Brookline Educators Union

Did You Know Brookline Educators STILL Don’t Have a Contract?

April 7, 2022

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/

Please support BEU call for an anti-racist contract

March 20, 2022

Brookline has long been known for its progressive values, quality of life, and engaged citizenry. Today, an increasing number of Brookline residents are calling on the town’s governance bodies and departments to identify and eliminate the structural barriers to participation in Brookline civic life that keep our community from becoming more racially and economically diverse. Such barriers limit access to resources, leave bias unaddressed, and allow the growing wealth gap within our school communities to widen. The Brookline Educators Union is trying to eliminate some of these barriers through the collective bargaining process. We are attempting to stabilize and increase the racial and ethnic diversity of the school staff at every school and all job categories to better and more sustainably meet the needs of all of our students, paying particular attention to the needs of our students of color.

In order to reach this goal, the BEU is calling for a contract between the BEU and the School Committee with provisions that will:

Attract and retain teachers from under-represented groups by endeavoring to award Professional Teacher Status (PTS), as early as allowed by law: when first hired or after their first year. PTS confers due process rights and such protections make it easier to speak out and exercise leadership. In addition, require that the central office administrators meet with these new teachers regularly to ensure that they are welcomed and supported. Brookline regularly recruits highly effective educators from other districts, who give up PTS in order to join our district. This proposal does not force the Superintendent to award PTS early and would not add additional money to the budget.
Hire individuals from the Brookline and Boston neighborhoods of our under-represented students into much needed job categories of paraprofessionals — building, lunch and recess monitors and building aides with a dignified, living wage. This will help address the problem of over-scheduling and under-staffing, opening up needed time for teachers and specialists to prep and meet with students and one another, and limit the pulling of paras from their assigned students to cover these duties.
Pay all educators enough to give a more diverse staff the capacity to gain and maintain a foothold in the middle class if they make a career in the Public Schools of Brookline. The BEU is asking for a 9% cost of living increase over 3 years.

Hiring and retaining the diverse staff our schools depend on requires funding staffing and scheduling that demonstrates respect for the dignity of teaching. Unfortunately the school district has moved in the opposite direction; rejecting our proposals and threatening to impose a contract on educators that would increase the length of the K8 school day for no pay, weaken the right to uphold the contract through grievances, and limit exercise of autonomy by teachers. That stance is damaging morale and making the district less attractive to talented educators.

This community has always stood with its educators and we hope you will join us now in our call for a contract that will attract and retain a more racially and ethnically diverse staff to meet the needs of all our students.

COMMUNITY MEMBERS–PLEASE SUPPORT EDUCATORS BY SIGNING THIS PETITION:

https://actionnetwork.org/letters/brookline-select-board-school-committee-transfer-the-funds/

We can secure the legacy of Brookline’s excellent schools

January 28, 2022

We can secure the legacy of Brookline’s excellent schools

Be it ending structural racism, making teaching in Brookline a sustainable career, respecting the professional judgment of those in the classroom, or responding to the educators’ urgent demands to address untenable working conditions, the management of the Brookline Public Schools is demonstrating a gross lack of commitment to the quality of our schools.

BEU educators are dedicated to working with district management to secure a legacy of excellent Brookline schools. Sadly, the attorney employed by the school district is advising the school committee to not make contractual commitments with the BEU in regard to several issues that educators– the BEU members – have raised as bargaining priorities.

The school committee will not agree to the following: to strengthening due process protections for educators of color so they can bring their desperately needed voices forward. They will not commit to stopping the erosion of the economic value of public school teaching in Brookline. Nor will the committee members provide for proper staffing needed to deliver the services that they are promising families and that educators need for manageable workloads.

When the district had time in the budgeting process to commit to what educators knew was needed, they squandered it by finalizing a budget that did not pay its labor bill. When the BEU changed our proposals to give the district more time — over a year and a half — to plan fiscally, the school committee said “no.” Rather than work with us, the committee members went in the opposite direction and dug in on a bargaining package which suddenly diminished union rights and increased the length of the school day, unpaid.

Now, the Brookline School Committee is abusing a system that is supposed to uphold collective bargaining rights. While maintaining no more than a veneer of good faith bargaining by offering only miniscule changes to proposals, the committee has manufactured an impasse that can eventually be used to justify an endgame where management imposes their “last best offer” on the table prior to mediation. To that end, the school committee is holding pay hostage to those proposals submitted very late in the game — proposals that we could never accept — insisting that they will stay in a package offer until and unless we give in on pay. That’s not right.

