Still No Contract. Amherst/Pelham Educators Rally Again 

Bargaining Takes A Hopeful Turn

Roughly 200 Amherst/Pelham Educators and their allies rallied in front of the schools’ district offices at the Amherst Regional Middle School on Tuesday afternoon (4/11) to protest the absence of progress in their negotiations for a fair contract. The educators have been working for 15 months without a contract. The educators were joined by allies from other area unions, retired teachers from the MTA Wisdom Warriors, parents, and students. The rally, the second in recent weeks to be held just prior to the beginning of a bargaining session, was one of several public demonstrations since bargaining stalled (see here, here, here, and here). Those assembled alternated between enthusiastically shouting “pro contract” chants and hearing brief speeches from several local educators. 

Wide Gap Persists Between Union Demands And School Committee Offers
The union and the school committee have been at an impasse since the school committee broke off direct negotiations last June and imposed mediation.

The Amherst Pelham Education Association (APEA), the union representing, teachers, paraeducators, and clerical staff in the Amherst and Pelham schools, is seeking a 3.25% increase to teacher and clerical staff salaries this year, followed by 4% and 5% increases for the next two years. They have asked for a 6% raise for paraeducators to compensate them for their “challenging and necessary work”.  Paraeducators are currently paid at a starting rate of $17.11/hour. Even the requested increases would not keep pace with inflation, they explain; the increase in the cost of living in 2022 was over 7 percent, but last year, teachers and staff received a meager 0.6 percent increase and in 2020, they received a 1.5 percent raise.

The union points out that among the ways that salary increases are not keeping pace with escalating costs is in the area of health insurance, the burden of which increasingly falls on school employees. In 2022–’23, the increase in health insurance costs was 3.8%, and in 2023–’24, the projected increase in health insurance is 7.94%.  According to the APEA, “The union estimates that all of the requested COLA [Cost of Living Allowance] increases would not exceed $1.2 million in the budget” and that there is “$8 million in unencumbered [town funds] that could be used.” 

Amherst School Committee Chair Allison McDonald has said that the School Committee has made four proposals for a COLA increase in response to the union’s original request  of an annual 9% increase. The first proposal, in March of 2022, was for 2% each year for three years. The second, in June, was 2.5% for one year followed by 2% for the next two. The third, in November, was 2.5% for two years followed by 2% in the third year. The School Committee’s latest offer at the end of March 2023 was for 2.75% per year for three years.

However, educators said this does not fairly compensate them for their work. They noted that they have steadily lost ground in their capacity to support themselves over the last six years. In 2021, teachers willingly took a mere 0.6% COLA — a concession to allow paras to gain a $1/hr increase. (Meanwhile, the district gave back $700,000 of unspent funds to the municipalities that year.) In 2020, educators received a 1.5% COLA. In 2019, they received a 2% COLA. In 2018, most educators received only a $300 increase. In 2017, they received a 1.5% COLA. And in 2016, they received a 1% COLA. 

APEA held an in-person membership meeting on March 29 to take a straw poll on the most recent offer from the School Committee. The membership voted overwhelmingly to reject the offer of 2.75% cost-of-living pay increase over the course of three years, and to continue to negotiate. They gave the bargaining team a mandate to continue negotiations in the hope that a resolution would be reached on April 11.

The APEA bargaining team has acknowledged some of the recent gains in the bargaining process. , such as for example, the School Committee dropping its proposal to add two more working days to the calendar, and agreeing to some differential pay for certain specialized roles. But they were not as sanguine as school Ccommittee Chair Allison McDonald, who had described the progress as “significant”. McDonald said that in addition to the 2.75% cost-of-living offer, the committee has added multiple increases for paraeducators, including an additional 3.5% increase for those at the top of the pay scale, and a significant reclassification of clerical staff,  that offers with an additional 5% to 10% increase for the lowest paid clerical staff. McDonald said the offer is higher than some contracts in the state recently settled for the same timespan, including South Hadley, Belmont, Duxbury, Rockland, Sudbury, and Swansea, and is “in the same ballpark” as several others, including Northampton. “The fact is that our districts already offer compensation packages that are among the strongest in our area, and that will remain competitive under our proposal,” McDonald said.

The union responded, on March 26, to McDonald’s enthusiasm with a statement from its executive committee on March 26, labeling the latest offer “disrespectful” and condemning the School Committee for its failure to make a serious effort to resolve the dispute after 15 months. The end-of-March statements of the School Committee and the union can be viewed here.

