ISD 622 support staff push back, win contracts they deserve

January 24, 2020 by

Union members packed the North St. Paul-Maplewood-Oakdale school board meeting in support of OPEIU Local 12’s contract demands. (submitted photo)

In December, after several bargaining sessions with members of Office and Professional Employees Local 12, negotiators for the North St. Paul-Maplewood-Oakdale school system put their best and final offer on the table.

Turns out, it was neither District 622’s best nor its final offer.

That’s because members of Local 12, who work as nurses, educational assistants and clerical staff, decided for the first time in Kelly Riemenschneider’s 19 years with the district to go get what they deserve.

“You get pretty used to hearing, ‘This is the best we can do for you,’ and sitting back and going, ‘well, OK,’” said Riemenschneider, an office nurse and union steward. “This time we didn’t. Sometimes you need to do that. You need to stand up for yourself.”

Members of Local 12’s bargaining team decided to take their frustrations to the school board. They targeted the Dec. 17 meeting and put together a plan to turn out as many supporters as possible.

Stewards like Riemenschneider began spreading word to the union’s 130 members, who work in 15 different buildings. Local 12 also reached out to unions that represent other workers in the district, including Education Minnesota, Service Employees Local 284 and Operating Engineers Local 70.

The St. Paul Regional Labor Federation, which unites over 100 local unions in the east metro, put out a call for solidarity among its affiliates, too.

The organizing effort paid off, as a standing-room-only crowd greeted school board members at their meeting. Local 12 members in the room held up signs reading, “We deserve a fair contract!”

When board members opened the meeting to public comment, Cathy DeGlusti, an elementary nurse, described the critical work she and other Local 12 members do for the district. Each year, DeGlusti said, the district expects them to absorb more students and more responsibilities into their workload, but balks at giving those same workers an annual raise.

“It saddens me,” DeGlusti said. “We all work very hard at taking care of the students. We care about their well-being in every aspect of their lives.”

The show of solidarity, Riemenschneider said, had an impact.

“I could see by look on their faces that school board members were very surprised,” she said. “Just seeing us there, it spoke volumes that this is important to us, and you need to remember we are here and we are important.”

Lo and behold, the message trickled down to the district’s bargaining team, too. The next time Local 12 and District 622 met, they were able to reach tentative agreements on new contracts for both of the union’s bargaining units.

“The district moved significantly on wages, health care and language we wanted in the contracts,” Local 12 representative Jim Niland said. “The district also agreed to move everyone in the clerical unit up to $15 an hour, which was one of our demands going into bargaining.”

Was the district’s change of heart a happy coincidence? Riemenschneider doubts it.

“The big thing I’ve learned from this experience is something we’re always trying to teach our students,” she said. “We want them to be as independent as they can be, to advocate for themselves. Well, if I’m teaching that, why am I not taking that advice for myself?

“So that’s what we did, and it was a really good experience.”

Filed Under: Organizing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

St. Paul educators to district: ‘We’re here for our students’

January 23, 2020 by

Union members rally outside the St. Paul Public Schools district offices.

 

The parking lot outside St. Paul Public Schools’ district offices was a sea of red – #RedForEd – before Tuesday night’s school board meeting, as staff frustrated by contract negotiations rallied behind their unions’ student-centered demands.

The public demonstration brought together members of the St. Paul Federation of Educators and Teamsters Local 320, as well as parents, elected officials and supporters from the labor community.

After 30 minutes of speeches, chants and music in the parking lot, union members filed into the building and packed the school board’s chambers. Several took the microphone during a public-comment period to reinforce their bargaining proposals.

SPFE member Rachel Stohlmann, a special-ed teacher at Benjamin E. Mays school, told board members her union’s demands reflect the urgent needs educators see in their schools each day.

“Instead of urgency at the bargaining table, we are being met with platitudes about how our proposals sound great, but there’s just no money in the budget,” Stohlmann said. “If you want SPPS to achieve, you need to use your power as a school board to adjust the budget to meet more than just the basic needs of your students and your educators.”