In the meantime, Brookline educators have been forced to take it upon themselves to make workloads tenable. At the beginning of February, parents and guardians will see that the comments on report cards will not be as detailed as they have been in the past. Teachers simply no longer have the time to do everything that is being asked of them within the confines of a reasonable work day. Our priority remains providing the best possible education to all of our students, and that task requires a degree of planning, preparation, and collaboration among colleagues, all of which the school committee is saying it will not talk with us about. The committee’s actions are an insult to educators and a disservice to students and the greater community.

Brookline can afford a fair contract for educators

For several years, the School Committee and Town administration have diminished the investment made in the Public Schools of Brookline. Spending on Brookline public schools has shrunk as a percentage of the overall town budget despite the increase in students and services provided. Our community has crossed the line from fiscal responsibility to damaging austerity.

The Brookline Educators Union is fighting for a fair contract, one that the town can afford and that delivers the quality of education that our students deserve.

Revenue is available:

Brookline has underestimated its tax revenues by roughly $5.9 million annually for the past five fiscal years.
The town and schools also have access to tens of millions of dollars through the federal government’s Covid-relief programs. These funds can bridge initial expenses of meeting staffing and wage needs and allow for time to plan future budgets.

Reasonable approach to planning:

To meet staffing needs, the schools do not need to hire only full-time certified teachers for every position necessary to allow for the adequate preparation, planning and collaboration time that the BEU is bargaining for. Our educational support professional workforce can be expanded.
The BEU’s proposed cost of living adjustments barely keep up with inflation and routine wage increases for professionals. The BEU is also flexible with the structure of the wage package in order to give the town ample time for budget planning.
By agreeing to the racial justice protections the BEU is proposing, the school system can do better in attracting and retaining a staff that is diverse in national origin, ethnicity, and race, which our schools need.

Brookline educators are well-paid in comparison to other similar districts, however, salaries actually grow less competitive the longer an educator works in our district. The salary “steps” are not raises, but rather they are an incremental progression through a wage scale that provides a discount to the PSB for every educator not on the top step. Brookline must make the value of each step fair and equitable for the duration of an educator’s career, valuing the educator’s experience and adjusting for increased living costs.

Brookline public schools are reaching a breaking point

The Public Schools of Brookline have long been regarded as among the best public schools not only in the state, but also in the entire country. Yet, the legacy and reputation of PSB are in jeopardy. The lack of investment that the School Committee and the PSB Administration are willing to make in our schools is taking its toll. Every year it becomes harder for educators in Brookline to maintain the tradition of providing a dynamic, comprehensive and challenging course of learning for every student we work with.

Quite simply, the austerity budgets we continually face make it increasingly difficult—and in some cases impossible — to teach to the whole child.

The Brookline Educators Union is trying to reverse that trend through contract negotiations.

Staffing is at a crisis level.

It takes adequate staffing to provide high-quality programs and to create new programs that our students need and deserve. We have built a K-8 World languages program. We have greatly increased inclusion programs for students with significant special education needs. We are creating more programs around racial justice. We are expanding social and emotional learning advisory offerings to students. We must start developing a robust environmental education curriculum that is central to all of our students’ learning.
Our existing staff is excellent, but it has not grown at the same rate that demands on staff time have grown. Federal, state and local mandates have piled on responsibilities that in many cases are not congruent with the BEU’s mission or PSB’s legacy of teaching the whole child. Rather than forgo beneficial learning experiences to address mandates, Brookline educators have worked tirelessly to protect professional autonomy that has long benefited our students. At current staffing levels, there just is not enough time in a 24 hour day to get everything done.
Our staff of color and staff with national origins other than the U.S. are being taxed with added responsibilities that are insufficiently supported by working conditions and pay that will strengthen hiring and retention and increase respect on the job. They are relied upon too heavily to address diversity, inclusion and racial justice, while not being provided the support necessary to thrive.

Wages have not kept pace:

Pay in Brookline has flatlined, a problem that is hidden behind the appearance of increases on steps that are designed to delay the achievement of professional pay. The pay has also failed to reflect how job responsibilities for educators have soared. In essence, the town has been demanding more while not paying for more, either through raises or increased staff.

Respect educators’ professionalism:

Effective teaching requires effective planning. Educators are asking for small amounts of guaranteed time to prepare and to collaborate. The BEU is also advocating for educator-driven professional development.

