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Dear Colleagues,
As a union, we cannot forget or lose our activist chops, and in this EBulletin, we offer you a number of opportunities to stand up for the NTA. Let's not forget the source of our power--our solidarity. More importantly, let's not let the school committee and Mayor Fuller forget the power of our solidarity. As you will see below, and in forthcoming EBulletins, it's time to send them a reminder of who we are!
When we fight, we win! Let's do some fighting!
Kindergarten Aides (new)
Line the Halls!
Join your colleagues on Monday, October 21, 2024, at 6:00 p.m. to line the halls at the School Committee Meeting to demand that the Full Time Kindergarten Teaching Assistants guaranteed in our contract be restored.
Yes, last spring, an arbitrator ordered the Newton School Committee to reinstate full time kindergarten aides, but the school committee has appealed that decision, which only serves to further delay compliance with our contract. That said, there is nothing to stop the committee from reinstating a full time aide to every classroom while they await the results of their appeal. It wouldn't compromise their legal position to do that at all-and there is no question that having a full time aide in every classroom will improve our kindergarten teaching and learning conditions.
And there is plenty of money! Mayor Fuller just announced that, once again, just as in the past two years, the City of Newton has run a surplus of well over $20 million--this time, about $24 million.
Why don't they just reinstate them? Because it suits them not to--because they can just use the legal process to delay and delay and delay.
Well, Enough is Enough!
Join your colleagues on Monday, October 21, 2024, at 6:00 p.m. to line the halls at the School Committee Meeting to demand that the Full Time Kindergarten Teaching Assistants guaranteed in our contract be restored.
Kindergarten teachers and others will be speaking at public comment to highlight the damage that is being done as a result of the failure of the School Committee to abide by the terms of our contract.
Please use this form to let us know that you will be joining us!
Join us in telling them: “Enough is Enough! It’s time for you to honor your commitment to the teachers and children of Newton!”
Show up in support of your colleagues and to remind the School Committee and Mayor of the power of our collective voice! Please use this form to let us know that you will be joining us!
JMLC Meeting Dates (new)
Thank you to all of you who volunteered to be a member of one of our Joint Labor Management Committees. We have set dates for our initial internal meetings. If you did not sign up, but would still like to participate, here are the dates and times. All will be held at the Newton Teachers Association Offices at 46b Austin Street. You can just show up to this first meeting if you are interested.
Mental Health
Tuesday, October 15 at 4:15 p.m.
High School Class Size (High School Joint Oversight Committee)
Thursday, October 17, 7:30 a.m.
Joint Instructional Council
Wednesday, October 23, 4:15 p.m.
Unit C Coverage and Schedule
Thursday, October 24, 4:15 p.m.
Evaluation Working Group
Wednesday, October 30, 4:15 p.m.
Know your Contract! (revised)
Parental Leave
Addendum, 10-14-2024: Members have asked me: how does taking a parental leave impact my step increase for the following year, if at all.
Here is the language from our contract that answers this question:
A. Only time actually served shall be credited towards earning a step increase. Any time for which compensation is received (sick leave, bereavement leave, jury duty, etc.) shall be counted as time actually served. Time for which compensation is not received, shall be referred to as a “break in service” and credit shall be granted for the year in which said break occurs according to the criteria delineated in Section B below:
B. In a given school year, a break or breaks in service shall not disqualify time served prior to or after such break(s). The period of the break in service, however, shall discount the determination of credit towards a step increase according to the criteria below:
1. If there are 45 days or fewer of uncompensated time, there will be no loss of credit. The employees shall earn credit for one (1) complete year of service towards a step increase.
2. If there are more than 45 days but 110 or fewer days of uncompensated time, there will be a loss of one half year of credit. The employee shall earn credit of one half year of service towards a step increase.
3. If there are more than 110 days of uncompensated time, there will be a loss of a full year of credit. The employee shall earn no credit towards a step increase.
The remainder of section on parental leave has not changed from last week:
The HR office has created a clear, accurate, and overall excellent slide deck explaining your parental leave benefits and responsibilities. They include a link to a spreadsheet on slide seven that allows you to calculate how many paid days you may be on leave based on your banked personal sick days.