Educators dressed in #RedForEd pack the St. Paul school board meeting Jan. 21.

Fighting for students

Negotiations between SPFE and the district began last May. After nine public sessions, during which union members offered 31 proposals, the two sides agreed in November to move talks behind closed doors and enlist the help of a state mediator.

But the bargaining teams remained far apart after their latest mediated session Jan. 16, according to educators, who said SPPS had not yet responded to most of their proposals. “They have refused to discuss any proposals that will cost money,” SPFE’s bargaining team said in a statement.

The nature of some union proposals, educators say, has rankled district officials.

Instead of focusing exclusively on wages and benefits, SPFE members in recent years have approached bargaining as their window of opportunity to influence how the district serves its students and families.

SPFE calls it “bargaining for the schools St. Paul children deserve,” and the strategy – gathering member and community input, identifying areas of need and proposing student-centered solutions – has compelled the district to take action on class sizes, professional staffing, restorative conflict-resolution practices and more.

But this is the first round of contract negotiations since the district installed a five-year strategic plan, “SPPS Achieves.” Nick Faber, SPFE’s president, accused district negotiators of using the plan as a shield to deflect union members’ proposals.

“Classroom teachers were not significantly involved in the strategic planning process, and now the district is acting very surprised that we are demanding these things we’ve brought to the table,” Faber said.

Urgent needs

Educators’ top priority at the bargaining table this year is improving mental-health supports for their students. SPFE wants the district to hire more social workers, provide teachers with relevant training and install a “mental-health team” in every school building.

Union members like Sarah Kaufenberg, who teaches kindergarten at Benjamin E. Mays, say their students’ mental-health needs often go unmet, creating barriers to learning that spread throughout the classroom.

“We have students whose parents are incarcerated or in medical facilities, who have been through a lot of trauma in their lives, and they have nobody to talk to but the teachers in their classrooms,” Kaufenberg said. “They’re in survival mode, and without support, we just are not able to provide them with what they need.”

Lindsay Walker, an art teacher in the same building, said the school’s lone counselor too often is forced to “triage” the needs of students, tending only to those most visibly distressed.

“A student who is hungry or a student experiencing homelessness, their needs should be met just as much as somebody who is having a behavior crisis,” Walker said. “Right now our staff is being pulled in too many directions at once.”

Additionally, educators have proposed “weighted caseloads” for special-ed teachers. Rather than assigning the same number of students to each teacher, they want caseloads to reflect the severity of students’ needs.

“Our special-ed teachers are burning out left and right,” Stohlmann said. “Other districts are taking this approach, and teachers see it working. So we have teachers leaving all the time.”

And education assistants represented by SPFE have spearheaded the union’s proposal to bolster support systems for multilingual students and families.

“How can students be successful if we have a lack of communication?” SPFE member Yasmin Muridi, recently named the state’s Education Support Professional of the Year, asked at the rally. “Frustrations on this issue are building slowly, and one day our parents will burst like a volcano and leave the district. And I don’t want that.”

SPFE President Nick Faber (R) hands the mic to Teamsters Local 320 member Dallas Robertson, a teaching assistant in the St. Paul Schools.

Teamsters fight for training

Teamsters Local 320, meanwhile, co-sponsored the rally with SPFE. The union represents teaching assistants who are also in contract bargaining with the St. Paul Public Schools.

Teaching assistants’ top priority, Local 320 member Dallas Robertson said, is making the district’s training programs more accessible.

“Even though we work with students all day, every school day, we don’t have any days in our contract set aside for us to further our learning with other educators,” said Robertson, a TA at American Indian Magnet School. “We want to learn how to serve our students better, but the current system of requiring TA’s to pursue professional development on our own time … is not working for our members – not when these opportunities are offered when many of our TA’s are working second or third jobs.”

The district, Robertson added, has told TA’s any new funds for training will have to come out of union members’ wage increases, even though TA’s make just $16,000 per year to start in the district.

‘Open your eyes’

So what does the district want to achieve in bargaining new contracts with educators?