The BEU takes pride in the quality of education provided to our students. We cannot tolerate a work environment that feels like constant triage. And we refuse to simply “check the box” for mandates and initiatives and consider that an adequate education.

Support the BEU in its work to bargain a fair contract with the Brookline School Committee and demand that the town once again value—and properly invest in — its public schools.

Presentation of BEU Unit A proposals to the School Committee 01/10/2021

January 10, 2022

Common Planning Time:

Last month, the School Committee issued the following public statement:

” – when teachers aren’t in front of students, someone else needs to be with them. That means additional hires.” The BEU does not disagree; it is a fact that since well before Covid the schools have been understaffed for the level of service that is being delivered to students. If the community expects this level of service to continue, then corresponding investments in staffing must be made, or the community should be made aware that the district can no longer bear the cost of the resources necessary to provide these services or programming.

Our team heard from building Principals in a bargaining session that scheduling common prep time was difficult and while we are holding firm that this time is needed for educators, we would propose that the time could be implemented into building schedules no later than 6/30/2023 to take effect for the 2023-2024 school year. While we know that Common Planning is crucial for grade level teams, teachers of specials, and related service providers / caseload educators to meet and plan curriculum, tiered intervention strategies, and brainstorm issues that arise for individuals or groups of students, we are willing to take the next school year to allow for necessary schedule and staffing adjustments.

Daily Prep Time:

As part of the public statement referenced above, the School Committee stated that its position on —“Fair workload” for language, art and music teachers” is that – “when teachers teach fewer students, that also means additional hires.” This is read by the team as acknowledgement that the current situation of teachers of specials and world language teachers is indeed UNFAIR. Additionally, we are not in disagreement that this would mean more hires; if this is not something that the schools are able to do, then the town should be informed that the level of service to which they are accustomed will need to change.

Our team remains committed to securing a daily preparation period of no less than 45 minutes for every educator. This change will make schedules more equitable throughout and across buildings. It is more evident than ever before that educators need time each day to plan, breathe, conduct other “self care” exercises, and take a break, even if it is a short one.

Commitment to Retention of Staff of Color:

At the Brookline School Committee meeting on 1/7/2022, this issue was thrust to the forefront of discussions around how our students see themselves represented in the buildings where they “live” every day. Our team has crafted language that we think both expresses a tangible and measurable commitment to recruit and retain staff of color. In this same public statement, we heard that “we do not need language in a specific employment contract to be strongly committed as a district to diversity, equity and inclusion.” We are baffled by this position. We see contract language as the very vehicle by which both parties can affirm their commitment to this valuable effort. We look forward to hearing language that you would accept that could lead to a common understanding of what diversity and equity could look like in the Public Schools of Brookline, but absent such commitment, we will stand by the language we proposed in November, which in no way limits the judgment of the superintendent and is zero cost.

JLMC:

When we first began the discussions to the successor contract in early 2020, this team of BEU Negotiators had 15 pages of thoughtfully formulated proposals that addressed issues of scheduling and workload. After meeting with hundreds of members (and people in the community), we distilled a set of issues such as preparation time, caseload and class size, teaching minutes, expansion of “4+1” into departmentalized grade levels, duties, extra help opportunities, office hours, stipend administrative positions, and others.

The concerns and solutions we presented were affirmed by the school committee as timely and legitimate. Yet we were told repeatedly that these issues were better addressed through administration than in a collective bargaining agreement. While we insist that the parameters of working conditions do indeed belong in a contract because this ensures fairness, consistency, and transparency, we also appreciate that the people who work most closely with students understand directly how well schools are functioning well or not. Recognizing the value in a collaborative process undertaken by a group of administrators and educators who work closely together in the buildings day to day, we devised a plan that can bring their shared experience to bear on the ever evolving challenges we are facing in our schools. We thus proposed a Joint Labor-Management Committee that would examine work activity and generate a “bargaining blueprint” for the next round of contract negotiations. We think all aspects of the contract pertaining to workload, including stipends, are relevant. The resulting report will be a recommendation, not contractual obligations for the BSC or responsibilities for Brookline educators. We are therefore standing with our last proposal on this JLMC.

