We hope everyone had a wonderful first week of school, and a wonderful first day for our BPS kindergarten educators and families who started yesterday! It was great to see so many of you at the BTU for professional development as well as in our schools we visited this past week. New educators can check out our Orientation Videofrom last year to learn more about who’s who at the BTU!
Tomorrow is the big day – a vote to ratify our new contract which happens only every few years, and we hope to see you there! The vote is in-person at the BTU Hall. We will begin our membership meeting at 4:30 p.m., recess at 5 p.m. to begin our ratification meeting, and then resume our regular business after. You must be present in-person to vote. Our membership meetings are on the second Wednesday of every month unless there is a holiday.
You can read the full tentative agreement, plain language summary and FAQ in advance of the meeting. The provisions in this TA, including the 9.5% cumulative wage increase, parental leave and other tentative wins will not be implemented unless ratified and voted on by both our membership and school committee. It will then go on to our City Council to approve the funds needed to implement it.
Don’t forget, our annual Back to School Fair is coming up on Saturday, Sept. 24.Please share the flyer with your students! It is available in 7 languages. We will be giving away 40,000 free books, and we’ll also have resource tables, music, food and fun. If you haven’t already done so, please sign up for FirstBook so that we can continue to partner with FirstBook and the AFT to host our fair each year!
Join us October 21 – 23 for the annual BTU Leadership Conference at the Seacrest Beach Hotel! Our goal is to have at least one BTU Building Rep from each school or unit attend. We also welcome any BTU member in a BTU leadership role or from an active BTU committee to join us for this exciting, informative and enjoyable conference. Register now!
While the first few days overall seemed to go well, we know there are still transportation issues and questions. In addition to the parking lots shared in our previous bulletin, please remember also that during the rest of the Orange Line shut down, the MBTA and commuter rails are free with a Charlie Card from your school. Blue Bikes are also free for the first 40 minutes. If you have questions or concerns, please reach out to our office so that we are aware of the issue.
We will also share an update at the membership about a new transportation benefit for our members and will share more at our membership and ratification meeting tomorrow. Again, we hope to see you there!