up to date, and an announcement of a number of "Virtual Licensure Workshops" being offered this winter by the MTA;
My blog post from before Thanksgiving on the right to strike.
Step Increases
Step increases happen differently in Newton than in most other districts... or at least they have until now...and will until the end of this contract.
Normally, step increases happen at the beginning of the school year--in time for the first pay check--and this is still the case for members of Unit C. And this makes sense--you earn your step increase by working the prior school year. The step you are on when you begin the new year should reflect the additional year you just worked.
However, in Units A, B and E, step increases happen later in the year.
This year, the step increase happened on December 1st, which means you will see your step increase reflected in your December 15th paycheck.
In the 2025-2026 school year, the step increase will move back to November 1st, 2025
In the 2026-2027 school year, it will move back to October 1st, 2026.
Then, on August of 2027-- the last day of the this contract--, the step increase will move back to September 1, 2027.
Going forward, the step increase will continue to be awarded on September 1st of each new school year.
The history of how we got here is exasperating. In 2011, the NTA agreed to allow the district to postpone the "anniversary date" of step increases until March 1st of the school year instead of September 1st, a delay of six months. We bargained this on the tail end of the Great Recession, at a time when municipal and school finances were in deep trouble. We made this concession because the city fo Newton and the Newton Public Schools district were in a deep financial crisis.
Yet when the NPS' finances improved, the school committee would not agree to move the anniversary date back to September.
In 2013, the citizens of Newton approved an override that increased the schools operating budget significantly. But the school committee, under Matt Hills' leadership, refused to renegotiate the step increase anniversary date for the 2015-2018 contract. The school committee, under Ruth Goldman's leadership, finally agreed to move the step increase date back by three months: in the 2019-2020 school year, to February 1, 2020; in the 2020-2021 school year, to January 1, 2021, and finally, in the 2021-2022 school year, to December 1, 2021.
And that is where we remain now. But with the MOA we signed on February 2, 2024, by the last day of the this contract, we will have won back what we ceded in 2011, per the schedule cited above.
Hone your Union Skills with the MTA!
Bargaining Summit:
Location: Hilton Boston Park Plaza
Date: Friday, January 24, 2025
Time: 6 PM – 9 PM
Join us for MTA’s Bargaining Summit where Prek-12 members will meet to discuss bargaining approaches that:
Engage local budget processes and put our campaigns for better working and learning conditions in the local and state political context.
This will be an opportunity to hear from other member leaders and collaborate on local association plans.
Winter Union Skills:
Location: Hilton Boston Park Plaza
Date: Saturday, January 25, 2025
Time: 9 AM – 5 PM
Now, more than ever, we must have strong local unions ready to fight for the schools, colleges, and universities that our communities deserve. This free eventwill include a variety of workshops related to local unions' core activities.
Locals are strongly encouraged to bring a group of members to participate in different training segments based on their roles and interests.
It will be an excellent opportunity for new activists to participate in an energizing statewide event while developing essential union skills.
Leadership Development
And more!
Mass Child Grants
The Massachusetts Child is a charitable corporation founded by MTA members in 1996 to help students struggling with financial need. Mass Child is a reimbursement program available to all MTA preK-12 local associations. Members use funds from their local associations to purchase qualifying items for students, and Mass Child reimburses the local associations.
Please note that Mass Child does not reimburse individual members; all grant applications must have the approval of the local president, and reimbursement is made to the local association. Therefore, please do not fill out the online application on the Mass Child website.
There are four types of Mass Child Grants:
Our local process for use of Mass Child Grant funds:
Contact Cindy Colantonio at NTA office (colantonioc@newton.k12.ma.us) before purchasing items to be certain that NTA still has Mass Child Grant Funds available and that the items you will be purchasing will qualify for reimbursement.
Once you have approval, purchase the items and submit your receipts to Cindy (You can do this electronically via email or by sending them through the Pony).
NTA will reimburse you directly right away. We will handle the submission to Mass Child for local reimbursement.
Retirement Planning
If you are planning to retire this year, remember that employees who give notice of retirement at least six (6) months prior to their last day of work and who work through the end of the teacher work year (orthrough June 30th for Unit E), will receive $500 in addition to the benefit of $500 for giving at least four (4) months notice of their retirement. Total benefit in these cases is $1,000. Don’t miss out on this — be sure to get your retirement form to the HR office in December for a June retirement!
The incentive payment of $500 for giving notice of retirement at least four(4) months prior to the last day of work still exists separately for those not working through the end of the teacher work year (or June 30th for Unit E). Any questions? Feel free to reach out to Christine Walsh at treasurer@newteach.org.
There are two very important legislative changes to our pension under consideration right now, one on Beacon Hill, and one in the Senate in Washington. Your continued advocacy can make a difference.
The Social Security Fairness Act
The Social Security Fairness Act (S. 597) has passed with strong bipartisan support in the House and is now in the Senate.
—As part of a final push for Senate passage of the Social Security Fairness Act (S. 597), the bill’s congressional champions will join NEA and labor and retirement groups for a rally on Capitol Hill this Wednesday, December 11. In addition, we’re asking you to call your senators and urge final passage now!
