Wait for vaccines to reopen schools, St. Paul educators say

January 18, 2021 by

Hamza Dirie, 9, shows support for teachers’ safety during a car rally staged by the St. Paul Federation of Educators.

St. Paul educators, parents and community members wary of the district’s plan to resume in-person learning staged a car rally Jan. 12, calling on administrators to hold off on reopening buildings until COVID-19 vaccines are available to school staff.

St. Paul Public Schools plans to begin a phased-in reopening of elementary schools and some other programs Feb. 1, with new guidelines, protocols and facilities upgrades in place to prevent the virus’ spread among students and staff.

Those measures drew skepticism from rally-goers like Brittany Livaccar, an emergency-room nurse at United Hospital who drove to the rally with her family of five. She said district leaders should reconsider their timeline now that restaurants, bars and gyms are open, and a more contagious strain of the virus is spreading.

“Our hospitals are going to be overwhelmed soon, so it’s really important we keep our students and teachers safe,” said Livaccar, a member of the Minnesota Nurses Association. “I know it’s difficult, but we can’t go backwards now, when our COVID numbers are still high and we don’t have a vaccine for everyone.”

The SPPS plan for reopening received a vote of no confidence from members of the St. Paul Federation of Educators Executive Board, the union’s president told supporters at the car rally.

“We want to keep our community safe, we want to keep our students safe and we want to keep our members safe,” SPFE President Nick Faber said. “That’s why we are here tonight.”

Union members and supporters will be back in the streets tomorrow, Jan. 19, rallying outside Central high school from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. The district’s Board of Education is scheduled to meet later that evening.

Vaccines are coming

After across-the-board shutdowns last spring, Minnesota school districts have navigated COVID-19 differently during the 2020-21 school year. But none of the myriad local learning models has managed to avoid disruptions and frustrations resulting from the outbreak.

To create more certainty for the state’s youngest learners, Gov. Tim Walz in December eased guidelines for opening elementary schools, allowing districts to reopen classrooms even if community spread of the virus is higher than previously allowed.

But educators warn that, regardless of guidelines, community spread will impact schools’ ability to remain open – at least until their frontline workers are vaccinated.

SPFE President Nick Faber speaks at the rally, which was livestreamed on Facebook and Zoom for supporters in their cars.
United Hospital nurse Brittany Livaccar and her family join the SPFE rally.
SPFE members Mandi Jung (L) and Peggy Cobbins

“One of the hard lessons we’ve all learned from this pandemic is that you can’t operate schools when the virus is spreading too fast through the community because too many educators get sick or go into quarantine,” Education Minnesota President Denise Specht said. “Wearing masks, washing hands, keeping your distance – these are the choices that will decide when our school buildings reopen and stay open.”

Educators got some good news Jan. 18, when Walz’s administration unveiled a pilot program to prioritize vaccination of school staff and child care workers. But officials emphasized that the state’s allotment of vaccine doses from the federal government remains limited.

“While we do not have enough doses for everyone who wants a vaccine to receive one right away, we are building the system and structure so that once we receive those additional doses from the federal government, we can move quickly to support our school staff and bring even more students back into our classrooms,” Deputy Education Commissioner Heather Mueller said.

A plea for patience

At the rally in St. Paul last week, union members and parents urged district leaders to hold off on in-person learning until it’s clear students and educators returning to the classroom are there to stay.

“We are so close to finally feeling comfortable returning to our classrooms,” Bridge View elementary teacher Christin Fleming said. “Being vaccinated would be an absolute game changer.”

Reopening before it’s safe, SPFE leaders warned, will cost the district qualified educators at a time when they are in short supply.

Results of an Education Minnesota survey released last fall showed a majority of members who responded said teaching during the pandemic has left them stressed, anxious and overwhelmed. Nearly three in 10 were thinking about quitting or retiring, and applications for pension benefits were on the rise.

A post on SPFE’s social-media account in the days following the car rally reported that two kindergarten teachers assigned to in-person learning at one elementary school in the district already have resigned.

Janet Nelson has seen the attrition firsthand while working in the district’s child-care program for essential workers’ families. The SPFE member said staff turnover is a “constant challenge” for the program. Among staff assigned to the site when the school year began in September, Nelson said, she’s the only one still working there.

Faber and other union leaders pledged to keep pressure on SPPS to alter its course, urging supporters to sign an online petition to Superintendent Joe Gothard and contact members of the school board individually.

“It is not too late to turn this around,” Faber said.

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As new school year draws near, unions push districts for answers

August 24, 2020 by

Members of the White Bear Lake Area Educators rally before a school board meeting, urging the district to delay its plan to return to in-person classes.

As school districts across Minnesota prepare for a school year unlike any other, the union members who work in public education are pushing for a voice in decisions impacting their health – and the health of their communities.

State guidelines announced by Gov. Tim Walz in July set the ground rules for reopening public school buildings during the COVID-19 pandemic, but allow districts leeway to craft their own protocols.

What should not be optional, unions say, is collaboration and communication with their employees. But in several districts across the metro, union members are calling out administrators for looking past workers’ concerns as they push forward with plans to reopen.

