Teachers set tentative deal to end strike
MINNEAPOLIS — Teachers in Minneapolis have reached a tentative agreement to end a more than two-week strike over pay and other issues that idled some 29,000 students and about 4,500 educators and staff members in one of Minnesota’s largest school districts.
The union for teachers and support staffers said Friday that it achieved what it sought when its members walked off the job March 8 after they were unable to agree on a contract with district leaders. Ratification votes were expected over the weekend.
Superintendent Ed Graff said he was looking forward to welcoming students and staffs back to school on Monday. However, union leaders said talks on a return-towork agreement were still underway as of Friday.
“These historic agreements contain important wins for our students and the safe and stable schools they deserve,” the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers and Education Support Professionals said in a statement, adding that “major gains were made on pay for Education Support Professionals, protections for educators of color, class size caps and mental health supports” for students.
At a news conference and rally outside district headquarters, union leaders said they would get details out to their members. They said the gains included higher starting wages for the lowest-paid workers and exemptions for teachers of color from seniority-based layoffs that they said could serve as a national model.
“The collective action of our members has shown that strikes work,” said Shaun Laden, head of the union’s education support professionals unit. “We know that we needed fundamental change in the Minneapolis Public Schools, and that was a big part of what this is about.”
Greta Callahan, who leads the union’s teachers unit, said gains on the critical issue of mental health support for students included a doubling of nurses and counselors in elementary schools, as well as a social worker in every building. But Callahan acknowledged that educators got less than what they had sought.
Laden also acknowledged that some of the gains could be temporary because they depend on one-time federal coronavirus relief money.
Graff declined to give details about the contract at an earlier news conference, but he said he believes it’s fair to teachers and staffs.
The Minneapolis walkout, the city’s first by teachers since 1970, sent families fretting about lost academic progress and scrambling to arrange child care. Churches, Boys and Girls Clubs, YMCAs and park buildings opened their doors to provide students with safe places to hang out and get meals. High schoolers staged a series of solidarity actions to support the teachers, including an all-night sit-in at district headquarters.
“I’m relieved to know that the union received an offer to be able to continue to provide schools that are good and safe,” said Erin Zielinski, mother to a first grader at Armatage Elementary School in south Minneapolis.
Minneapolis Public Schools administrators and School Board members insisted throughout the talks that they didn’t have enough money to meet teachers’ demands, especially for large permanent salary increases. Graff told reporters Friday that the two new contracts with the teachers and support staffs “are going to require us to take a look at our budgets and make some adjustments going forward.”
“We walked out united to change the trajectory of MPS [Minneapolis Public Schools] and ensure that educators have a greater say in how we do our work,” the union said. “This too has been achieved and will have impacts that improve our district for years to come.”