Hundreds of Baltimore city teachers saturated the district's headquarters in yellow Tuesday night in solidarity with their union leaders who say that contract negotiations have failed.
The teachers packed the boardroom and overflow rooms, clad in yellow union T-shirts, for a school board meeting where Marietta English, president of the Baltimore Teachers Union, implored members to send a new team to the negotiating table when talks resume this week. The current contract extension ends Oct. 30.
She suggested the current negotiating team is inexperienced, especially compared to the same union team that has been negotiating for years, and are not bargaining in good-faith. She said that the current team was attempting to "renegotiate things we thought were settled."
"We are incensed by some of the proposals that the school system has presented to us," English said. "We are not being dealt with fairly at the negotiating table. Send a team that will negotiate a fair, equitable contract."
The unusually public spat over union negotiations began last week when the union issued a statement saying the school district wanted to cut $10 million in compensation and benefits.
The school system has declined to make its proposals public, but schools CEO Sonja Santelises addressed the idea of a teacher pay cut in remarks Tuesday.
"We are not seeking a reduction in the current salaries of any teachers in the district, and all teachers will continue to have the opportunity to increase their compensation," Santelises said.
"We have savings targets for every area of the district, across the full spectrum of operations," she added. "Our union contracts are a large component of our overall costs; therefore, we have to look at them with the goal of ensuring the long term financial sustainability of the district."
The last teachers' contract was approved in 2014. It preserved many of the terms of 2010 contract that tied teacher pay to performance and was hailed as a "landmark" deal and the most progressive in the country.
English noted that since 2010, the district has had five superintendents. She said that for many students, teachers and paraprofessionals have been the only stability they've had in the last several years.
"We are here and we will be here," English said.
The contract has bolstered Baltimore teachers' pay to the highest starting salary in the state, and allowed them to make more money faster by climbing a career ladder tied to professional development.
But for years, district officials have hinted that the contract could be putting financial pressure on the system. Gregory Thornton, the former city schools CEO, painted a dire financial budget forecast last year and said the district could not afford the union contract in its current form.
And over the years, both district and union officials have acknowledged that the contract has had a rocky implementation.
English said Tuesday that as of last Friday, teachers still weren't being properly paid because the district couldn't process "achievement units," which are basically credits that teachers are able to earn to climb the pay ladder, under the current contract. The delay in processing the so-called "AUs" has been a source of tension since at least 2011.
"BCPS has failed to resolve these issues," English said, "and these directly affect our members and their salaries."
Santelises said that the district remained committed to investing in teachers, while also investing in students.
"Without reducing our costs across the board, we will not have the resources to provide our students – all of our students – with the full range of academic, physical and emotional supports they need to be successful," she said.
Kimberly Mooney, a teacher at Roland Park Elementary/Middle, said that she was concerned that any compensation loss could drive good teachers away from the district. She said she would like current issues – like the processing of the AUs fixed – improved upon.
"We've had years of promises that this structure was going to stay in place, and then they say they can't afford it," she said."We don't feel there's much to depend on. We want to believe in them, and invest in this process. But it's hard to when we get mixed messages."
Mooney told the board during public comment that she hoped for greater transparency moving forward.
"We don't want to be unreasonable, we don't want to speculate, we all just want to fight for the same goal," she said.
erica.green@baltsun.com
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