SPFE members and community supporters rallied in 2020 to support the union’s contract campaign. (UA file photo)
The St. Paul Federation of Educators last week reached a tentative agreement on new union contracts covering about 4,000 teachers, education assistants and school professionals working in the state’s second-largest school district.
If union members and the Board of Education vote to ratify the two-year contracts, they could take effect before the district’s first day of school.
That’s a big departure from recent bargaining cycles, which take place every two years. Talks between the St. Paul Public Schools and SPFE typically extend deep into the school year and have often required assistance from a state mediator.
Educators had voted to authorize a strike in each round of talks since 2018. They went on strike for a week in 2020.
This time around, SPFE and the district committed to a robust summer bargaining schedule, meeting for full days instead of evenings. Union negotiators credited the early settlement to engagement both from rank-and-file members, who spoke to the union’s proposals during open bargaining, and from district leaders.
Erica Schatzlein, SPFE’s lead negotiator, said newly hired Superintendent Stacie Stanley and school board members – at least one of whom attended every session – set a new tone for the collective bargaining process.
Stanley’s predecessor, Joe Gothard, would “show up on the first night in a suit, stand up, give a speech and then we would not see him again typically until very close to a strike date,” Schatzlein, who has been part of the union’s negotiations team since 2012, said.
“Dr. Stanley wasn’t there all the time – we expect that she can’t be – but she was there often. In crunch time she was there pretty much the whole time, for a lot of hard discussions, and she participated. She offered some solutions. It was a very different vibe.”
Focused on dignity
Educators and the district make bargaining sessions open to the public, and SPFE took steps to turn out its members in support of their negotiators. The union provided child care, held cookouts and brought in an ice-cream truck.
SPFE also took a new approach to presenting its contract proposals, organizing members with similar interests into “bargaining action teams,” which joined the union’s elected negotiators whenever those issues were on the agenda.
Schatzlein, an English-learner teacher at Nokomis North Middle School, declined to discuss economic gains until they had been presented to union members, but she said the strategy built on the SPFE’s work over the last two decades to expand the scope of bargaining and push for the “schools St. Paul students deserve.”
“We went into this round talking about dignity,” she said. “We’re in a political climate right now where things that would have shocked us eight years ago are happening all the time. So what do we need to do to shore up our contract language to provide dignity for our members and our students and families across the district?”
The district agreed to language that protects students’ right to be addressed by their preferred name and pronouns – and protects educators from discipline for using them. SPPS also agreed language that recommits the district to educating every student in the district, regardless of immigration status.
The new contract delivers new standards on staffing, training and beyond for educators at RiverEast, which provides therapeutic services to students in the district with acute special-education needs.
Another contract gain will give school nurses more time to complete legal paperwork and track down the authorizations they need to administer medications or other health services to students. Schatzlein said the bargaining action team of SPFE nurses was especially effective at the negotiations table.
“They came and presented the proposal and said, ‘This is what we need,’” she said. “And at the next meeting, the district’s head of Health and Wellness came to the table and actually said that’s not what nurses need.
“That’s really shocking if you think about it, to say, ‘I know better what the workers need than the workers who are doing the work.’ That’s what happens in open negotiations; those voices have been heard by all of our members in attendance. It’s really powerful.”
Rallying behind ‘Vote Yes’
By wrapping up negotiations early, SPFE and school leaders can shift more of their focus to advocating – in harmony – for the levy referendum before voters in the district this fall.
SPPS is seeking an increase to the current annual operating levy of $1,073 per student. If approved by voters, it would generate about $37.2 million per year – and stave off the same amount in cuts to staffing and programs beginning next school year, the district says.
Superintendent Stanley, in announcing the tentative agreement with SPFE, said the district is “focused on coming together as one community,” noting that includes “informing St. Paul residents about the upcoming referendum this November.”
SPFE already has endorsed the “Vote Yes” campaign.
“We did have an eye to whether, if we are all in the throes of negotiations, we were going to be able to devote the energy necessary to campaign,” Schatzlein said. “Our feeling was if the district can get its house in order to settle this sooner, then we’re going to do that as well. And I feel confident that we’re taking our members a good settlement.”
– Michael Moore, UA editor
Union Advocate 