Wage Proposal:

Lastly, we would like to bring you up to date on our research around wages that lead to our proposal of nine percent over the three year contract. Again, I reference the public statement from last month stating “if we were to agree to the request of 9% over 3 years, that would translate into a salary increase of $2M for next year. **That would mean cutting somewhere between 25 and 30 teachers – the equivalent of eliminating all of the K-8 classroom teachers at Driscoll, Heath, Lincoln or Runkle, or eliminating music at all K-8s. It would mean larger class sizes, reduced program offerings, or both. ** Clearly, that level of staffing cut would be detrimental to Brookline schools, which is why the negotiators have offered 6%, which is still a financial stretch but is in keeping with what other contracts near us have settled for, thus keeping Brookline teachers as the highest-paid among our peer districts” There is a lot here to unpack, and let’s start with the last statement. We are not aware of any “peer districts” having been discussed during these negotiations. Are the districts mentioned in the public statement what you would propose that we are using for comparable districts if we end up in mediation or fact finding?

If so, we take it to be your position that your list are truly peer districts. We would submit for the bargaining record our own list of peer districts: Acton-Boxborough, Arlington, Belmont, Concord-Carlisle, Dedham, Dover-Sherborn, Lexington, Lincoln-Sudbury, Natick, Needham, Newton, Somerville, Waltham, Watertown, Wellesley, Weston, Westwood, Winchester.

We included all of yours even though some would be a stretch in terms of “comparable” but the list above would be amenable to the BEU.

If you are not presenting these formally and prepared to justify your points of comparison, we would expect a public retraction of the suggestion that you have presented these as part of negotiations at any point and allowed the BEU to formally question your choices. Should there be a need to engage in this conversation, we have a list ready for consideration that includes all of the districts mentioned and some others that we think are more similar to Brookline.

Again referencing the SC public statement: it references “Brookline teachers as the highest paid among peer districts.” The concept of “peer districts’ ‘ notwithstanding, our research places Brookline 2nd or 3rd among the districts chosen by the SC for pay early in an educator’s career and 7th or 8th among those districts in pay later on. We used the most current salary data from Brookline AND from those districts rather than salary numbers from three years ago. I don’t know if it was stated publicly in that communication or not, but there is a number north of $100,000 that is floating out there as average educator pay in Brookline. We calculated the actual average pay based on the “scattergram” data that you provided and it comes out to just under $91,000, not including longevity or other benefits. We would appreciate a public correction IF there has been a statement regarding that number.

The public statement, however, makes no mention of the current levels of inflation. As of November 2021, inflation since the expiration of the last contract (Aug 31, 2020) stands at 6.9%. This means that the 6% “COLA” referenced as the “committee’s offer” represents a cut in pay of almost 1% with another 18 months of inflation not yet on the books. Some believe that inflation will indeed begin to recede, but unless it turns negative, which is not a notion that is being entertained, that number of nearly 7% will not come down, but MAY (if we are lucky) lessen the slope of its ascent. Inflation lessens the buying power of money and this round has been most influenced by energy, housing, and food which are the bulk of educator expenses no matter where they are on the salary scales. Brookline’ scales have traditionally been among the higher scales in the state, which is appropriate given the cost of living in the greater Boston region. That is why we have limited our ask to maybe cover the cost of living / inflationary pressure on income and not asked for a raise. Our proposal would put the average pay for educators in Brookline just over $100,000 if there are no retirements and no new hires next year. If there were, that number would obviously go down. With the level of work and expectations of the community, we would not expect that our pay should be effectively cut.

This brings us to the actual COLA ask; we feel that the 9% (three percent over each of the three years of the contract) is both affordable and appropriate; in truth, it’s actually a good deal for the district. Each year, quite apart from 35% enrollment growth, the district embarks on new initiatives and endeavors while refusing to allow time in the teacher day for these to take place. We have been remiss in not insisting that we be compensated for this expansion of services in the Brookline school system. Instead, we insisted that time be carved out of the day and workloads be adjusted in order to make these things happen. Again, we have repeatedly been told that “collective bargaining agreements are not the place for these manageable workload protections.” So Brookline has gotten all this great programming while we have not demanded that it be paid for. The town has been expanding the school system offerings while setting educator COLA’s at low levels of inflation, and thus has not had to go to the residents for overrides. Well now inflation is high, and we need COLA’s that reflect that. We have also heard that “there is no money for these COLA’s”, and while we disagree, we can respect that the budgets for School Year 2021 and 2022 have been set.

We also respect that the budget for next year is being worked on right now and we will insist here and moving forward that budgets reflect the priority that educators be paid minimally for the rate of inflation; and also for any and all additional programming that comes with each school year. Brookline needs to make a decision about what it can offer students in town and what that actually costs; educators do the work to make the programming function, we will not also bear the cost of the programs on our backs any longer.

