Following reports on January 24 of meaningful progress being made in the negotiations between the Newton School Committee and Newton Teachers Association (NTA), January 25 brought progress to a standstill, with a significant decline in rapport. The two sides once again held separate press conferences that night.
At 9:37AM on January 25, the NTA issued a press release reviewing the prior day’s activity and proposals from the union’s perspective.
Later that morning, in response to a question from Fig City News, NPS explained why on January 24 NPS had removed a series of statements it had previously posted on its social media accounts. NPS told Fig City News:
Yesterday, the School Committee and administration decided to take them down as they were not achieving the intended goal of distilling the data and proposals into more manageable pieces of information. We know the community is accessing a lot of information via social media and wanted to share via that channel too instead of just on our website, where all of the information and data was previously posted and from which the post information was derived.
The School Committee sincerely hopes for forward progress on an agreement. The posts were not received as intended and were causing anxiety and upset. So, we took them down and are now sharing links to the data on our website. We are hopeful this is helpful to the community.
Also on January 25, the City Council issued a letter to Mayor Fuller, Members of the School Committee, and the Newton Teachers Association, signed by 23 of the 24 City Councilors. It called for them to reach a fair and sustainable agreement and stated that “concessions by all parties are necessary.” The Councilors requested Mayor Fuller to “provide the School Committee with the additional funds” and the NTA to make “equally meaningful concessions.”
Another notable event during the day occurred when a group of teachers walked into City Hall, up to Mayor Ruthanne Fuller’s office, and attempted to meet with her but were turned away. Both the NTA and Mayor referring to the incident in their evening statements, and it was reported widely on local news outlets.
The strike will continue through January 26, keeping the schools closed, and the union’s lawyer will attend a hearing at the Middlesex Superior Court at noon that day.
Each day of the strike delays the end of the 180-day school year, which may not extend beyond June 30. At that point, any further days of the strike will remove days from the April vacation. Including closure on January 26, the last day of school could now be seen to be in the last week of June, assuming no more snow days this winter.
Newton Teachers Association Press Conference
The NTA addressed reporters at 7:30PM in front of the Education Center, beginning with two NPS educators discussing their experiences as new mothers while employed by NPS (video). The first speaker called what she said was the School Committee’s rejection of the NTA offer on parental leave policy “inhumane” and said “no other country in the world treats parents this way.” The second speaker discussed receiving only 12 weeks of parental leave in 2006.
NTA President Mike Zilles said, “The School Committee refuses to bargain with us. They are playing a game of wait-it-out. …There is nothing in particular that we are fighting over that we couldn’t reach agreement on.”
Zilles said, “What dashed [the hope expressed the day before] was we reached a disagreement about one primary issue in the parental leave policy. That was whether there would be access to the sick-leave bank for members that were newer to the system or for whatever reason did not have enough of their own personal illness days to pay for their entire 60-day leave.”
A parent of two elementary school students asked Zilles, “Why can’t the NTA continue negotiating while our kids are back in school, because …our kids are being used as leverage and pawns?” Zilles said, “I am sorry. I have a lot of empathy for parents who are being put through this. It should not have lasted this long. …We were not negotiating ever with a School Committee that wanted to reach agreement with us.” Another NPS parent responded, “I’m a working mother. …We’re really struggling. I am with the teachers. If you go back to school, there will be no bargaining.”
Zilles said the two sides also discussed the number of hours that Unit C employees (aides and behavior therapists) are paid. “We modified our proposal, made it more economical for them, …and they refused.”
School Committee Press Conference
In the School Committee press conference (video), School Committee Chair Chris Brezski said, “The progress from yesterday continued in the morning. We had small-group discussions …that were productive. Unfortunately, in the afternoon, progress broke down and did not end on a positive note. [The School Committee is] doing everything we can to end this and get our kids back [to school].”
Regarding the issue of paid parental leave, Brezski said, “Yesterday we put a proposal on the table that was going to allow for 60 days of paid parental leave …modeled …on the Massachusetts law which is what the union has put forth as their goal, and so we thought we had a really good, creative proposal, and the feedback we got last night was, ‘We’re getting close on this.’ Today we received a counterproposal that was completely different and not at all based on the progress we had built yesterday. I can’t answer how that happened or …what happened overnight.”
When asked to comment on the NTA saying earlier that the School Committee had refused to negotiate with them, Brezski said, “I honestly don’t know where that comes from. Saying it over and over again doesn’t make it true. …We’ve had some creative solutions to these things that seem like they’re otherwise insolvable, and then we get nothing back. We get the same ‘We’re not moving off our position.'”
Mayor Fuller took the lectern and said she had “complete confidence the Newton School Committee is bargaining in good faith.” In response to a question about the mid-day incident at City Hall, she said, “Our teachers are passionate, they care deeply…what they did today was not role-modeling what I think our adults should be doing here in Newton.”
Later in the evening, the School Committee emailed parents with an update on stalled progress, including a table comparing the current NPS parental leave policy with the going-forward proposals from the School Committee and NTA. This was followed at 11:56PM by the Mayor’s e-newsletter containing a brief statement about the strike.
Bruce Henderson and Amy Sangiolo contributed reporting for this article.
