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This morning I joined the Angier Elementary teachers outside, despite the pouring rain, as I have every morning since last Friday. Their co-workers are doing the same all over the city.
Newton educator strike pickets are going strong over a week into the strike, whether the weather is nearly zero degrees or pouring rain. By virtue of this experience, and sharing their stories with each other every day, this union is now a galvanized force of members who will never be pushed around again.
Some parents (or elected officials) might be hoping that the union members call off the strike and meekly return to work as if nothing ever happened. They wouldn’t be expecting that outcome if they had spoken to these educators at the pickets, standouts, and rallies…or even if they had simply spoken to them with any depth in the past few years before this strike broke out. This strike was the result of going unheard for so long, and now that it is under way, they’re getting even more opportunities to hear from each other about the problems.
The email from Mayor Fuller on the evening of Thursday Jan 25 contained two alarming points in quick succession:
1. “We will not sign a contract with the union that would result in cuts to programs, services or staff in our schools and/or other City departments.”
2. “...the Court will hold a hearing tomorrow [Friday] to address ‘a more meaningful approach to ensuring compliance with the law.’”
Taken together, the implication is that there will be no negotiation by the Mayor and somehow the de jure force of the legal system will erase the de facto force of a mass-membership organization, where around 1,700 individual members voted of their own free will to go on strike.
A union defeat would be a school district defeat
In the unlikely event that the Court is actually able to end the strike involuntarily, such rhetoric remains completely detached from the reality of trying to run a school system. Each passing day is increasing the level of anger from the educators, who were already upset enough with their working conditions and contract to stop work. Newton already had gained such a poor reputation in recent years with potential hires that it was becoming difficult to fill key positions and definitely not quickly.
If the union is “broken” and the strike forced to end, there would be a mass exodus of employees from the Newton Public Schools in such significant numbers in such a short period that they would be difficult if not impossible to replace not only for this school year but also the next school year. Anyone who had the immediate option to leave for greener pastures or was already thinking of retiring would do so. Others would be making plans to get out as quickly as they could. A widespread shortage of young, new educators would make it very difficult to fill posts – and even more so with no willingness to pay extra to fill the vacancies fast.
There is actually a point of compensation (and treatment) below which teachers and aides simply will not work or do the job and will not be replaceable. Announcing that you flatly will not sign a contract at or above that point, even if it meant layoffs or cuts to programming/services, means the end of public schools here in Newton, regardless of what a judge might say.
A court victory over the union – or calling the police on union members, as happened yesterday – would be the most hollow, Pyrrhic victory imaginable.
Granting ourselves 4 years of breathing room to solve the problem
One point I have been making since last August (publicly, but since March in private) is that the CIty’s financial situation is a direct function of the political situation, and those two things cannot be separated. Our public money comes from public confidence, both in the growth rate of property values and in any possibility of tax overrides by referendum.
Earlier this week, the School Committee agreed to negotiate a contract for four years instead of just three, which would have ended in the middle of the next Mayoral election, unhelpfully for both sides. This move is not necessarily a breakthrough, but it is potentially useful for allowing us to reframe this away from the peculiar notion from the management side that anything agreed to now in this contract is a permanent decision from now until the sun goes out.
Imagine that we make a decision to buy ourselves four fiscal/academic years of time to try to address the current crisis. What might we get done in four years and what might be different then, which makes this distinct from just kicking the can down the road?
In four more years, we will have held a Mayoral election and could potentially organize a referendum on a narrower and smaller property tax override, having had ample opportunity for voters to weigh in on the direction of the city and what its most critical services are. This way if we were still under serious fiscal pressure, voters would have more of a chance to weigh in on where the balance should lie, rather than it being a top-down guesswork effort.
In four more years, school enrollment is projected to have dropped quite a bit more, easing significant pressure on long-range staffing needs in the schools.
In four more years, with a temporary surge in funding in the interim, children struggling with learning issues, mental health challenges, or behavioral and emotional development relating to the pandemic should be back on track.
In four more years, we could have a plan in place to make other changes elsewhere in the budget to restructure services more efficiently or more cost-effectively, rather than threatening to scramble a bunch of cuts at random.
A cliff or a surge?
Mayor Fuller has said she is not willing to create a “fiscal cliff” where expenditures are surged for several years and then suddenly cut back when funding runs out. But the crisis in the schools is now and not permanent, and the enrollment levels are peaking now, not later.
It is very possible to envision a scenario where we do not need as much funding in the next contract cycle as we do now.
So, is it possible to buy that breathing room and give the community more of a chance to understand the fiscal picture and prioritize services, while also reducing the level of crisis?
Yes, we have enough funds to create a bridge grant for several years without cutting back on other services or instituting immediate mass layoffs. A smaller bridge grant has already been proposed to boost the allocation for one year, but this one would need to be larger – which accurately reflects the scale and duration of the post-pandemic recovery process for our schoolchildren.
It would be very important for the elected officials and stakeholders to use the intervening years to engage the community more directly on how money should be spent and prioritized in the future, and community members should be organizing with each other to build wider and more durable coalitions that can advocate for funding their priority areas.
The top-down approach is not working and leads directly to this type of showdown and crisis.
Post-script
The other 23 City Councilors signed a new letter without me yesterday. I was not even given it for review this time. It includes a number of points that do not make much sense and again seems to float abstractly in space untethered from evolving events on the ground. I understand that some Councilors think I have put “personal feelings” above the good of the city, but I would simply contend that I’m actually analyzing the practical power dynamics of the situation correctly and not trying to stamp my foot on theoretical principle, unlike some people. This is about power more than it is about political ideas. If anyone in this situation is howling into the wind fruitlessly in support of an idea of how the world should be versus how it actually is, it’s probably not me…
If you are interested in donating to support the NTA strike fund, that link is here.