Teachers, related service providers, and administrators in the Brookline Educators Union (BEU) remain without a long-term contract this spring after starting the school year without one for the third straight year.
Educator morale is at an all time low. Limits on staffing, lack of common planning blocks, and pay that is not keeping pace with inflation is putting retention of excellent educators at risk, including our much needed staff of color. This also puts our students at risk. Brookline’s overall retention rate stood at 88.3% in 2009. In 2019 before Covid, when comparable districts were hitting about 90%, Brookline had slipped to 84.5%. Today, retention is even worse.
Our classroom educators and related service providers are our students’ greatest source of stability in a school system that has had 6 superintendents in 7 years and an unusually high turnover of principals and central administrators. Making a commitment to educators in writing, one that prioritizes a) working conditions that enable excellent teaching, and b) economic fairness, is long overdue.
The BEU seeks community support for:
- A Just Wage: Our salary proposals allow for time to fund cost-of-living increases that are closer to 3% a year than 2%.
- Common Planning Time: Add planning blocks with no loss of instructional time in order to facilitate collaboration across grade levels, academic departments, and schools.
- Adequate Staffing: Maintain current staff, and hire additional Paraprofessionals from Brookline and Boston neighborhoods of our underrepresented students to cover building duties, increase the diversity of our staff, and open up time for educators to provide individualized learning and support.
- Retaining a Diverse Workforce: Consider granting BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) educators Professional Teacher Status (PTS), which protects their voice, as early as allowed by law and adopt regular meetings between them and the superintendent.
PLEASE SUPPORT BROOKLINE EDUCATORS BY SENDING THE MESSAGE AT THE FOLLOWING LINK:
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/brookline-select-board-school-committee-transfer-the-funds/