To this end, we remain firm at 9% over three years, but recognizing current budget commitments we would offer the following redistribution to our previous proposals:

YEAR ONE (2020-2021) 2% COLA retro to 9/1/2020

YEAR TWO (2021-2022) 2% COLA retro to 8/31/2021

YEAR THREE (2022-2023) 5% increase on ALL MONEY ITEMS IN THE CONTRACT

Year three involves a budget that has not been made yet, and we know that budgets are more than line items, they are statements of priorities.

Our research has uncovered some “line items” that could be addressed to show that educators and education is a priority in Brookline.

The difference between the 6% and 9% COLA proposals is about $2.6M over the life of the contract with most of that falling in the last year (2022-2023) Over the past three years, Brookline has UNDERESTIMATED local receipts by an AVERAGE of almost $5.9M per year. Should this pattern hold, half of this underestimation would fund the dollar difference in the two contract proposals.

In our research, we looked at state reported finances of surrounding districts, including Brookline. The average spending of “free cash” as a percentage of the operating budget was just over 7%. Brookline’s was just over 4% putting it 11th out of 15 districts. We looked at the same for “stabilization fund” dollars, and Brookline uses those monies for just over 2.5% of their budget while the average among the 15 districts is almost 6.5%, leaving Brooklne in 10th place. Brookline operates with debt as 5.9% of its budget placing it 11th (or 4th lowest) of these communities where the average community has debt as almost 10% of its budget.

Brookline is among the wealthiest municipalities in the commonwealth and current budget priorities are designed to facilitate three things.

Limit meaningful discussion of monetary priorities and additional expenditures by proscribing an arbitrary allocation of revenue through the school-town partnership.
Maintain low a property tax rate
Maintain a Moody’s AAA bond rating before anything else.

The following data confirms the above and shows that there are untapped resources in town that would allow for full and robust funding of the schools and staff. With over 80% of school funding going to staffing, there is no debate that Brookline schools ARE the educators, paraprofessionals, and administrators that make up the culture and “feel” of the building. When we state that there is “wealth” in Brookline, it is because we know that:

Brookline ranks 23rd out of 351 in per capita income ($95,466) according to the DOR
Brookline ranks 27th out of 351 in property value per capita ($476,107)
Yet Brookline ranks 313 out of 351 in terms of property tax rate (9.8%)
Brookline has a prop 2.5 tax levy ceiling of over $700M. Their actual tax levy is just shy of $275M. What this means is that over the years since proposition two-and-a-half became law, Brookline property values have increased almost half a billion dollars more than taxes have been increased. Brookline has a gap of almost 65% between what they could be taxing and what they are taxing under Prop 2 1/2. That puts them 1st among the 15 communities referenced above in unused tax capacity, where the average “untaxed capacity” is 48%. If the town is indeed “broke”, then it is by choice.

Steps and “increases on the base”—they are not the same and both are necessary.

January 9, 2022

There are three types of pay increases that make up the majority of educator salaries in the United States. They are “steps,” COLA (cost-of-living adjustment), and increases “on the base” other than COLA that reflect community recognition of the value of the work. (We’ll touch briefly on lanes as well).

Steps are what make teaching into a career and not just a short-term job for those that are early on in their careers. Without steps few people would want to stay in teaching for any length of time. Historically steps were a way to make educators provide a discount early in their career, but not later. Would someone with 20 years experience and a masters degree take a job that pays $50,000 per year?

Lanes are another compensation for experience. Lanes are the way that educators are compensated for their educational background: bachelors, masters, doctorate.

The other two ways that salaries are adjusted are responses to a changing social and economic context, and to account for inflation.

Sometimes an increase on each salary, which appears in a “salary schedule” table as an increase in every “cell,” is described as a Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) in recognition of the impact of inflation. Without such increases, an educator would be taking a pay cut because the value of the dollar is decreasing. Nobody would expect a teacher to work for a starting salary today that is the same as a starting salary from 20 years ago or even five years ago. Who would take a teaching job that had a starting salary of $36,000, particularly in this region where the cost of living is as high as it is??

Another reason our salaries have increased is that working people have demanded that their work be respected. Our work as educators becomes more valued by society and as a result the compensation system has become more fair.

To summarize, steps are salary increases to pay for experience while COLA and other raises are to keep the profession current with today’s salaries and the value of the work. People often confuse “steps” with “increases on the base” of the salaries at every step. Without both, teaching does not continue as a respected profession.