In the past week, both the Newton Teachers Association (NTA) and the School Committee have released public statements regarding the status of negotiations for a new contract to replace the existing one, which expires on August 31. The School Committee has stated the two sides are at an impasse, and it intends to file a request with the state for mediation to facilitate a resolution. The NTA has stated that it believes further bilateral negotiations are feasible, accusing the School Committee of attempting to impose its most recent offer via mediation.
While several aspects of educators’ working conditions are addressed in their collectively bargained contract, including health and retirement benefits and the school calendar, the core issue of salary appears to be a primary stumbling block based on the recent statements by the School Committee and NTA. The precise gap between the two sides is not publicly known. Salary increases for teachers, paraprofessionals, and non-educator positions such as custodians, are divided into:
- Step increases (which give salary raises per year of tenure, up to maximum of 15 years of experience) and
- Cost-of-living-adjustments (COLAs), which all covered employees receive.
Therefore, more experienced teachers may be more sensitive to COLA provisions in the contract. One would need to know the tenure distribution of all NPS employees in order to calculate the total cost of any given combination of step and COLA increases.
The most recent quantitative public information provided by the School Committee on June 12th states that the School Committee offered to the NTA total step + COLA annual increases of between 5%-8% for the next three years depending on the type and tenure of educator, without specifying each component of that total. The NTA has published information (not confirmed by the School Committee) stating that the COLA portion of the School Committee’s offer was between 1-2% per year. The NTA has not published its request regarding step increases, but it has highlighted the gap between its desired COLA of 3.8 – 6.0% per year and the School Committee’s COLA proposal.
What do all these percentages mean in real dollars for the district? It is difficult to say with certainty. The 201-page FY 2024 NPS $268.6 million budget, approved in April 2023, does not contain the tenure distribution referenced above to calculate the total cost of various proposals, nor does it contain what the district assumed for per-employee salary percentage increases from the prior year. After much analysis, a reader could extrapolate total percentage increases across all FTEs for a given function, but still not broken out by tenure. The School Committee negotiators receive both public and non-public input from the Mayor’s office and the Superintendent’s office that inform their offers to the NTA. Regardless of the percentage salary increases ultimately agreed to and voted on by the School Committee, the actual cost impact on the NPS budget is not known until well into the academic year, since the district’s costs will depend on actual staffing levels during the year. The NPS website currently lists 117 job openings.
Nominally, the School Committee should be able to offer only salary increases that are estimated to be feasible within the approved FY 2024 NPS budget allocation. The City’s Chief Financial Officer Maureen Lemiuex confirmed to Fig City News via the City’s communication officer that all cities in Massachusetts “can only commit funds that have been appropriated.” However, the School Committee is tasked with agreeing to an NTA contract that covers the next three years through FY 2026 (which happens to coincide with the last year of Mayor Fuller’s current term). While the School Committee has received public guidance from the Mayor that NPS should expect total budget increases no more than approximately 3.5% annually through that period, absent an override, the actual City allocations to NPS for FY 2025 (voted on by School Committee and City Council in Spring 2024) and FY 2026 (voted in Spring 2025) are yet to be determined.
Layered into this multi-year uncertainty, the School Committee must grapple with cash fluctuations within fiscal years due to exact staffing levels, variable expenses such as the volume of actual employee health insurance claims, maintenance and transportation expenses, and even unanticipated revenues such as the recent ARPA funding or state supplements.
Since by law the district cannot run a deficit across fiscal years, if NPS begins to run a deficit during the year for any reason (staffing expense or other), it must cut costs. If during the budgeting process for the following fiscal year the district is forecasting a deficit, it will prepare for cuts, as happened this past spring. Based on the statistics on page 38 of the NPS budget, the approved FY 2024 allocation assumed a 2.0% total increase, from $188.2 million to $190.0 million, for base salaries across all employees from FY 2023. This implies (although one cannot say for certain) that even the School Committee’s latest published offer on June 12 of between 5-8% salary increase could cause a deficit.
It remains to be seen if either the School Committee or the NTA will clearly delineate for the public the assumptions they are using to inform their respective negotiating positions. In the meantime, NPS families hope for resolution.