Faber said administrators have proposed making it easier to put teachers on performance-improvement plans, increasing the waiting period before new hires are eligible for benefits and limiting employees’ access to union leave.

“The message is clear,” Faber told members at the rally. “Our district wants to take stuff away. And for educators who are with students every day, they want you to sit down, shut up, take what you’ve been given and do what you’re told. And they also want you to take the blame.”

Still, classroom teachers like Kaufenberg are holding out hope administrators – or their bosses on the school board – can be persuaded to take educators’ demands seriously.

“Maybe they need to join us in our classrooms,” she said. “Spend a couple hours with us, spend a day with us, spend a week with us, and you’ll see it. And if you don’t see it, then you have to open your eyes.”

Filed Under: Organizing, Union Events Tagged With: , , , , , ,

To stop cycle of cuts, St. Paul educators back levy referendum

October 25, 2018 by

spps-levy-logoJust months after emerging from a fractious round of contract negotiations, St. Paul educators, board members and administrators are pulling in the same direction this fall, urging voters to approve an operating levy worth an additional $18.6 million in annual school funding for the district.

The new funds would help the St. Paul Public Schools address revenue shortfalls that have forced over $50 million in programming, staff and other budget cuts over the last three years. This school year, the district shaved an additional $17.2 million from its budget.

A number of factors outside the district’s control have contributed to the budget woes, but the biggest factor, district leaders say, is the state government’s per-pupil funding formula hasn’t kept pace with rising education costs. Mandated special education services, for example, cost the district $42 million more annually than the funding it receives to provide those services.

With so much uncertainty, SPPS Superintendent Joe Gothard said the levy increase would provide the district with greater budget stability, freeing schools and educators to focus less on where to cut and more on the students they serve.

“We have great work happening every day in our schools, but it is a challenge to sustain our efforts,” Gothard said. “We see this levy as a investment in making sure St. Paul continues to be a great place to live, work and learn.”

Members of the St. Paul educators’ union began mobilizing in support of the levy as the new school year began, pursuing an ambitious plan to knock the door of every educator living in the district. Beth Swanberg, a music teacher at Highland Park Middle School, said her conversations at the doors have been positive.

“People in St. Paul are supportive of public schools,” Swanberg said. “There is a history of quality education here, and people have told me they want to continue that.”

A game of ‘what if?’

Indeed, the stakes are high for students, parents and educators. Long gone are the days when districts like St. Paul went to voters with levy requests to fund the extras that might enrich their schools’ programming.

“Now we’re trying to do a levy referendum to make up for the cuts that have come down from our state Legislature,” union president Nick Faber said.

Last month the North Star Policy Institute unveiled a new report, “Minnesota Backslide,” that charts the decline in state funding to local school districts. Researchers found 93 percent of school districts statewide are receiving less aid today, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than in 2003, when state lawmakers overhauled the school funding system. In half of districts statewide, state funding has dropped by more than 10 percent.

The state’s failure to keep school funding steady has forced most school districts to seek property-tax levies to bridge the gap.

St. Paul is no exception. If state funding had kept up with inflation over the past 15 years, SPPS would have received nearly $620 more per student this year. That’s a total of $21.6 million in lost funds – a number that leaves a lot of educators wondering “what if?”

“If we could actually start to recoup the funding that we’ve lost over the last 20 years and have that referendum on top of it, imagine the things that we could do,” Faber said. “With the knowledge that our educators have here in St. Paul, with their willingness to tackle racial equity head on, we could accomplish so much with that kind of funding.”

“I often wonder what I would request for my students if we had more funds, and it’s hard to even imagine because I’m so used to not having any extras,” Highland Park Middle School teacher Leah VanDassor said. “It’s been so many years of cuts, cuts, cuts at every level.”

VanDassor, Swanberg and other St. Paul educators aren’t just talking with voters about the levy. They are also trying to paint the bigger picture, urging support for labor-endorsed candidates at the top of the ballot who will reinvest in public schools. That includes Tim Walz, the labor-endorsed candidate for governor.

