St. Paul educators set March 11 strike deadline, seek community support

February 28, 2024 by

SPFE members rallied for a contract before a school board meeting in January.

Union educators in the St. Paul Public Schools are giving the district two weeks to settle their contracts. Otherwise, the St. Paul Federation of Educators’ 3,689 members – teachers, education assistants and school professionals – will go on strike March 11.

Outside the state Bureau of Mediation Services, where union representatives on Monday filed an official notice of their intent to strike, SPFE President Leah VanDassor said the district would need to significantly improve its contract proposals on wages, health insurance and student supports to prevent a strike.

“This is about retention,” VanDassor said. “This is about stability. This is about valuing what goes on in those classrooms in our schools.”

Representatives of SPFE and the district will meet with a state mediator Friday – their last scheduled session before the union’s strike deadline, although other dates could be added.

Last Friday, the two sides held their first mediation session since SPFE members voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike Feb. 15. The vote, VanDassor said, should have sent a powerful message that educators are “enthusiastically ready” to stand together “to show, as a working group, that we need to be respected,” she said.

But district leaders continue to claim educators’ demands – even a scaled-back economic proposal passed across the table last Friday – exceeded the amount SPPS has budgeted for the contract, despite a record $56 million funding increase delivered by state lawmakers last session.

“While we agree that our staff deserve more for their hard work on behalf of our students, we also have to live with the resources available to us without compromising the services and programs that our students need and deserve,” Halla Henderson, school board chair, said during a press conference yesterday.

The board met in closed session Monday to discuss negotiations.

SPFE, meanwhile, has set up an online form for supporters to email board members. VanDassor said District negotiators “claim the Board of Education sets the parameters” for how much of the SPPS budget can go toward the educators’ contract.

“If that’s what happening here, then the board needs to change those parameters,” she said. “We have an educator shortage that’s only getting worse, not better. We’re asking for a budget that reflects that reality.”

VanDassor also asked supporters, especially parents of SPPS students, to offer their solidarity to educators and staff as the strike deadline nears, whether in person at a school or online via the union’s social media channels.

She emphasized that educators do not take the decision to set a strike deadline lightly.

“Our bargaining team is doing everything in its power to reach a settlement before that time and will continue to do so,” she said.

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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St. Paul educators vote to authorize strike: ‘It’s time for us to stop being disrespected’

February 16, 2024 by

Over 2,000 SPFE members voted on a potential strike yesterday at the Carpenters hall in St. Paul.

Over two-thirds of the Saint Paul Federation of Educators’ members filed into the Carpenters union hall yesterday to take a strike vote, and an overwhelming 92% voted “yes.”

Union leaders said they hope the resounding support educators showed for their bargaining team will push the St. Paul Public Schools to improve its financial proposals in mediation sessions scheduled the next two Fridays. Otherwise, the union’s 3,689 members – teachers, education assistants and school professionals – could go on strike next month.

“When the district sits and refuses to talk to our bargaining team about the things that we need, they are not just refusing that small group of people,” SPFE Treasurer Robyn Asher, a teacher on special assignment, said. “There are thousands of us, and this (vote) is a show of support.

“We’re showing that we’re ready, and we’re hoping that they take us seriously.”

That means offering educators more than the most recent wage proposal, which would raise most union members’ pay by 3.75% over the two-year contract. Educators also want some relief in their health insurance costs.

“We just had insurance increases, and our paychecks have all gone down,” Rene Myers, an intervention specialist at Hazel Park Preparatory Academy, said. “The district wants to add to the cost.”

SPFE members said they expect the district to do better after state lawmakers passed a record $2.3 billion increase in funding for public schools last May – and after the district raised administrators’ pay by 6% last August.

“It’s about priorities,” Asher said. “With what our members are seeing the Legislature give to education this time and for what we know that we need to retain educators, [the district’s offer] is not good enough.”

SPFE members went on strike for a week in 2020, and they came within minutes of a strike deadline in 2022 before reaching a deal with the district. Those talks resulted in historic contract language that commits the district to investing in the services that educators say their students need, like class-size limits, school nurses and mental-health supports.

This time around, union negotiators are looking to preserve and expand on those gains, while also gaining ground in compensation, arguing it is critical to the district’s ability to recruit and retain staff during a statewide teacher shortage. Myers said 75% of her colleagues at Hazel Park have told her “they’re leaving or they’re thinking about leaving.”

