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I joined more of my former teachers on the picket lines this morning, and some of them commented that things inside the schools have been in a long, steady slide since the failure of the 2008 override referendum and subsequent round of budget cuts. For example, this year a sticking point has been on the issue of teacher absences (usually for serious family or medical emergencies) and lack of substitute coverage, but high school substitutes were significantly cut back to almost nothing after that 2008 referendum. I remember because I was a senior in high school when that changed.
The Newton Teachers Association members feel passionately that they are doing what they are doing right now for the sake of the schoolchildren and their wellbeing in the face of diktats and demands from people who aren’t in the classrooms and don’t seem to grasp the reality of the level of emergency conditions in each school building daily since they reopened in the pandemic.
Today, a judge imposed absurd, if somewhat predictable, escalating court fines on the union if they persist in their strike. The fines began today at $25,000 and will double with every day’s renewal of fines going forward, quickly putting each day’s new fine well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The NTA members were aware of this likely outcome when they voted 98% in favor of going on strike anyway, which should tell you something. If you are interested in donating to support the NTA strike fund to help pay their fines, that link is here.
Is NPS bargaining in good faith even now?
I’ll quote here from Ryan Normandin, a math and physics teacher on the bargaining team for the NTA:
“For sixteen months, we have asked to support our students with a social worker in every building. Superintendent Anna Nolin has said in her entry plan that she wants the same. SO WHY WON’T THEY DO IT?
For sixteen months, we have asked for a living wage for our Unit C professionals. Paying new hires less than thirty thousand dollars a year is an insult to the vital work they do supporting our students. Everyone knows that they need to be compensated. SO WHY WON’T THEY DO IT?
For sixteen months, we have asked them for humane, modern parental leave. We believe that new parents should have 60 days to spend with the newest members of their family. But the School Committee has refused even to remove language from their proposal that only gives parental leave to primary parents. Not only is this language out of the dark ages, it is illegal in Massachusetts. Everyone knows this language needs to be removed. So I ask again: WHY WON’T THEY DO IT?
For sixteen months, we have asked the school committee to adequately staff our schools, our classrooms, so that our students are safe: physically, emotionally, and mentally.
Imagine – though many of you don’t need to – having to sit across from a family with a student who you know needs services, and knowing that they are not getting those services because there aren’t enough behavioral therapists, and the district isn’t willing to put down the money. We have students on IEP’s for whom we are not providing legally obligated services, which means the district is out of compliance, and they can be sued!”
Mayor Fuller’s claims on strike law don’t hold up to historical scrutiny
In the latest email from Mayor Fuller sent to the community on Monday night, she made the following claim: “There is a reason that teachers strikes are illegal in Massachusetts. Being out of school really hurts children. Schools provide routine and consistency for students. Kids learn in school, have fun with friends. Students receive needed support from trusted and outstanding educators and staff.”
In reality, this is a completely made-up claim, even without addressing how damaging it is for the kids to be in an underfunded school system with poverty-wage aides for years at a time.
The reason teacher strikes are against the law in Massachusetts is that a blanket ban of all public employee strikes was passed in 1919 when the Boston Police union attempted to go on strike. The law was enacted at the height of the First Red Scare, when the United States was cracking down on communism, socialism, anarchism, and trade-unionism a couple years after the Bolshevik October Revolution in the former Russian Empire. Virtually every contemporary newspaper article or politician speech on the 1919 strike, this law, and then-recent constitutional reform debate transcripts in Massachusetts (1917-18) mention the Bolsheviks explicitly.
I’m not really sure how a backwards law like that is relevant today, but it definitely has nothing to do with the claim made in that email.
To be extra clear: There is no mention of teachers or educators or schools in the General Laws Part I Title XXI Chapter 150E. It refers to all “public employees” and also specifically to police at one point.
This law exists to put the thumb on the scale in favor of public employer management to give them a leg up in bargaining. It does not have anything to do with the wellbeing of children. I suspect schoolchildren in 1919 would be shocked by the more widely benevolent attitudes on child wellbeing today, considering only three years earlier the first federal child labor law was passed, but no one had them in mind when writing this public employee strikes law…
Anyway I guess this is why my NPS teachers taught us not to believe everything you read on the internet and to apply critical thinking to statements from authority figures. Perhaps our Advanced Placement class students can use these citywide blast emails for Document Based Question reading practice, analyzing the statements of opinion for bias and lack of sourcing.
See you tomorrow morning.