But VanDassor acknowledged “any fundamental change will not be fast,” and the immediate needs of her students are great.

Trusting the voters

The levy campaign has broad support from the community. The St. Paul Regional Labor Federation has endorsed it, and so has St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, who called SPPS the “lifeblood” of his community.

Only a year removed from campaigning citywide for the mayor’s office, Carter said he has faith people living in the school district will join him in voting “yes.” The investment, Carter added, goes hand in hand with his administration’s work to realign city programming to meet the needs of St. Paul’s changing population – and include more voices.

“We’re not just going to say we can do more for our children,” he said. “We’re actually going to do more for our children.

“I’m confident the city will step forward.”

Filed Under: Community, Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Union ambassadors make case for public schools in St. Paul

August 28, 2018 by

Members of the St. Paul Federation of Teachers are helping their district reverse declining enrollment by doing what unions do best: organizing.

Over 100 families living in the district enrolled children in the St. Paul Public Schools this fall after conversations with SPFT members, who canvassed neighborhoods for six weeks, touting the benefits of local public schools.

Union and district officials called it a successful launch for the Select SPPS project, a collaborative effort with the American Federation of Teachers.

“This partnership allowed our members to go door to door and share some of the fantastic things that happen every day in St. Paul,” SPFT Vice President Erica Schatzlein said. “It also gave us a chance to hear from families about what they are looking for from their children’s schools.”

Said Superintendent Joe Gothard: “I commend the SPFT advocates who worked over the summer to increase the enrollment in SPPS. Through our combined efforts we were able to connect with thousands of families to tell them about our great schools and all we have to offer.”

Yasmin Muridi, an educational assistant at Four Seasons Elementary, was one of nine SPFT members who participated as “family advocates” for the Select St. Paul initiative. She said the experience was rewarding.

“Parents were happy to hear from us, to see someone from St. Paul Public Schools coming to their house,” Muridi said. “It made a big difference. It let them know we care about them. We care about their kids. We want them to be successful.”

A Somali and Arabic interpreter for the district, Muridi had the most success when talking with immigrant families, a population in which many parents, she said, are not familiar with American school customs.

“They came from countries where, maybe, schools start at age 7,” she said. “How do you tell him he has to send his kid to school at 4 … in a way that he feels comfortable?”

The enrollment drive was born out of the last round of contract negotiations between SPPS and SPFT. The district’s projected budget shortfalls – a product, in part, of declining enrollments – loomed large over those talks, but the union pressed for investments and alternative approaches to bringing in the resources students need to thrive.

The district and union also are jointly lobbying for more funding on a state and national level, and partnering to seek additional funding from large corporations and medical and higher education nonprofits in St. Paul.

Muridi said she hopes it won’t be the last time the district and SPFT reach out to families together.

“Imagine if we have that program twice a year,” she said. “It makes me so proud of my union.”

Filed Under: Organizing, Union Events Tagged With: , ,

Jesse Paggen: We can emerge stronger after Janus – and we must

March 1, 2018 by

Jesse Paggen is lead custodian in the Sartell schools.

As a union member with SEIU Local 284 in the Sartell schools, being in a union means having a voice to be heard as a group – even a family – so we can get what we so rightfully deserve. We all just want a piece of the American dream: a well-paying job with benefits for our families. We work hard and deserve to get the best pay and benefits possible.

With our union, we can stick together to not let big business run over the little guys like us.

I’m the lead custodian in the Sartell schools, where I’ve been for 22 years, and I am a proud union steward in Local 284. We all live in our community and care deeply about our public schools. My team and I work hard every day to make sure our buildings are safe and clean for our students.

We’ve had some issues over the last few years, and we voted to authorize a strike in December 2017 in order to make the district understand that it needed to do better. We reached a fair deal in the end and didn’t have to strike, but by sticking together we were able to get better results for our families and our schools than we ever would have alone. That is the power of being in a union.

