Newton Educators Launch Strike Amidst Contract Negotiations; Normandin, Active in Negotiations, Describes the Issues
On January 18th at 5:00 pm, the Newton Teachers Association (NTA) announced that they would be going on strike. The vote passed with 98% of union members in favor.
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Ryan Normandin, a math and physics teacher at Newton South and member of the NTA negotiations committee, offered his perspective on the contract negotiations and provided context to the state of disagreement that the NTA and Newton School Committee (NSC) are currently in.
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According to Normandin, negotiations commenced in October of 2022 and have since endured numerous challenges, including a declaration of impasse by the NSC in the summer of 2023:
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“The School Committee just declared that we were at impasse. Despite having reached new tentative agreements that very session, despite having a new proposal from the NTA that day, they still claimed we were at impasse.”
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The NTA’s prioritized points of contention in these negotiations as highlighted by Normandin revolve around the “time and learning agreement” (school-day schedules, prep periods, work duties, etc.), parental leave policy, mental health support for students (including a social worker in every building), living wages for Unit C professionals, and the “cost of living adjustment” (COLA). Possibly the most publicly debated point of contention, the COLAs, pertain to the annual increase in teacher salaries to account for inflation.
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In a June 2023 message, the School Committee wrote, “The School Committee believes it is important for the Newton community to know that NPS pays its employees well. Our teacher salaries…are in the top third when compared to other nearby and comparable public school districts.”
In 2011, Newton ranked eighth of 329 Massachusetts school districts in average teacher pay.
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According to data provided by the Massachusetts Department of Education, from 2011-2021, average Newton educator salaries increased by 7.5%. Meanwhile, comparable districts such as Brookline, Needham, Lexington, and Wellesley all saw wage increases between 25.6% and 28.8%. Aggregate inflation was 19% from January 2011 to January 2021.
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“There are districts that pay much better, for sure,” says Normandin. “It wouldn’t surprise me if, by the end of the year, there are some vacancies at Newton South High School and other schools across the district.”
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Yet even so, Newton educators are not getting the salaries that they’re asking for. Normandin offered his perspective on why that is: “[Mayor Ruthane Fuller] is very invested in maintaining Newton’s AAA bond rating for people who invest in municipal bonds.” Bond ratings are affected by free cash and budget surplus, among other indicators of financial health. “So Fuller has been overestimating expenditures and underestimating revenue every budget cycle. And everyone does this to some degree, but she does it in grotesque amounts.”
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Normandin explains that the state recommendation for free cash hovers around 12 million dollars. “[Fuller’s] goes up to 30 million [dollars] all the time,” says Normandin. “And she just rolls this money over, and it turns into her little personal piggy bank, where anytime she wants to come out and be the hero, she’s like, ‘Look, I found some money. Now I can fund your project.’”
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This past year, Newton schools saw an $8 million deficit despite a $40 million city budget surplus. Even with some of this surplus being allocated to public schools, it was not enough to fully cover this deficit.
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In 2023, city council rejected the mayor’s plan for surplus funds. “The effect legally of them rejecting her budget is that the budget goes into effect anyway,” says Normandin. “So Mayor Fuller really has unilateral power over the budget.”
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Denebola reached out to Mayor Fuller and a member of the NSC to hear their perspective on teacher salaries and budget management but received no response.
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Beyond the disagreements on salaries, the NTA has found the NSC’s approach to the negotiations to be uncooperative.
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On June 1st, 2023, the NSC created a set of Memoranda of Agreement, combining their suggestions for COLAs and other contract aspects into one package. They then began offering these package proposals to the NTA.
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“But to tie COLAs that we don’t like to other things we don’t like and say ‘take all of it or leave it’ is not a way to negotiate,” says Normandin.
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Once again, the School Committee and mayor did not offer a comment regarding the package negotiation approach. Normandin speculates that “it’s easier for them to track the costs when they do it all as a package.”
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To Normandin and the rest of the NTA negotiations committee, the very nature of the negotiations feels ineffective and disrespectful.
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“The mediator basically is just shuttle diplomacy. We sit in one room, [the School Committee] sit[s] in the other room, [and the mediator] shuttles our messages back and forth to each other. The School Committee, up until the very last session, has refused to allow us to go into their room to present our proposals. They have refused to come into our room to present their proposals. The School Committee, I believe, in response to that request, said, ‘Why would we do that? What’s in it for us?’”
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Ultimately, these negotiations start to take a toll on educators across the city.
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“The School Committee has always let our contract expire,” says Normandin. “And then we come back and we don’t have a contract. And this is really disheartening to teachers because it makes it feel like we are not valued by the city or by the elected officials. Second, it makes it hard because we’re not receiving that cost of living adjustment that we need right now…The morale goes down as a result of these things.
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“We want to do our jobs,” says Normandin. “We want to teach, we want to work with kids, and it becomes harder and harder to do that – and to do that well – when there’s this constant distraction that is requiring your time and effort and emotional energy.”
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With little progress made on the contract negotiations that have gone on for over a year and decreasing faith held by Newton educators, the NTA decided that a strike was the best approach to push for their desired contract. In his speech on Thursday announcing the commencement of the strike, NTA president Mike Zilles stated, “[union] members didn’t want to be out [striking], but they felt so disrespected, so abandoned, so left alone by the political leaders in this city, that they knew that they had no choice but to go out on strike.”
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Picket lines crowds at places like Newton Centre, the Education Center, and City Hall have been estimated to exceed 2,000 people, including most of the NTA’s membership and other supporters from the community. Speeches and chants have demanded that the mayor and School Committee listen to the needs of the teachers.
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Organized work stoppages by municipal unions are illegal in Massachusetts. Today, the strike enters its fourth day and the NTA is accumulating fines with each successive day of striking. A Superior Court ruling determined that each day on strike will result in a fine doubled from the previous day, starting at $25,000 this past Monday and reaching a maximum fine of $200,000 per day if the strike continues into Thursday or beyond. This is an unusually large fine compared to similar events; a recent four-day teacher strike in Haverhill saw a $110,000 total fine, significantly less than the $375,000 fine the NTA would receive in a potential four-day strike.
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The School Committee and Teachers Association both say they hope to reach an agreement on the contract soon, although many are doubtful.
“I’m not saying this hyperbolically, I do not believe that Mayor Fuller values the Newton Public Schools,” says Normandin. To many in the NTA, these negotiations have made that clear.
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This is a developing story; Denebola will provide updates as new information becomes available.