In a statement released after the votes were tallied, SPFE President Leah VanDassor said educators don’t want to strike, but have shown they are committed to doing what’s necessary “to give our students the schools they deserve and keep our educators in the profession for years to come.”

“Over the past decade, our union has come together with our community to win improvements to our schools like class size limits and student mental health supports,” she added. “Now is the time to build on that progress while also helping our educators afford their lives and stay in this district.”

SPFE must give the district notice at least 10 days before beginning a potential strike.

“Nobody wants to go on strike,” Myers said. “This is not what we set out to do. It’s an inconvenience and a pay loss for a lot of us. But it’s time for us to stop being disrespected.”

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St. Paul educators settle contract, pivot to supporting Minneapolis strikers

March 9, 2022 by

SPFE members joined their union’s solidarity march with members of the Minneapolis Federation of Educators last month.

The St. Paul Federation of Educators called off plans to strike this week after reaching a settlement in last-ditch negotiations with the district Monday night, just hours before picket lines were scheduled to go up at school buildings across the capital city.

With a tentative agreement in hand, St. Paul educators urged support for their union siblings in Minneapolis, where 4,000 members of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers and its chapter of education support professionals began an open-ended strike yesterday.

The Minneapolis and St. Paul unions have stood together throughout the negotiations process, holding rallies and joint press conferences to highlight their shared approach to bargaining contracts that hold school officials accountable for meeting students’ needs, said Erica Schatzlein, an English learner teacher at Nokomis Montessori North and SPFE’s lead negotiator.

“What we have shown here (in St. Paul) is that educators and school leaders can come together to give our students the resources we need,” Schatzlein said during a press conference Monday night. “And we need [Minneapolis Superintendent] Ed Graff and the Minneapolis school district to do the same for children and families across the river.”

SPFE’s tentative agreement delivers on many of SPFE’s student-centered bargaining priorities, most notably keeping and improving hard-fought language around class-size limits and mental-health services for students. It also includes compensation to retain and reward the union’s roughly 3,500 members during a historically challenging time for school employees.

But administrators refused to discuss most of the union’s demands until just days before the March 8 strike date, SPFE leaders said.

“The district had some parameters that they said they had to stay within for what they could offer for wages and benefits, and they moved off those,” SPFE President Leah VanDassor said during a press conference after signing the tentative agreement.

Schatzlein added: “In these last days and hours, I feel like we’ve turned a corner in collaboration with the district, and we hope to see that continue.”

Indeed, SPFE members have now voted to authorize a strike in three consecutive rounds of contract negotiations, and they went on strike for three days in March 2020. The current round of talks dragged on for nearly eight months, and the two sides bargained for over 50 hours in the final days before the strike deadline.

SPFE President Leah VanDassor urged on striking Minneapolis educators during a Capitol rally. “This is not just a Saint Paul, not just a Minneapolis issue,” she said. “This is an issue for public education, and we are all in this together.”

“This agreement could have been reached much earlier,” VanDassor said. “It shouldn’t have taken a strike vote, but we got there.”

Union leaders said they hoped to share details of the agreement with educators, who will take a ratification vote in the coming weeks, before making them public. The school board must also sign off on the contracts next month.

A highlight of the settlement, Schatzlein said, was compensation increases for educational assistants, who are among the district’s lowest-paid employees.

“We have made important ground in getting our lowest-paid educators, our educational assistants, many of whom are black and brown women, who look like our students, who are close to our families, the compensation that they deserve,” she said.

The tentative agreement also includes a one-time recognition payment to all educators, tapping into federal funds authorized by the American Recovery Plan.

Educators also succeeded in protecting contract language around restorative practices as an approach to discipline in schools, “so that we learn to transform our school culture and welcome our students in instead of pushing them out,” Schatzlein said.

“This has been an amazing, difficult, taxing last few days, but we have gotten what we need for our students,” VanDassor said. “As we move forward with these new things we have in our contract, we are going to continue to build and work together to make this the best school district in Minnesota.”

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Educators in St. Paul, Minneapolis vote to strike over student-centered demands

February 18, 2022 by

Members of the St. Paul and Minneapolis educators’ unions cross the Ford Parkway bridge during a march last weekend.