“The communication that is received by staff and families is vague at best and non-existent at worst,” said Karin Hogan, an educator in the White Bear Lake Area Schools, where union members rallied before the school board tonight.

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“Educators are feeling extremely wary, scared and nervous about going back to school because of all of our unanswered questions surrounding safety, consistency, and educational quality,” Hogan said.

Until they get specific answers to those questions, union members want administrators to pump the brakes on in-person learning, set to begin Sept. 8 with a hybrid approach that combines in-person and at-home learning. In a survey of union members, 74% said they prefer distance learning to start the year.

“Our union is appreciative of the cooperation that the administration is currently showing with our negotiations committee. It is more than many other districts,” Hogan said. “However, it is not enough to address and alay our concerns.”

Unions representing school employees initially praised the governor’s reopening guidelines as data-driven and based in science.

But Denise Specht, president of Education Minnesota, stressed that readying school buildings would take a “tremendous amount of work,” and she cautioned local districts against settling for “safe enough” to meet arbitrary deadlines for starting classes.

“We know we have a lot of work to do before school can start this fall,” Kelly Gibbons, president of SEIU Local 284, added. “We are committed to doing everything in our power to make sure every district in the state, no matter what their plan may be, is putting the health and safety of students, staff and our communities before everything else.”

Already, local unions are reporting problems.

A White Bear Lake school board member listens as one of the district’s educators explains her concerns about plans to reopen school buildings.

Under Walz’s executive order, districts are required to accommodate staff members with health conditions that put them at elevated risk to COVID-19.

But Specht has said she is “deeply troubled” that educators’ requests for accommodation haven’t always been taken seriously. In a public statement, she listed several examples of complaints – some “plainly illegal” – Education Minnesota has heard from its members.

“We can and must do better,” Specht said. “Education Minnesota calls on school districts in this state to be model employers.”

The American Federation of Teachers has authorized educators to go on “safety strikes” during the pandemic as a last resort in efforts to secure certain protections on the job. But some metro districts are doing better by their employees without large-scale worker mobilizations.

In St. Paul, where the coronavirus cut short a contentious educator strike in March, administrators not only invited members of the St. Paul Federation of Educators to join work groups charged with planning for the fall semester, but took their input seriously, SPFE President Nick Faber said.

“Most of the discussion was around hybrid and returning to classrooms, what it would look like to go back,” Faber said. “It seemed like every time we answered a question or concern, it just opened up 50 more. It was just not logistically possible to do it safely.”

Tiffany Dittrich, president of the White Bear Lake Area Educators, speaks at the rally.

The St. Paul Public Schools will begin the school year with remote learning for all students, a move Faber characterized as the least-bad option on the table for SPFE members.

“Our members aren’t crazy about having to go back to teaching over a computer screen, often while their own kids are in the house somewhere,” he said. “But they know this is the safest way.”

Other metro-area school districts, including Roseville and Bloomington, have recently come to similar conclusions, postponing their initial plans for in-person classes due to safety concerns.

Tiffany Dittrich, president of the White Bear Lake educators union, hopes her district will do the same. Two weeks ago, she presented administrators with a list of over 100 questions about the safety and quality of instruction under the district’s back-to-school plan. Most remain unanswered, Dittrich said.

“I’m proud of the tireless work of our district leaders and teacher leaders throughout the entire summer to set the stage for our return this fall,” she said. “Yet there is much work that must still be done … and time is running far too short.”

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SPFE sets strike vote, parent info session

February 11, 2020 by

SPFE members and community supporters rallied last month in support of the union’s contract campaign.

Members of the St. Paul Federation of Educators representing over 3,600 teachers, educational assistants, licensed professionals and other staff in the St. Paul Public Schools will hold a strike-authorization vote Feb. 20, leaders announced today.

In an e-mail to community supporters, members of the St. Paul Federation of Educators’ negotiating team said the union’s executive board called the strike vote in a unanimous vote last night.

“This decision was not made lightly, but we are certain that a strike vote is necessary if we hope to reach a settlement with the district that respects our students’ needs and honors our educators’ voices,” the e-mail says. “After nearly a year of negotiating, the District still isn’t taking our student-centered proposals seriously and has refused to have any real discussion around educator pay and benefits.”

Before the vote takes place, SPFE will hold an information session for parents to discuss what its bargaining proposals are – and why educators are willing to strike for them. The session will begin at 10 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 15, at the union’s headquarters, located at 23 Empire Dr., St. Paul.

Additionally, SPFE is encouraging members, parents and community supporters to attend the district’s Feb. 18 school board meeting, hoping a last-ditch appeal to board members – many of whom were elected with labor endorsement – will lead to movement at the bargaining table.

Talks between SPPS and SPFE began last May. Union members offered 31 proposals based on the needs identified by educators, parents and other stakeholders. But the district refused to respond to most of them, and the two sides entered mediation in December.

Union proposals look to expand on gains made in recent contract campaigns, which focused on “building the schools St. Paul students deserve.” Educators’ top priorities would increase mental-health supports for their students, reduce special-ed caseloads and expand families’ access to multilingual services.

Rank-and-file union members signaled “overwhelming support” for those priorities – and for calling a strike vote – in petitions circulated throughout the district’s 65-plus buildings, according to union leaders.

 

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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.”

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