Brookline Educators Union

700+ educators sign in support of K8 World Language teachers

The K-8 World Language Program in the Public Schools of Brookline supports the kind of cutting-edge learning that contributes to the excellent reputation of the town’s schools.  

Lauded upon its arrival in 2008, K-8 World Language today is being seriously weakened unnecessarily due to systemic problems faced by too many of its teachers and students. There are too few World Language teachers in pockets of this comprehensive language program, and in some schools World Language is treated as an afterthought, creating inequities that are a disservice to both students and educators.  

As a member of the Brookline Educators Union, I call on the School Committee or its designee to immediately return to the bargaining it began over an agreement to ensure the continued success of K8 World Language.   

Such an agreement must involve issues of scheduling and staffing. A contractual agreement is the only way to guarantee that the educators responsible for the success of the K8 World Language Program are treated fairly, equitably, and with respect.  BEU members stand together knowing that the schedules of our K8 colleagues are intertwined with ours, and that teaching is a joint, whole community endeavor.  We reject any district strategy that undermines one subject area or educational service — and thus the educators responsible for it — in an effort to meet the needs of another.   We know that schools are communities in which students and adults only flourish when everyone does.  

Currently, too many K8 World Language Program educators are given excessively high student loads and untenable scheduling involving erratic teaching locations, no limit to the number of grade levels taught, and no limit to the number of sections.  Furthermore, they are typically excluded from staff meetings due to scheduling. These conditions are untenable In a program that meets rigorous state standards using a target language exclusively in classes of students with highly varied degrees of language proficiency.  In 2015, Brookline voters approved a tax hike to specifically support the K8 World Language program, whereas today these dedicated educators face precarious employment and are frequently threatened with layoffs. 

Over the past five years, more than a dozen K8 World Language educators — over half in the program — have left the Brookline school district.

The BEU sees this as a failure on the part of the district to support an important program with a racially and ethnically diverse staff that promotes respect for diverse cultures and knowledge about the world beyond the town borders. Allowing further weakening of the K8 World Language program would be a devastating blow to the Public Schools of Brookline’s attempts to be a more culturally responsive school district for students and staff alike.

For these reasons, the BEU is demanding immediate action on the part of the School Committee to reach an agreement that protects the K8 World Language Program. 

 

In support of transparency

Educators extend our gratitude to the parents, guardians, and caregivers, and other members of the Brookline community, who have been reaching out to us with words of support and sincere questions about what issues are on the bargaining table and what is prompting collective action in the schools.  

 

For some time, we have asked the School Committee to open up negotiations to the public so that members of the community can hear our concerns, see how we work as a union, and judge for themselves whether our proposals are good for our students and schools.  We hope you will encourage the School Committee to finally open up the sessions.  

 

Educators do not take the decision to engage in collective action lightly. Unfortunately, every other effort we have made to see serious problems addressed by the district has not worked, leaving us with no other choice. Conditions we are addressing have for too long been degrading educators’ ability to do their best work and to sustain a career commitment to the Public Schools of Brookline.  This prolonged, grinding situation is already hurting children much more than our efforts to get to an agreement with the school committee quickly.  The conditions we are addressing are definitely not as visible and dramatic as a work action is, but they are ultimately more disruptive of quality educational services and our ability to translate our love of our students into substantive supports that we want to deliver. 

 

Here are our current bargaining priorities of our three year contract:

 

  • A Just Wage: Increase educators’ salaries an average of 3% per year during the 3-year contract term (retroactive to 2020-2021)
  • Fair Workload for K-8 World Language Teachers and teachers of “specials”: Reduce the untenable workload of the district’s K-8 World Language and other teachers who are required to teach more classes across multiple grade levels without opportunities to participate in their school communities
  • Common Planning Time: Create additional common planning time for educators to facilitate collaboration across grade levels, academic departments, and schools
  • Adequate Staffing: Hire additional personnel  from Brookline neighborhoods facing the highest unemployment rates to increase the diversity of our staff, cover building-based duties, and open up common planning time for educators
  • Retaining a Diverse Workforce: Grant BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) educators Professional Teacher States (PTS) as early as allowed by law and regular meeting with the superintendent

 

We encouraged members of the community to challenge claims that the town “simply has no money.”  This is just not just not true, and if it is “the case”, then it is by choice. In 2019, Brookline placed 29th lowest (or 322nd highest) in tax rates while being in the top 10% in income (even higher in income by some accounts). If Proposition 2 ½ is in the way, it is past time to make means of funding of public services as great a priority as austerity talk. Furthermore, community stake-holders, including the educators of Brookline, are supposed to be part of decisions about how to use $40 million in stimulus funds.  We hope you will stand with us.

 

Please contact the School Committee at school_committee@psbma.org and insist that this bargaining process becomes transparent and happens in public–right away.

The case against staffing cuts

Year after year the staff of Brookline Schools has heard how they have carried the load as the school district was bursting at the seams. We taught large classes, we taught in hallways, we taught with limited support and resources.

 

After the most difficult year of teaching in everyone’s career, we are being told that some positions must be cut due to lower enrollment. This is a shortsighted and destructive move. Nobody knows what the enrollment will be next year. Will parents who homeschooled want to return their students? Will international families be returning? Will families that went to private schools now be returning? The answer is we don’t know. 

 

Despite the district’s inability to retain Town Hall administration and principals, the educators in the system have kept the district delivering quality education for Brookline students. There is every reason to believe that the numbers will come back, and that as we get beyond the pandemic the student population will rebound. So reducing staff is shortsighted.

 

Reducing staff is also destructive. It is destructive when reduction of staff necessarily leads to other teachers being assigned to pick up additional sections that remain to be covered in their absence. This means students will be taught by teachers who are spread more thin and who may be less experienced in a subject area.  It is destructive because it makes everyone who works in the schools feel undervalued and like “part of the machinery.” It is destructive because it makes Brookline less attractive as a destination for outstanding educators.

 

With a large amount of Federal funds coming in, and increased state funds on the horizon, now is not the time for cuts. Next year is a year when we need all of the skilled staff that make up the Public Schools of Brookline. Even if classes are smaller at the start of the year, what better time for increased support than as we recover from a pandemic? 

 

For far too long and in far too many areas Brookline is reactive not proactive. Here is an opportunity to be considered and think long term. The federal government is funding the opportunity to maintain the valuable school system that has taken generations to build. Last year the Public Schools of Brookline laid off over 360 staff because the district had not been  doing the hard work of long term planning. While most were hired back, quite a few chose to move on. We have chronically not been able to hire enough paraprofessionals to serve our children. We have begun to lose valued teachers.

 

If you want to have world class schools, you need world class educators. That does not happen if you hire and fire people as if they were contract employees. It is time for the residents to demand that educators be treated as the valuable center of the system that they are and must be.

BEU Announces its Health and Safety Targets

Brookline does not exist in a bubble.  For instance, over 540 Brookline educators currently live in Boston, as do other school employees and hundreds of our students.  Thousands of college students will soon arrive from around the country, travel back and forth to their home communities, and become part of neighborhoods in Brookline, Boston and surrounding towns and cities.

 

Our educators and students cross municipal boundaries every day so our lives are inextricably tied to the lives of those in other communities.  Creating safe conditions in our schools calls on us to address these and other ways we move in and between rooms in schools, neighborhoods, and municipalities.  It calls on us to think about more than the narrow, mechanical measures, as important as those are.  What follows are the Brookline Educator Union’s health and safety benchmarks and compliance protocols to protect our students, educators, their families, and our communities.

Updated H&S Recommendations 8-10-2020

BEU Latest Tweets

RSS MTA News

RSS MTA Events