Burlington teachers still have not signed an employment contract almost three months after the conclusion of a strike that shut down city schools.
Among the issues not yet resolved, and contributing to the delay, is whether teachers should be paid for the four days they were on strike in September. Teachers asked to be paid but the school board declined.
“We pay people for working or sick days or vacation days, not for just not showing up,” said Mark Porter, chair of the school board.
The strike left approximately 400 teachers off the job and 3,600 students out of school.
It ended September 20 when teachers and the school board signed off on a tentative two-year contract. The terms called for a wage increase of 2.5 percent in the first year and 2.75 percent in the second. The contract would be retroactive to September 1.
Contracts are typically finalized and signed within four or five weeks of a tentative agreement. This time, there have been delays, acknowledged Fran Brock, a history teacher at Burlington High School and president of the Burlington Education Association.
But she predicted the contract will be signed soon. While the strike pay was a contested issue, it’s not an obstacle at this point, Brock added.
It’s within the board’s right to withhold pay on the strike dates, but in some situations, school boards offer partial compensation, she said. Alternately, the board could pay teachers to work additional days.
So far, the board has not chosen either option.
“It was one of the issues but at this point, though, it’s not an issue that’s slowing things up,” Brock said.
The state teachers’ union, the Vermont-National Education Association, has a strike fund that local unions can tap for partial compensation but Burlington teachers did not use it, Brock said.
Another reason for the delay: The district lawyer and the lawyer for the Burlington teachers’ union were simultaneously drafting contracts for several other teacher unions in Chittenden County, both Brock and Porter said.
The board and union in Burlington also went back and forth over the language guiding some additions to the contract. These included terms for a committee of teachers intended to help the board study and reduce the academic achievement gap between various student groups at Burlington High School.
“There were misunderstandings about things that we thought we had agreed to in the [tentative agreement] that seemed to come out differently in print once we saw the draft,” Brock said. “We’ve had to go back and forth.”
Related Stories
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!
Quid pro quo: Pay the teachers for the four days they were on strike and have the union reimburse any costs submitted by parents, subcontractors and other related parties incurred because of the strike.
The school board will have the final decision as to what costs qualify for reimbursement, including the costs incurred by the board for the administration of those reimbursements.
Of course, it’s possible, the costs of such an unanticipated circumstance might well be in excess of the teacher’s salaries for those four days. But hey, what’s good for goose……
The school board forced the strike with imposition. Mark Porter should reimburse any costs submitted by parents, subcontractors and other related parties incurred because of the strike.
The board clearly doesnt care about Burlington families as the school district is using parent conference time to have the students make up days so they can save money.
Ahh..as expected, the devil created this pre-adolescent playground behavior exhibited by the ‘adults’.
‘He started it’…. No he didn’t – she did it first!’
The only folks ‘forced’ into anything in the current public school governance arena are parents and their children, who have enough to do working through their own behavioral issues. Wouldn’t it be nice if they could simply choose the school that best meets their needs instead of being held hostage to mandated, dysfunctional, bureaucratic finger pointing, …not to mention the cost of the inconvenience.
Jay, you should reconsider your assessment of who the real perpetrators are in this scenario… workers have relegated themselves to lower levels of significance than ever before. Thank god for teachers, who are organized enough to draw the line in the sand. They carry the rest of the work force in their backs. Trumps tax bill will rob us all blind, but youre too busy being hyper-focused on the peasants in your own community who are trying to get a fair shake to notice.
Show some respect for the great work of these human beings. The percentage of your dollar youre providing investing in public education is minutiae compared to the percentage youre handing over to Exxon Mobil.