Teachers, school board reach agreement
Three-year contract still needs approval by three-member arbitration panel
HARTFORD – The Hartford Federation of Teachers and district leaders have reached an agreement on a new, three-year labor contract, though details of the deal are being kept secret for now.
The contract will go before a three-member arbitration panel for approval. The board is expected to sign off on the agreement, and it will not be subject to a vote by the city council.
“Right now, we’re all talking the same language,” Andrea Johnson, president of HFT, said of the situation Tuesday. “This union is getting a decent deal. … You can’t please everybody and you can’t have everything, but it can get better than it was and that’s where we feel we are.”
She declined to discuss specifics until the agreement is ap-
proved by the arbitration panel.
Union officials said last week that they were dismayed by a list of demands from school board members, including a reduction in sick days from 20 to 15, two years of pay freezes followed by a 1 percent pay increase in the third year, and a switch from a preferred provider medical plan to a health savings account. Teachers hired over the last few years have been required to sign up for health savings accounts, Johnson has said, but the new proposal would have forced all union employees to move to that plan.
The board was also seeking a substantial change in union rules, recommending that layoffs be determined by evaluation rather than seniority.
In addition, it suggested eliminating a higher tier of pay for workers who have earned a master’s degree plus 60 additional credits, and reducing the number of union officers who are de- tached, with pay, from day-to-day district work, from three to one.
Though Johnson would not say what the final terms were, she noted that board members had backed away from pursuing two years of pay freezes.
“At this point in time, it’s different,” she said. “It started off horrific, horrible. That’s moved on and we’re in a different time and a different place right now.”
A spokesman for Superintendent Leslie Torres-Rodriguez confirmed that a deal had been reached, but declined further comment.
“We are in the final stages of developing a joint agreement, which will be submitted to the arbitration panel ... to be rendered as an arbitration award,” spokesman John Fergus said in a statement.
It was unclear when the arbitration panel was expected to review the deal.
Teachers who had planned to protest at a board of education meeting Tuesday instead lined up to speak during a public comment session, telling board members that without pay increases, some may be unable to continue working in the district.
“We are proud to be teachers,” said Amy Couch, a sixth-grade educator at Mary Hooker Magnet School. “The contract changes you are proposing don’t make me proud. They scare me. I am scared that we won’t be able to take care of ourselves, our families, our students.
“What will happen to all those students we care about and treat like our own children if we need to leave because we can’t afford to stay?”
Marcella Wnuk, a first-grade teacher at María C. Colón Sánchez Elementary, demanded that board members “do better.”
“We say ‘no’ to three more years of a salary freeze when comparably educated professionals in other industries make anywhere from 17 to 30 percent more than Hartford Public School teachers,” she said during the hearing at Bulkeley High School. “We say ‘no’ to flat wages as administrators and other department heads continue to see increases in their salaries.”
Educators routinely go above and beyond for students, said Carol Gale, a social studies teacher at Global Communications Academy. The concessions proposed by district leaders threaten teachers’ ability to keep that up, she said.
“I brought cookies into school today as a reward for my students. The school doesn’t give me money to do that. That’s what teachers do, we do what’s caring and compassionate," she said. “If that means cutting into our pockets, we’re willing to do that — up to a point that we can afford it. Many teachers are finding they can’t afford it and have to take second jobs.”
For Tiffany Moyer-Washington, an eighth-grade English teacher at Hartford Magnet Trinity College Academy, the givebacks suggested by school officials made her feel unappreciated.
“It seems like there isn’t much focus on how much people sacrifice to become teachers,” she said Tuesday. “In the end, I want to feel valued. We need to feel like we were listened to and we were respected.”