Brookline Educators Union

BEU Educators Postpone Back-to-School-Night

On September 24, BEU educators at BHS sent out a personalized version of the following message:

 

Dear Parents, Guardians and Caregivers,

I was looking forward to meeting all of you via Zoom at Brookline High School’s annual Back to School Night Event on September 30th.  Unfortunately, for the third September in a row, a new school year has arrived and my colleagues and I are working without a contract. This has too often been the case. For another year, this means yet another pay cut for all of us because our salaries have not kept up with inflation.  When the School Committee resists giving serious attention to working conditions and refuses to consider true cost-of-living adjustments–leaving our salaries and working conditions unresolved–it means I do not have the full financial picture for my family and myself or a way to plan my worklife.  It is doubly stressful given the current state of the pandemic, since health and safety measures are also addressed through negotiations.  

Therefore, I write to let you know that I will be postponing the back to school night event until three-year contracts are signed for Units A & B (teachers, related service providers, and administrators).  If you have questions, please direct them to the School Committee.

Lawrence Educators Statement in Support of Schools Our Students Deserve

September 11, 2021

 

We, the BEU aligned staff of Lawrence School, are united in our commitment to ensuring that our students receive excellent instruction and services that are delivered under the safest, healthiest conditions possible.  We stand behind our Covid-specific negotiations team that initiated the bargaining process on August 15 and were disappointed when the School Committee did not appear on the date they chose, August 25.  Our negotiating team tells us that when they did meet on August 31, the school committee did not agree to safety protocols and benefits that are reasonable and fair. These include visitor protocols, minimizing unnecessary concentrations of people indoors, social distancing guidelines for unmasked times, a fair vaccination process, ventilation standards, and Covid sick time provisions. While other districts have already accepted such proposals, we were told we would have to wait until September 17 to revisit what our school committee rejected.  With a month wasted, during which health and safety conditions could have been put in place, we are saddened but not surprised that Covid has resulted in the mass quarantine of a class of students. We call on the school committee to agree immediately to learning conditions that are safer and higher quality than this.    

 

Unprepared for what could have been predicted, and without a plan in place for quarantined students and teachers, the district turned to colleagues of ours on Sept. 8 with the expectation that they would spend hours and hours scrambling to design and deliver remote instruction. That is not the quality education we have agreed to deliver.  We expect we will not be put in this position again.  We want the buildings safe and therefore open for teaching and learning in-person.  We stand together in our insistence that the school committee negotiate a fair Covid agreement with strong health and safety provisions, and then go to the main table without delay to negotiate staffing and compensation that are needed to provide our students with the education they deserve. 

 

Signed:

 

Jonathan Norwood

Joanna Lieberman

Rachel Keegan-McGlinn

Jen Sanders

Jessica Dubrow

Jeremy Ward

Brandon Chan

Terry Jewell

Abigail Thompson

 Jon Mastroianni

Liz Exton

Kevin MacKenzie

Russell Morin 

Susan Flegenheimer

Lea Di Miceli

Megan Hegedus 

Charles Deily

Emily Kanzer

Jessica Gordon

Shannon Egna

Laura Basileo

Kayla Nicholson

Sara Gottfried

Henry Moche

Jillian Davis

Pamela Tully

Maggie Russell

Kathy Moriarty

Nora Carpenter

Carolyn Vanasse

Keryn Gannon Steckloff

Holly Ahearn

Miranda Tygert O’Connell

Dianne Muendel

Shaina Martinez

Shannon Cline

Erin Grogan

Gwen Vitti

Sarah Wolff

Justin Brown

Erin Vebber

Quhao Huang

Vicki LaRiccia

Caroline Lew

Christine Moodie

Laura Horst

Mary Lee Mastroianni

Sharon R Kiernan

Lara Miller

Katy McGraw

Diane Cornish Issa

Margaret Avakian

Katherine Grenzeback

Colin King

Jill J Puleo Demsey

Kris Frye

Suzanne Currle

Angela Lo

Lora Smid

Jon Weinberger

David Lamour

Debra Morales

Catherine Perakis

Kate Hollander

Rachel Dolan

Akiko Kawai-Marbet

Nana Wen

Danya Mavor

Patrick Brien

Statement from the Brookline Educators Union (BEU): July 1st, 2021

On June 30, both the Brookline Educators Union and the School Committee ratified a contract for Paraprofessionals that will move educators in that bargaining unit considerably closer to a living wage and parity in sick and other leave time that has long been denied them.  We celebrate the success of the partnership between the union and school district that is reflected in this agreement. However, the School Committee unfortunately fell short when it came to reaching a fair agreement for all of the other unionized educators in our district.  

 

For Units A and B, the BEU made every effort to meet the School Committee “where they are ”: 

 

  • we pared down our list of issues to make a quick agreement possible,
  • we limited our Unit A & B salary proposals to reflect a conservative assessment of the rising cost of living.  We asked for only 2-3% more in each of the years of the contract (which includes a proposed increase in long stagnant stipends for clubs and other enrichment), 
  • we structured the timing of the increases so that much of those increases were delayed, giving the district time to work with the budget and incoming, increased funding.  
  •  

The School Committee’s response was to come back with an offer of 5.5% over 3 years, even as the CPI (consumer price index) for Cambridge/Boston/Newton has risen 3.2% from a year ago (5/20-5/21). Inflation would quickly wipe out the School Committee’s proposed pay increase. Thus, we are still at the bargaining table to reach a fair agreement for the A & B units and we ask for community support.

 

As Brookline educators, we strive to provide what the Public Schools of Brookline vision statement seeks, “an extraordinary education for every child.” Our contract proposals and “open bargaining” approach are designed to support a “community [that is] well informed and involved in the schools [and] supports these efforts that continue a tradition of challenging ourselves to do better, efforts that ensure the enduring value of a Brookline education.”

 

This past school year has been the hardest year of many of our careers, and it followed a decade marked by an unprecedented surge in enrollment that was never matched with proportional staff increases. During all of these years, the School Committee has expressed regret that they could not afford to lessen the burden on educators with higher pay and/or smaller classes and caseloads so that we could deliver the highest quality education.  With enrollments as volatile as they are, the district needs to plan long term for a large system.

 

Fortunately, the federal and state governments have given Brookline a way to finally properly design and implement a responsible, longer-term school budget.  Thanks to organizing efforts in which unionized educators have played a key role, a robust federal stimulus package will make a major difference while serving as a bridge to the committed, additional long-term funding coming from the state. The Massachusetts Student Opportunity Act  will be bringing millions of additional dollars into our schools annually.  Major new funding will also likely be coming from a tax on income over one million dollars.  We hope our partners on the School Committee and others in the community will join us in working to ensure the success of the Fair Share tax. These increased short term and long term sources of funding have given us a chance to greatly improve upon our local budgeting approach and implement a new system that truly serves our community over the long run by helping us recruit and retain highly skilled educators.  We have an opportunity with unprecedented federal and state funding to join together to return Brookline Schools to the time when they were the envy of all.

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 Latest Tweets

RSS MTA News

RSS MTA Events