Please remember: even though Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey are strong supporters of this bill, your call still matters. As your senators advocate for passage of this bill, it is important that they be able to say just how many calls and emails of support they have received. Your voices make their voices more powerful!
RetirementPlus Bill
The MTA is calling on all members to contact their state legislators before the end of session on Dec. 31 and ask that they support the passage of the RetirementPlus bill (H. 2630), which is currently with the House Committee on Ways and Means. This bill will allow teachers hired before July 1, 2001, who did not provide a written election to participate in RetirementPlus, to have a second opportunity to do so. Please call your legislator today! Click here to get more information, including a link to your legislators’ phone number and an email you can use to share your story directly with them.
Licensure
Please be sure to keep on top of your licensure to avoid problems down the road. Please note — if you lack the appropriate license or endorsement(s) for your position, that can constitute grounds for dismissal. If your supervisor or human resources has reached out to you to bring a deficit to your attention, please address the issue without delay. If you haven’t done so in a while, log on to your ELAR account through the DESE Security Portal to check your licensure status. MTA has a number of resources and tools to guide members through the license renewal process located on their website. If you have questions or need support, please reach out to Christine Walsh at treasurer@newteach.org.
MTA also offers....
Virtual Licensure Workshops
to support you in keeping your licensure up to date.
Join MTA Education Policy Specialist Beth Tripathi and Professional Development Strategist Dan Callahan at the 2024-2025 MTA Virtual Licensure Workshops for presentations on licensure for various career stages. All workshops will be held from 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM. For more detailed information about each workshop and to register, visit https://bit.ly/mtalic2425.
1/15 Professional Licensure
1/29 Licensure Basics for Early Career Educators
2/26 Licensure Basics for ESPs
3/26 Professional License Renewal
The Right to Strike
Two weeks ago, as we were preparing to begin Thanksgiving break, and without yet knowing that the of the strikes in Beverly and Marblehead would end before that break, I wrote the below message to members. I want to keep this in our EBulletin for this week, as we should not turn away quickly from just how hard members there struggled to win a fair contract, and the challenges that their struggles foreshadow for other district's across the state.
******
I have found the strikes in Beverly, Gloucester, and Beverly deeply disturbing.
Outrageous fines.
School committee refusals to address the same issues we bargained for here in Newton: A living wage for Unit C members; realistic cost of living adjustments; modern parental leave policies; mental health supports.
Public posturing by elected officials who ring their hands about damage striking educators are inflicting on children and families, even as they refuse to bargain in good faith. Indeed, (The Beverly School Committee even went so far as to petition the Commonwealth Employment Relations Board (CERB) to request that the Board grant them the right NOT to bargain during the strike--and the CERB granted their request!
Maura Healey speaking out against striking educators.
Ruthanne Fuller adding her two cents about budgetary constraints.
--Why do I find this so disturbing? I mean, we saw all this and then some here in Newton. --Yes, and that is part of why it is so disturbing.
And it's also the timing. Massachusetts is reputedly a progressive state. Voters voted overwhelming democratic in this November's election, as they almost always do. In Massachusetts, the Democratic Party currently controls all branches of government. We purportedly value education highly here, and elected officials love to boast of our best in nation educational system.
Any yet...and yet...in this purportedly progressive state, school districts continue to balance their budgets by exploiting educational support professionals, by refusing to provide modern parental leave, by turning a blind eye to the desperate need for mental health and behavioral supports in our schools, and by expecting educators to shoulder the burden of inflation.
What is wrong with this picture? Why cannot educators expect the support of elected leaders in this bluest of blue states? As educators, we overwhelmingly cast our votes for democratic candidates .Don't educators--and working people- have a right to expect protection, support, solidarity?
These strikes, at this moment, have brought home to me the harsh reality of the words Bernie Sanders chose to explain the failure of the Democratic Party in the elections of 2024: “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them,”
But--as disturbed as I may be by how harshly, how inveterately, our elected leaders fight against educators in Beverly, Gloucester, and Marblehead, how harshly, inveterately, they fought against us here in Newton, I need to remind myself that when WE FIGHT--we, as union members, in solidarity--WE WIN!
We won our strike here in Newton. Before us, educators won victories in Dedham, Brookline, Haverhill, Malden, Woburn and Andover. Educators just won in Gloucester, and they will soon win in Beverly and Marblehead.
But the costs of our victories should not be so high. The balance of power between educators and management should not be weighted so heavily in favor of management. We must gain the legal right to go on strike when negotiations fail.
We cannot expect that our elected leaders will ever give us this right in the legislature: Newton's newly elected representatives, Amy Sangiolo and Greg Schwartz, stated clearly to the NTA that they do not support the right to strike, so we made no progress when Newton and Brookline citizens elected them to office. And to date the state legislature has made clear they will not budge on this issue.
MTA and AFT members won a major statewide victory at the ballot box by eliminating the use MCAS as a graduation requirement.
Our next ballot box battle must be for the right to strike. In a world where we cannot count on our elected leaders, we must have the right to protect ourselves--and our students.
*****
In solidarity,
Mike Zilles, President
Newton Teachers Association
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