Dear Colleagues,
You may have noticed that over the past few weeks this EBulletin has taken on a more combative tone.
Last week, we asked you all to come out andLine the Halls to demand that the school committee and Dr. Nolin restore kindergarten aides immediately. We're still asking you to do that--tomorrow night, at 6:00, at the Ed Center!
Last week, we called on you to join with your colleagues on a number of Joint Labor Management Committees so we can continue bargaining for the common sense proposals in our last contract: a full time regular education social worker, adjustment counselor or psychologist in every school building; sensible class size caps in the high schools, as well as coverage and professional hours for Unit C employees.
Last week, I excoriated Mayor Fuller for her anti-labor, anti public education budget braggadocio when she introduced the City of Newton's next "five year economic plan." [Spoiler alert: What's coming? More austerity; more huge end of year surpluses.]
And over the past few weeks, we have been posting"Know your Contract" sections to the EBulletin, and last week we posted a section on the grievance process, in order to inform you about your contractual rights and protect you from their infringements.
The shift in tone is very real. Of course, there is the mayor, who refuses to fund the schools and insists on "reining in" the unions. Of course, there is the school committee, which seeks out every legal means possible to avoid its commitments.
And there is also a growing concern we are seeing from Dr. Nolin and some members of her central administrative team, who are trampling over both our professional culture here in Newton and our collective bargaining rights. This is hard.
Here is a partial list of the many troubling issues the NTA is tackling:
The district has refused to grant paid medical leave to a number of members who are suffering from severe illness. Chris and I are confident that these members are contractually entitled to sick leave benefits. Yet these members' are not being paid, and in some cases, have had their health insurance cancelled. This exacerbates the trauma of already unimaginably difficult life crises. While we are using all the tools we have to protect their rights, the grievance process is far too slow to meet the needs that these members have right now.
In direct violation of its legal obligations, the district has regularly not fulfilled our requests for information, handicapping our ability to represent members when their rights are violated.
The district seeks to undercut our right to use our "urgent personal days" at our discretion. Members report feeling intimidated about using personal days. A member was suspended for using her two urgent personal days in defiance of Dr. Nolin's denial of her "request" to use those day. In last week's "Extended Administrative Council" meeting, administrators were trained on how to approach members to ask them to switch their urgent personnel days to a different date if there are multiple requests on the same day.
The district extended an applicant a job offer. The applicant questioned the placement they were offered on the salary scale and contacted us to determine if they were understanding the matter correctly. He was, and we told him so. He reported to HR that he had confirmed his understanding with the NTA. His job offer was subsequently rescinded, and we have to date not been able to get a straight answer as to why.
Indeed, those who were involved in perpetrating this violation don't seem to understand why we even care about it, since the applicant was not yet a member of the NTA when their job offer was rescinded. And that is a huge part of our concern: No one we have worked with on the administrative side seems to see what a chilling effect this action has had upon our ability to trust them, or understand how crushing it feels to know that our involvement on behalf of an employee resulted in the loss of an employment opportunity. This betrayal of trust feels, as it should, staggering.
The district has implemented an Instructional Leadership Academy which requires administrators to leave their buildings for seven full days during the school year, during which time they do "instructional rounds" to observe educational practice. We are all told these rounds are "non-evaluative." Yet the district is establishing, and calibrating, an understanding of best practices that is not based upon our own evaluative framework, but which will subsequently be used when supervisors do evaluations in their own buildings.
And apart from the evaluative implications of this leadership academy for our Unit A members, the burden on Unit B members is extreme. Seven days of work responsibilities will not just magically disappear for them while they attend these rounds.
Many members tell us that they feel as if change is coming from the top down at a torrid pace. Nor do they encounter genuine curiosity about what makes the Newton Public Schools great NOW, and how to support the great work we ALREADY do. (Dr. Nolin praised the business consulting book "Good to Great" in her presentation.) For all the claims we hear about wanting to support educators, it feels much more as if we are once again being subjected to initiative overkill--now just at a much faster pace.
Here is some advice we can give you to protect yourself:
If you have questions for the Human Resources Office, whenever possible, ask them in writing. If you have a conversation with a Human Resources Officer, take careful notes during your conversation. Follow up in writing with whomever you speak, explain your understanding of the substance of your conversation, and ask for confirmation that this is correct.
Do not ask to use an unpaid day adjacent to when you are using a personal day. You do not need to explain why you are using a personal day; you do need to explain why you are requesting an unpaid day. Don't give Dr. Nolin the opportunity to "reject" your use of a personal day at the same time she rejects your use of an unpaid day.
Never explain why you are using a personal day. There are only two prohibited uses of personal days: you cannot use them adjacent to a holiday or vacation in order to extend that holiday or vacation or facilitate travel plans. Don't do that.
To be very clear, you may use a personal day adjacent to a holiday or vacation if you judge you are doing so for urgent personal business. If you are asked if you are using these days to extend a holiday or vacation, or facilitate travel plans, and if the answer is no, then just say no--do not explain why your urgent personal business.
Kindergarten Aides
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 appealed that decision. As they await the results of that appeal, there is nothing to stop the committee from reinstating a full time aide to every classroom -- unless the real reason for the appeal was simply to delay.
Kindergarten teachers who were present for negotiations in 2018 will remember that the School Committee Negotiators told us then that we didn't need contract language because we had their word they would assign a full time aide to every classroom.
Let's not just sit on our hands while the wheels of justice turn ever so slowly! Let's join together to DEMAND that the Newton School Committee honor its commitments!
And let's let them know: Enough is enough! Keep your word!
Join your colleagues on Monday, October 21, 2024, at 6:00 p.m. and line the halls at the School Committee Meeting!
Demand that the School Committee honor its commitment to provide a full time Kindergarten Teaching Assistant in every classroom!
Let us know you are coming by using this form.
Let’s End the High-Stakes Graduation Requirement
and Win Big on Nov. 5!
Yes on 2 Phone Banking Opportunity--Get out our Vote!
What: NTA phone bank for Yes on 2
Why: We're two weeks out from the vote! This is the final push!
When: Tuesday, October 22 4:30-6:30pm
Where: NTA Office - 46 Austin St
Who: You! Let us know you're coming by signing up here.
JMLC Meeting Dates
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.
Mayor Fuller's Long-Range Financial Plan
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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