Tewksbury Teachers Union Negotiations Go Public

TEWKSBURY, MA — The Tewksbury Teachers Association shared five bargaining points in its ongoing negotiations with the School Committee Friday after both sides agreed to waive a negotiation ground rule barring public discussion of the negotiations.

Committee Vice-Chair Shannon Demos said at a December meeting that the committee would like to waive the rule after the union "published information concerning our negotiations."

"We respectfully suggest that the audience targeted by this Tewksbury Teachers Association message cannot reach a conclusion as to whether the school committee has presented an equitable offer unless one has seen what is actually in the school committee's offer," Demos said, in reference to a Facebook post by the union.

The union's bargaining team voted in favor of waiving the rule and reached an agreement with Committee Chair Keith Sullivan Friday, union President Conner Bourgoin said.

The committee has not yet shared its version of the sticking points publicly and Sullivan did not respond to a request for comment from Patch. But the committee is due to meet at 4:45 p.m. Wednesday for the first time since the agreement was made. The committee meets in the high school's Large Group Instruction Room #1.

The teachers union has been working under an expired contract since the beginning of the school year. Negotiations are currently before a state mediator, at the request of the School Committee.

Since December, the union has been "working to rule," where teachers "follow official working rules and hours exactly in order to reduce output and efficiency," as the union described the process at the time.

Negotiations in Tewksbury have traditionally been closed, Bourgoin said, but the work-to-rule process is part of the reason to open up the process.

"The community is becoming more and more engaged with this," he said. "Work-to-rule affects students, parents, teachers, everybody. Both sides have come to an agreement that the community should know more."

The union shared a list of five unresolved matters on Facebook:

1. Changes to Professional Learning Communities
   • Currently, elementary school specialists and special education teachers meet with core teachers for structured meetings known as Professional Learning Communities. The union wanted to create separate communities for specialists and special education teachers. This would likely create three new positions for facilitators, Bourgoin said.
   • The committee has proposed eliminating the "team leader" positions in grades 5 to 8 in return.
   • "They're saying if they're going to give these positions, they can't afford the team leaders," Bourgoin said.
2. Special education testers
   • The union wants the district to hire special education testers or pay hourly so that existing special education teachers are not pulled out of class to administer tests.
   • This issue has been tabled since the summer.
3. Elementary school lunch duty
   • The Committee wants to require lunch/recess duty from pre-K to 4 teachers.
   • The union counters that those teachers already have less prep time and common planning time than other teachers. The two sides have been unable to reach a compromise.
   • "It's nervewracking and is going to affect student learning if teachers don't have time," Bourgoin said.
4. Salary bumps for teachers with eight or more years of service
   • The union wants to $1,000, $2,000 and $3,000 salary bumps for 8th-, 9th- and 10th-year teachers in the next two school years.
   • The district has proposed $150, $300 and $450 bumps.
   • "Teacher retention yields better student learning," Bourgoin said. "Tewksbury has a lot of amazing teachers. but Tewksbury has also seen a lot of amazing teachers leave in the last year or two."
5. Salary bumps for extracurricular positions
   • The union is looking to increase the stipends for theater directors and lead teachers at the high school.
   • "The current stipends don't pay for the hours the directors are currently doing," Bourgoin said. "If we don't bump that up, those directors get burnout and they leave these positions within just a few years."
   • Lead teachers are department heads for subjects other than MCAS subjects and history.
   • "The department heads work extremely hard and they are compensated rightfully so," Bourgoin said. "Now we want to make sure that lead teachers begin to be compensated rightfully."

More details are available from the union's Facebook page here. The union is also holding a family outreach meeting Tuesday, Jan. 18 at 7 p.m. on Zoom.

The School Committee are meeting at 4:45 p.m. Wednesday. Meetings are broadcast on TewksburyTV.

Christopher Huffaker can be reached at 412-265-8353 or [email protected].