In our new contract, members are now guaranteed 40 days of paid parental leave, but, depending on how many personal sick days they have banked, they may be entitled to take up to 60 days paid. The district pays the first 20 days of leave, then the member may use up to 40 of their own personal illness days to be paid for up to 40 additional days. If a member has saved fewer than 40 personal illness days, the district will pay additional days for them directly, up to a total of maximum of 20 more days.
The easiest and most accurate way to determine how many paid days for which you are eligible is to use the spreadsheet that is found on slide seven of the Human Resources slide deck on parental leave, which accurately calculates paid days based on the formula we agreed to in our last negotiations.
Mayor Fuller's Long-Range Financial Plan (new)
Mayor Ruthanne Fuller presented her annual five year plan to the Newton City Council on Monday, October 7. (You can watch it here.) I will be saying more about Mayor Fuller's Long Range Financial Plan in a future EBulletin, but the hypocrisy of some of Fuller's opening remarks, which she shared in her weekly email, need to be called out.
1. Mayor Fuller opens by contrasting the tumultuousness of the national and international scene with the fiscal security that we enjoy here in Newton under her leadership. Is it simply lost on her that, under her "fiscal guidance," she put the Newton Public Schools through two years of damaging budget cuts, which she followed by a scorched earth bargaining strategy that forced the NTA into a fifteen day strike? The quietly patrician pride, indeed, triumphalism, of her speech makes clear she just doesn't care.
2. She says that the city invests "one-time funding into our one time needs' and by doing so avoids the "temptation of putting these monies into ongoing operations which too often leads to layoffs and service cuts when the one-time funding sources dry up." Yet these so-called one time funds--free cash--is really just the surplus that results from under-budgeting revenues year in year out. It was the failure to allocate this revenue to the schools rather than let it accumulate as surplus each year that lead to layoffs and service cuts--at a time when Newton's students were most vulnerable.
Mayor Fuller, you have not protected us from hypothetical cuts; your so-called fiscal prudence caused real cuts that hurt real people.
Mayor Fuller, this is not prudent budgeting, prudent fiscal restraint; it is is gross negligence. The means were available to fund our schools. You simply failed to do so.
3. She says that "we intentionally match the growth in our personnel costs with the growth in the City of Newton revenues. Our employees are the reason we have great schools and great City services. Not surprisingly, personnel costs are also by far our largest expenditure category. We never want to lay off employees by signing a contract we cannot afford."
Here Mayor Fuller reveals the "fuller" picture of what is at stake for her:
She believes that she and the Newton School Committee signed "a contract they could not afford" with the Newton Teachers Association in 2019. To "prove" this, she underfunds the schools in FY22 (the 2021-2022 school year) and FY23 (the 2022-2023 school year), which forces cuts and layoffs thus "proving" that the Newton School Committee could not afford the contract that they signed in 2019.
This is not some abstraction, some hypothetical: in FY22, the city ran a $28.8 million surplus; in FY23, it ran a $27.9 million surplus and last year, FY24, it ran a $23.6 million surplus. The deficits in the school budget were not nearly that much.
And why "prove" that the NPS could not afford its 2019 contract? To justify a scorched earth bargaining strategy in 2024, one that forced the Newton Teachers Association into a strike. Yet realistically, the gap in cost between the NTA contract proposals and the Newton School Committee contract proposals was far less than the surplus the city runs every year.
NONE of the cuts in FY22 or FY23 were justified financially. Last year, there was no need for a strike.
No, Mayor Fuller, you have the cart before the horse. The cuts did not happen for financial reasons. The strike did not happen because the NTA made unreasonable financial demands. The cuts, and the strike, happened, because you, Mayor Fuller, are motivated by a deep anti-union, anti-public education sentiment that you couch in the neo-liberal language of fiscal restraint. Your free cash surpluses don't lie.
And you are doing your best to set the table for more of the same in the next round of negotiations.
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In solidarity,
Mike Zilles, President
Newton Teachers Association
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