But now, because of that power, a well-organized group of billionaires and corporate special interests have a case before the U.S. Supreme Court called Janus v. AFSCME, and it could undermine our unions. Basically, these special interests want to make every public sector union into “right to work,” which we all know really is just a fancy way of saying they are trying to destroy our ability to come together and make gains for our families.

The nine Supreme Court justices heard oral arguments in Janus on Feb. 26, and they will rule sometime this spring. Most people assume they will rule for the anti-union plaintiff.

In anticipation, many unions have been making sure working people understand what it means to be a union member – and what we can accomplish together. My union, which brings together over 9,000 school employees across the state, has been working hard to make certain we don’t let any divide-and-conquer techniques rip us apart. We can, and must, come out stronger from this attack.

The groups attacking us think that making it harder for unions to survive will mean that we won’t be strong enough to fight for the things we deserve. They think they can divide us so we won’t have a unified voice, something everyone knows working people need to win a better future for our families.

I think they are wrong. I think no matter what this court case says, our unions are stronger than the divide-and-conquer techniques our opponents are using. More and more people are realizing that our system is rigged in favor of those at the top. They want regular families to be able to make ends meet and have a chance to get ahead. In the richest country in the history of the world, this doesn’t seem like too much to ask.

When we stick together with our unions (and work to get more people the chance to join unions), we can tip the scales back towards working families. If we let them split us apart, I’m scared to see where things will go.

As the Janus case rolls along, let’s prove our opponents wrong and use this moment to build a strong labor movement that sticks together and wins a better future for working families across Minnesota.

– Jesse Paggen is a member of SEIU Local 284 and lead custodian in Independent School District 748.

Filed Under: Labor Voices Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Walker’s anti-union Act 10 dealing major blow to WI public schools, report finds

November 20, 2017 by

Working people from Wisconsin and Minnesota came together in Hudson, Wis., to protest Act 10 in February 2011. (file photo)

A new analysis of Wisconsin’s public schools reveals several alarming trends since the state adopted legislation stripping teachers and other public service workers of most collective bargaining rights in 2011.

“Gov. Scott Walker and Republican elected leaders in Wisconsin said that Act 10 would benefit schools and families alike,” said David Madlan, co-author of the report. “They couldn’t have been more wrong.”

Instead of improving public schools, Act 10 has led to a sharp decline in teachers’ wages and benefits and a troubling uptick in teacher turnover, according to the report.

Madlan and his co-author, Alex Rowell, found that by the 2015-16 school year, the average Wisconsin teacher was earning nearly $11,000 less than before Act 10 passed, when adjusted for inflation.

Unsurprisingly, teachers have been leaving the profession – or finding jobs in other states – at a higher rate since Act 10, and data collected by the state’s Department of Public Instruction shows an influx of less experienced teachers into Wisconsin’s public schools.

“We have seen turnover like we’ve never seen before,” Shelly Moore Krajacic, an English and drama teacher in Ellsworth, Wis., told reporters on a conference call unveiling the report’s findings last week. “It’s difficult for the students and for the teachers to develop teamwork and process.”

Academic research into teacher longevity backs up Moore Krajacic’s experience. “The research is pretty clear that experience and stability of teachers is an important factor in the quality of education a school can provide,” Madlan said.

Commissioned by the nonpartisan Center for American Progress Action Fund, the report serves as a warning to lawmakers in neighboring states considering similar measures.

Last year the Minnesota Legislature moved to weaken teachers’ tenure rights and loosen the licensure process, making it easier for “under-qualified instructors to remain in the classroom for several years in a row,” Rep. Carlos Mariani (DFL-St. Paul) said.

With the Supreme Court expected to deal a major blow to public-sector unions in a decision on Janus v. AFSCME next year, advocates for public schools worry that what’s happening in Wisconsin could spread to states like Minnesota – and spread quickly – if teachers’ collective voice is weakened.

“Our general approach in Minnesota has been to work with public-sector unions in order to create services that work well for the public, and we think over time that’s paid off,” Mariani said. “We watch with a lot of concern what’s happening in our neighbor state.”

Filed Under: Politics Tagged With: , , , , ,