Staff in the St. Paul Public Schools are on the brink of a strike again after members of the St. Paul Federation of Educators voted yesterday to authorize the union’s elected leaders to call a work stoppage.

Union members who voted “yes” said they were hopeful the vote would be a catalyst for movement in negotiations with the district, which began last May and have since entered mediation.

According to members of the SPFE bargaining team, the district has shown little interest in the union’s student-centered contract proposals, which include lowering class sizes, fully staffing mental health services, support for students with special needs and measures to attract and retain educators during the pandemic.

“I want our district to stop saying that they value their educators and actually do it,” said René Myers, an intervention specialist at Hazel Park Preparatory Academy who voted “yes” to authorizing a strike. “I want our district to value our knowledge and expertise, and actually support us in our efforts instead of dismissing us and saying they know better.”

About two-thirds of SPFE’s 3,680 members participated in the vote, with 78% voting in favor of strike authorization.

Educators across the river voted to authorize a strike this week, too. Members of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers and Education Support Professionals announced their strike vote results yesterday, and said they are seeking living wages for ESPs and improved learning and working conditions in the district.

School districts and their unions negotiate every two years, and strike votes have become more common in recent years, since the state eliminated a penalty for districts that fail to finalize employee agreements by a certain deadline, SPFE member Peter Grebner said.

“The district has no incentive to take us seriously until our members show they are willing to support their bargaining team and help fight for our demands,” he said. “Although strike votes are stressful, they now appear to be necessary if we are to continue to win some of our proposals and prevent them from removing things we have won previously.”

But Grebner, a longtime member of the union’s bargaining team, said the district’s stance is more hardline this year than he has ever seen.

Not only are SPPS negotiators effectively stonewalling most of SPFE’s 23 proposals, the district is seeking to claw back hard-won language in the educators’ contracts around mental health supports, class sizes and even guaranteed recess for elementary students.

“Trying to take advantage of the pandemic to take away these things is not only harmful, but disrespectful to families and employees,” Grebner said.

While SPFE negotiators are hoping for progress when talks with the district resume, the strike vote is no empty threat.

Most of SPFE’s members, who include teachers, educational assistants and professional staff in the district, have experience on the picket line after a weeklong strike in March 2020. At the time, union leaders said the strike would likely have continued were it not for uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.

Myers, who also serves on the bargaining team, said the district seems to be taking the same approach it did two years ago, marked by a stubborn “unwillingness … to actively participate in the process.”

“I am voting for a strike so that our kids can get what they need: a real, well-rounded education where they see educators that look like them, who can support their mental health as well as their academic needs, who will be there for them every step of the way because they are provided with the tools they need,” Myers added.

SPFE must deliver 10 days’ notice to the district before the union can legally go on strike. Union leaders indicated they plan to deliver that notice next week.

“No one wants to strike, but district leaders haven’t budged and even want to backtrack on the investments our students need,” SPFE President Leah VanDassor said. “The last two years have been hard on everyone. It has also shown us students need even more support, not less.

“The short-term sacrifice of a strike is worth it so our students have the schools they deserve for years to come.”

Educators urged community members to call on administrators to quit stalling and begin taking the negotiations seriously, and to sign the petition in support of their student-centered contract demands.

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Educators frustrated by plan to uproot St. Paul students

October 15, 2021 by

Art teacher Lindsay Walker greeted returning students at Benjamin E. Mays elementary school with sidewalk chalk and confetti in one of several back-to-school celebrations staged by members of the St. Paul Federation of Educators last month.

Plans to close five schools in St. Paul and merge or consolidate 10 others drew a swift rebuke from union educators, who called the proposal heavy handed, shortsighted and disruptive to students and families.

Members of the St. Paul school board received the recommendations, generated through a realignment process called Envision SPPS, from district administrators during a special meeting Oct. 11.

The board is scheduled to take action on the proposals Nov. 16.

Officials can expect to hear plenty of public response before then, members of the St. Paul Federation of Educators said, after not doing enough to engage the community while putting together the plan.

First-grade teacher Annaka Larson said Envision SPPS working groups never convened a meeting with stakeholders at Wellstone Elementary, where she teaches in the Spanish dual immersion program. Staff were stunned to find out the school was among those slated to be closed.