“The APEA feels the bargaining is moving in a positive direction. Unit A COLA was not discussed at all, but progress was made on Unit B (clerical) and Unit C (paraeducator) contracts. The APEA looks forward to more negotiation on April 26.”

Claire Cocco, APEA Communications Chair

Latest Bargaining Session Hopeful
Following the bargaining session on April 11, Claire Cocco, Communications Chair for the APEA said, “The APEA feels the bargaining is moving in a positive direction. Unit A COLA was not discussed at all, but progress was made on Unit B (clerical) and Unit C (paraeducator) contracts. The APEA looks forward to more negotiation on April 26. The APEA observes that while the district is cutting teachers and paraeducators, the district today (4/12) posted for a newly created administrative position (transportation director).”

Read More: Schools Reach Tentative Deal With Administrators Union In Amherst, Pelham. (Daily Hampshire Gazette)

Educators’ Frustration Shared At Rally
Liz Elder, a teacher at Wildwood Elementary School, underscored that in a community that claims to value education, educators and the work that they do is not respected. She stressed how hard it is to do the work under current conditions.

“This job gets harder and harder every year. This community [of educators] ‘is’ the school district. We’re the glue. We hold it together year after year. During COVID there was a lot of talk of how we’re not going to rush things anymore, and we’re going to leave time for creativity, and we’re going to get back to…giving kids what they need and take the time to figure out what that is, and do things that bring us joy. And now …it feels like a grind. It’s more, more, more! We want you to do more with less — with fewer paras, less money, fewer supplies, dirtier rooms. We are not doing what we really want to be doing with kids …and this has been going on for years, this work creep, since I negotiated my first contract back in the early 2000s. And I said to a colleague today, I’m exhausted and I don’t know how much longer I can do this. 

“But who wants to work in a school that doesn’t pay you a living wage? This is about the people who are making the least, doing the most — we don’t even know half the things that they’re doing. They’re trained to keep our students with the highest needs safe. They support students who aren’t even on their caseloads.”

Molly Cooksey, Fort River/Caminantes kindergarten teacher speaking in support of paraeducators.

Molly Cooksey, a former paraeducator and a current kindergarten teacher in the Caminantes dual language program at Fort River, emphasized the invaluable work done by Amherst’s paraeducators and the need to support them. She said, “We really need to refocus our energy as a community on our paras and their dignity. My para is bilingual and an extremely talented educator, and she gets pulled all over the school to cover [classes] any time one of our Spanish-speaking teachers is out. And she does it willingly and with grace. But who wants to work in a school that doesn’t pay you a living wage? This is about the people who are making the least, doing the most — we don’t even know half the things that they’re doing. They’re trained to keep our students with the highest needs safe. They support students who aren’t even on their caseloads. They don’t have to, but they do it because they love the kids. They show up early. They bring in snacks and host out-of-school events. Nobody asks them to do this, but they do it anyway.” To the paraeducators in the crowd, she said, “We see you. You are at the center of our fight.”

“Across the river, people in Northampton organized to get support for a slate of people running for school committee, to change the way schools operate there. We can do that here. We might win this fight [for a fair contract] but we need to be organized in the fall for election season because in order to be sustainable we need people on the School Committee who really value education and value educators.”

Mick O’Connor, Amherst Regional Middle School teacher

Mick O’Connor, a teacher at Amherst Regional Middle School, reminded those assembled of the power of organizing, and encouraged them to take the struggle to the ballot box and the November town elections. He said, “You have found that when other educators’ unions across Massachusetts have come together and organized, and have been persistent, that they’ve had some significant wins. This tells us that we need to keep fighting. And this [gathering here today] is what fighting looks like. And it also looks like lawn signs. And it also looks like reaching out to other members of the community, sharing your thoughts with the Town Council, and the Town Manager, and the School Committee.” He urged the crowd on, saying, “This is how winning happens. You being here signifies that you are committed. But we need to up our commitment if we are going to be successful. Tell other people who care why you show up, and that they need to show up, too… One of our mandates as educators in this commonwealth is to teach students how to be socially active, how to fight for social justice. Not only are we here today fighting for ourselves but we are showing a valuable part of our curriculum in action.”

“Across the river, people in Northampton organized to get support for a slate of people running for school committee,” he continued, “to change the way schools operate there. We can do that here. We might win this fight [for a fair contract] but we need to be organized in the fall for election season because in order to be sustainable we need people on the School Committee who really value education and value educators.”