On January 17, the School Committee and Newton Teachers Association (NTA) continued their negotiations, from 8:30AM until about 9:30PM. The core of the NTA negotiating team stayed in the negotiations and did not attend the NTA’s afternoon rally at City Hall. After the day of negotiations, the two sides presented somewhat different views of progress.
The NTA held its usual 7:30PM press conference, and for the first time, the School Committee and Mayor did not hold a press conference following the NTA conference. Mayor Ruthanne Fuller issued a statement saying that negotiations were continuing and she may send another email later in the night.
At 10:30PM, the School Committee emailed the following message to the Newton Public Schools community:
The School Committee negotiating team was at the Education Center today negotiating with the NTA from 8:30 a.m. to approximately 9:30 p.m. We have shared revised proposals responsive to NTA requests. Discussions were productive with multiple exchanges of proposals and revisions based upon feedback. Negotiations will begin again on Sunday at 8:30 a.m.
The School Committee is doing everything possible to settle the contract and return kids to school on Monday. We hope for a very productive day of negotiations tomorrow.
The NTA continues to assert that the major issue in these negotiations is the amount of funding available to allocate to the schools. The NTA says that more funding is available from Free Cash – the surplus funds at the end of each fiscal year resulting from what the NTA describes as overly conservative budget projections.
At the NTA’s press conference, NTA spokesperson Ryan Normandin said:
- “Today, …the NTA and the School Committee agreed on a framework for a family-leave policy. All they had to do was sign the piece of paper, but they didn’t. Instead, they tied their acceptance of this policy – a commonsense, moral imperative that is in line with what other districts have – to [cost] increases in their health insurance proposal.”
- “The current [budget] allocation is not enough to settle this contract. So why don’t they get more? Because [School Committee Chair] Chris Brezski and the School Committee are not working for the people who elected them. …They are working for Mayor Fuller.”
- “I would love nothing more than to stand up here next to Chris Brezski and hold hands, make a joint statement reaffirming what City Councilor and Finance Committee member Bill Humphrey said today, which is that ‘the city does have money, and they need to use it to give our students and our educators what they need.’”
- “We had several face-to-face meetings today. …We made some substantive progress on parental leave, but [the School Committee] tied it to cost increases in health insurance. …It feels like they’re focused on bean counting.”
At the NTA press conference, NTA President Mike Zilles said:
- “We won an important victory yesterday with the judge who imposed fines, because what that judge realized was the fines – that were supposed to bring us back into the schools faster – had actually enabled the School Committee and the Mayor to basically sandbag us the entire week. …They were counting on the fines to break our strike. …He pretty much reprimanded the School Committee for not bargaining in good faith. We had hopes that they would stop that game of trying to ‘bargain to impasse’ with us. We thought, ‘Well maybe now they’ll bargain with us. …But they still seem bound and determined to operate within the fiscal constraints given to them by the Mayor. …They don’t even look at the educational value of what we put on the table.”
- “We’re scheduled to stay here as long as it takes. …Frankly, we go into the room, we present a proposal to them that is different than the last one, compromise, giving in a little bit, trying to find a way to agree with them, and they just keep saying ‘No.’”
- ‘We’ve come to an agreement about what parental leave should look like. …We are in agreement on the language. We’re not quite in agreement about when it should be implemented. But the problem is that they want us to pay for it …through give-backs on health insurance [for which] the dollar value of those give-backs is more to them than the cost of the parental-leave policy. So we’re paying for it, and then some.”
- [Asked to name a specific hurdle in negotiations,] “We have a proposal that there should be a floating BT [Behavioral Therapist] for every 10 BTs that you have – one floater full time that can step in. If you have a floating BT, there will always be someone to step in that knows the student and has the skill set. [The School Committee] said no and told us how much the program will cost with the proposal without any explanation.”
- “I expect we’ll go home later in the evening, deadlocked like we are now. And I don’t know if there will be a breakthrough tomorrow.”
Amy Sangiolo contributed reporting for this article.