“The idea that you would make a decision about the bilingual program without consulting teachers, without consulting families? It’s incredibly frustrating. We worked so hard to build that program,” Larson said.

Seeking the ‘correct alignment’

If the school board approves the Envision SPPS recommendations, Wellstone and four other elementary schools – Highwood Hills, Jackson, John A. Johnson and Obama – would close before the start of next school year. Obama would reopen as a magnet school after a remodeling project.

LEAP High School would also close next fall, and 10 other schools, mostly elementary, would merge or consolidate programming. Most of the impacted schools share a low “utilization rate,” meaning their enrollments fall well below their building capacities, compared to other schools in the district.

Administrators justified the upheaval as necessary to ensure students have access to specialists and enrichment opportunities, which smaller schools can’t always afford. Jackie Turner, SPPS’s chief of operations, pitched the plan to board members as a step toward right-sizing the district’s programming with its declining enrollment – a key factor in state and federal funding formulas.

“We need to make sure we have correct alignment,” Turner said.

Where’s the plan to grow?

Birth rates are declining in St. Paul. So, too, is the district’s “capture rate,” or the share of school-age children residing in the district who enroll in SPPS schools. In the 2012-13 school year, SPPS drew 67% of eligible students. It has since fallen closer to 60%.

But educators worry that uprooting hundreds of students – and drastically changing the learning environments of hundreds more – will prompt more families to consider open enrollment in another district or a charter school, draining more funds from SPPS and, ultimately, leading to another realignment down the road.

“I don’t think they’ve considered how these changes might push families further away,” said Peter Ratzloff, a science teacher at Galtier Community School, where students will relocate to Hamline Elementary as part of a merger.

Educators, Ratzloff said, want a plan to bring students back to SPPS, while it seems administrators “are just looking to make the numbers work.”

A step away from equity

The proposed realignment also raised equity concerns. SPFE President Leah VanDassor said Envision SPPS would leave programming in the city’s predominantly white neighborhoods mostly intact, while the East Side and West Side neighborhoods would see big disruptions.

“These buildings that are closing are the buildings that have, specifically, not been funded over the years, and now they’re being closed,” she said. “Chronic underfunding has brought us to where we are, and so has lack of foresight about how charter schools would impact our district.”

Those concerns have been echoed by labor-endorsed candidates for school board this fall: James Farnsworth, Halla Henderson, Clayton Howatt and Uriah Ward.

“If we accept this an equity issue, consolidating is a step away from that goal,” said Ward, a financial aid counselor at Augsburg University, during a candidate forum sponsored by SPFE this fall.

“There’s nothing equitable about shuffling students and closing schools,” added Henderson, a policy director at the MN Alliance with Youth. “When we’re taking resources away from our communities, all we’re doing is continuing to disenfranchise and defund communities that desperately need those resources.”

Farnsworth, a graduate of the district who works as director of the Highland Business Association, criticized the district for failing to work in partnership with staff and families on Envision SPPS.

“Families deserve upmost transparency,” he said. “The biggest thing that’s missing is any sort of real engagement structure in this.”

Howatt, a PTO president who works in construction, said the district needs a plan to increase enrollment, and it must include dealing with charter schools directly. He supports pushing a moratorium on new charters while experts study their impact.

“While SPPS is looking at closing elementary schools, two more charter schools are slated to open next year and another two or three the year after,” Howatt said. “This system of taking a limited amount of resources – our students, our tax dollars – and spreading it thinner and thinner, it makes no common sense.”

‘Mad and fired up’

Still, it’s likely decisions about Envision SPPS proposals will be made before new board members take office.

Educators and families, meanwhile, were already planning to push back at virtual public information sessions, scheduled by the district Oct. 26 and Nov. 8 from 6 to 7:30 p.m., and at listening sessions at the district office, 360 Colborne Ave., from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Oct. 28 and Nov. 11.

After the initial shock of learning Wellstone could close, Larson said, staff members’ mood soon changed to “extremely mad and fired up.”

“There was a meeting for families that I listened into, and families were confused and angry as well,” she added. “Wellstone is such a welcoming place. We have a very diverse student body and a diverse group of educators. I don’t understand why the district would want to mess that up.”

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