Newton Teachers Rally For New Contract Before Budget Is Passed

NEWTON, MA — Monday night teachers and educators wearing red shirts packed the hallway outside the School Committee room and chanted after marching from Newton North High School to the Education Center. They held hand made signs that read "Your future is in our classrooms," and "Will work for fair pay." One woman held a sign that read "New Mayor! No Money?"

They walked down Walnut Street banging on orange Home Depot buckets, whistles blaring and chanting:

"What do we want?"

"Fair Contracts!"

"When do we want it?"

"Now!"

And then a number of them weighed in during the public comment period at the Newton School Committee meeting this week at the Education Center.

"What we heard from the teachers loud and clear is; while they're not into teaching for the money there's this level of respect in being paid fairly and feeling like money is a little like respect," School Committee Chairperson Ruth Goldman said in a phone interview. "Their ask was that we don't pass the budget without negotiating the contract first."

The School Committee is slated to vote on the budget Monday and have scheduled a presentation to city council on Wednesday. And although the contract doesn't expire until the end of August, Newton doesn't have a great track record of settling contracts before the old ones expire.

While School Committee members don't typically don't respond to public comment in the moment, Goldman said members are preparing to address that ask at the next meeting.

"The School Committee absolutely values our teachers and all our staff," said Goldman. "All of us have or have had kids in the Newton Public Schools... We all knew people in the audience or who were marching, and we have personal relationships with them and value them. And we also know that this is the nature of negotiations."

Last May, with major changes on the school committee and a new mayor, the School Committee and the teachers union signed a 1 year- bridge contract.

That contract extended the terms of old contract which will be in place until the end of August. It bought the new committee and the union a year to negotiate a new contract rather than scramble, said Goldman. Then, negotiation committees started meeting last August and have been meeting regularly since, according to officials.

"We've had a lot of pretty productive meetings," said Goldman, including healthy conversations that will help set the stage for full day kindergarten.

She added, "And we have been moving into a fairly typical contract negotiation, each side has some things they'd like to get done."

In other school districts unions negotiate contracts for teachers and aids at separate times. In Newton, all five units, are being negotiated simultaneously, which could be part of why it's taking so long.

"We are really trying to be respectful," she said declining to go into the details of the contract, because they are held privately.

"But, I think there's some pent-up demand on the union side. It's a time of unions showing their strength in the country. There's always what's going on here and then what's going on with the state union and what's going on across the country and in the economy. All those things also play into the whole thing," she said.

Patch has reached out to union president Mike Zilles.

Take a look at the previous contracts here.