Family2Family Forum, Membership Meeting TOMORROW, and more

Last week, the BPS negotiating team unilaterally cancelled two long-scheduled negotiating sessions during the month of March and is threatening to cancel a third. This means that since December 9, we have only met twice with BPS to bargain a contract that expired 7 months ago. In three months, we have only been able to meet for two sessions.  Two additional sessions were previously cancelled by BPS. We understand that during this time there have been many transitions, but this is disrespectful to our team and to our membership. For this past week’s silent rep summary, we did some math to make our point. 

The explanation for the last cancellation is that there are four new school committee members that are getting caught up. However, we have dozens of important proposals that our members and our students deserve that can’t wait.  These proposals include a process for a timely response to work orders in our decrepit buildings, decent staffing ratios in our special education inclusion classes, improved leave of absence policies, guaranteed staffing for counselors and social workers, a library in every school, pre-K seats for all 4-year-olds, not to mention a wage increase when inflation is running at its highest level in decades, and many more. We call on the School Committee team to meet with our team weekly and engage fully with our proposals, which have previously been summarily rejected.

Our campaign to fight state receivership will be ramping up this month. We have long known that the state’s accountability is based on flawed metrics, as further validated recently by a Nobel Prize-winning economist at MIT. As AFT-MA President Beth Kontos shared, “What troubles us greatly…is your stated intent to move forward with the school percentile metric—a metric that research shows to be biased and deeply flawed. The disruption to MCAS data caused by the pandemic only exacerbates the problems with this metric.” See the full letter to BESE and a School Yard News article about the MIT study on the topic. You can also read the letter our Director of Organizing, Natalia Cuadra-Saez, wrote to the Boston Globe in response to an editorial on inclusion in Boston’s exam schools. We will share more at our membership meeting on Wednesday, including next steps for the Our City, Our Schools campaign to fight back against state receivership.

In good news: Last week, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), our national affiliate, fulfilled all educator requests on Donor’s Choose! While educators should not have to fundraise for supplies and educational experiences, we are grateful to Randi Weingarten and our national union for fulfilling these requests. 

Please join us in congratulating our very own Marilyn Marion, RTC President, who was recently just elected to also to serve as President of the Alliance of Retired Americans, Massachusetts! Johnny McInnis, our Political Director, was also recently elected to serve on the MA Democratic State Committee. We are proud of their leadership both at the BTU and beyond.

March is Social Work Month, and this week is School Social Worker Week. BTU and Office of Social Work wishes all social workers in Boston Public Schools a happy School Social Worker Week! Thank you for all you do.

The Superintendent Search Committee was named last week. There are nine members, including a student, parent, BTU President Jessica Tang and BTU member and teacher Jose Valenzuela. The first listening session is this Wednesday, beginning at 6:00pm.  You can register for this session, future sessions and see the full timeline on the superintendent search webpage. 

Don’t forget our monthly membership meeting is TOMORROW, Wednesday, March 9 at 4:30 p.m. It will be virtual on Zoom with the plan to resume in-person meetings at the Union Hall in April. As always, registration in advance is needed to verify BTU membership and to receive the link. See the tentative agenda here.

Quick reminders for registering: 

Last week, the BPS negotiating team unilaterally cancelled two long-scheduled negotiating sessions during the month of March and is threatening to cancel a third. This means that since December 9, we have only met twice with BPS to bargain a contract that expired 7 months ago. In three months, we have only been able to meet for two sessions.  Two additional sessions were previously cancelled by BPS. We understand that during this time there have been many transitions, but this is disrespectful to our team and to our membership. For this past week’s silent rep summary, we did some math to make our point. 

The explanation for the last cancellation is that there are four new school committee members that are getting caught up. However, we have dozens of important proposals that our members and our students deserve that can’t wait.  These proposals include a process for a timely response to work orders in our decrepit buildings, decent staffing ratios in our special education inclusion classes, improved leave of absence policies, guaranteed staffing for counselors and social workers, a library in every school, pre-K seats for all 4-year-olds, not to mention a wage increase when inflation is running at its highest level in decades, and many more. We call on the School Committee team to meet with our team weekly and engage fully with our proposals, which have previously been summarily rejected.

Our campaign to fight state receivership will be ramping up this month. We have long known that the state’s accountability is based on flawed metrics, as further validated recently by a Nobel Prize-winning economist at MIT. As AFT-MA President Beth Kontos shared, “What troubles us greatly…is your stated intent to move forward with the school percentile metric—a metric that research shows to be biased and deeply flawed. The disruption to MCAS data caused by the pandemic only exacerbates the problems with this metric.” See the full letter to BESE and a School Yard News article about the MIT study on the topic. You can also read the letter our Director of Organizing, Natalia Cuadra-Saez, wrote to the Boston Globe in response to an editorial on inclusion in Boston’s exam schools. We will share more at our membership meeting on Wednesday, including next steps for the Our City, Our Schools campaign to fight back against state receivership.

In good news: Last week, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), our national affiliate, fulfilled all educator requests on Donor’s Choose! While educators should not have to fundraise for supplies and educational experiences, we are grateful to Randi Weingarten and our national union for fulfilling these requests. 

Please join us in congratulating our very own Marilyn Marion, RTC President, who was recently just elected to also to serve as President of the Alliance of Retired Americans, Massachusetts! Johnny McInnis, our Political Director, was also recently elected to serve on the MA Democratic State Committee. We are proud of their leadership both at the BTU and beyond.

March is Social Work Month, and this week is School Social Worker Week. BTU and Office of Social Work wishes all social workers in Boston Public Schools a happy School Social Worker Week! Thank you for all you do.

The Superintendent Search Committee was named last week. There are nine members, including a student, parent, BTU President Jessica Tang and BTU member and teacher Jose Valenzuela. The first listening session is this Wednesday, beginning at 6:00pm.  You can register for this session, future sessions and see the full timeline on the superintendent search webpage. 

Don’t forget our monthly membership meeting is TOMORROW, Wednesday, March 9 at 4:30 p.m. It will be virtual on Zoom with the plan to resume in-person meetings at the Union Hall in April. As always, registration in advance is needed to verify BTU membership and to receive the link. See the tentative agenda here.

Quick reminders for registering: