St. Paul educators reach tentative deal, shift focus to levy campaign

August 14, 2025 by

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

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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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Nick Faber: Strike, contract campaign led to real gains for St. Paul schools

April 1, 2020 by

SPFE President Nick Faber (R) spoke at a union rally outside district headquarters.

– Nick Faber is president of the St. Paul Federation of Educators. He wrote this column for the April 2020 edition of The St. Paul Union Advocate newspaper.

No one should doubt St. Paul educators’ unwavering commitment to our students. We care so much about what our children need, we were willing to strike for them.  

And the short-term sacrifices we made during the three-day strike were worth the long-term gains made for our students and families and the collective power we built as educators.  

Our strike was about getting our students the resources they deserve and breaking down racial disparities in our schools, so all students, no matter what they look like or where they are from, can thrive and succeed.   

The contract ratified March 20 by members of the St. Paul Federation of Educators puts the St. Paul Public Schools on the path to building the schools our students deserve. 

The new contract guarantees the district will spend an additional $5 million to hire more counselors, social workers, intervention specialists, nurses, psychologists and bilingual educational assistants next school year to give students the mental health and multilingual support they need. 

Educators understand how important these supports are to the health and well-being of our students and families. In the 2019 Minnesota Student Survey, 19 percent of eighth-grade girls in St. Paul Public Schools said they seriously considered suicide in the last year. And 40 percent of fifth-graders agreed with the statement, “I worry a lot.” We need more staff to tend to these increasing mental-health needs. 

Hiring more staff who speak different languages also is critical so all families feel welcome and supported at their school. Families in St. Paul schools speak 129 different languages, but many don’t have access to multilingual staff to help them feel welcome and fully participate in their school community. SPPS only has 13 full-time Spanish interpreter positions working in 63 schools and nine Somali interpreters in 45 schools that need them.  

This isn’t just important for our families, but our multilingual staff as well. Many are people of color, some immigrants themselves, who are being pulled away from their primary duties working with students to interpret because there just isn’t enough staff. 

Educators also won on another important issue – expanding restorative practices across the district to end the school-to-prison pipeline. Restorative practices are one way to build community and a positive school climate without pushing students of color out of school.  

We knew the community had our backs in the days leading up to the strike. St. Paul has long valued public education – our schools are always at the heart of our community. But once we went on strike, the support was truly overwhelming. Students came out in droves – some even whipped up pancakes from the back of minivans. Parents brought their babies, future SPPS students, sporting SPFEonesies and buttons to rallies. St. Paul businesses fed educators on the picket lines. I could go on and on. 

The strike empowered St. Paul educators. But we’re not done yet. We’re not done advocating for our students – this is just the beginning.  

Educators across the nation are frustrated. Policymakers need to start listening to the experts – educators and parents – when decisions are made about our public schools.  

Closing our state’s racial and economic disparities requires real investments – a multi-billion-dollar increase in state funding for public schools – so we can provide every student with the resources they need. No exceptions. 

And St. Paul educators will demand to be heard at the local level. Budgets reflect priorities. We are with our students every day and know we need to focus first on hiring more adults who work directly with our children.  

Elected officials at all levels should be on notice. Educators are willing to take mass action to get the schools our students deserve. 

 

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Strike ends, but educators vow to fight on for public schools

March 13, 2020 by

Striking SPFE members lead a march through downtown St. Paul Wednesday.

St. Paul educators set out last May to bargain a contract in the public good.

When they went on strike this week, the public was right there standing with them.

On the picket line and social media, at union rallies and in the streets, public support poured in for the 3,600 members of the St. Paul Federation of Educators, who went on strike Tuesday morning to demand the district take action on their student-centered contract proposals.

The strike ended today, after negotiators for SPFE and the district reached an early-morning tentative agreement on new two-year contracts that will begin to address union members’ concerns.

The agreement would commit the district to hiring more staff to support students’ mental health needs and assist multilingual families. It would expand the district’s restorative approach to discipline, create more manageable workloads for special-ed teachers and raise SPFE members’ wages.

Nick Faber, the union’s president, refused to discuss how much money the district committed to the new agreement until it had been shared with members. But Faber did say educators would have pushed for more were it not for the coronavirus pandemic — and the district’s willingness to use potential school closures as leverage to force a settlement.

“Our teachers were ready to stay out … to get all of the supports our students need,” Faber said. “Had it not been for the coronavirus, we would have been able to do better.”

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Schools will reopen Monday, but union members reported to their buildings for work this afternoon, bringing an end to a historic week of activism and solidarity in the capital city, which saw its first teacher strike in 74 years.

Each morning from Tuesday to Thursday, SPFE members put up picket lines outside their school buildings, drawing a steady chorus of honks from passing vehicles. Each day after picket lines came down, educators came together for an afternoon rally and march through the streets.

Their ranks swelled with parents, students, elected officials, labor leaders and other community members inspired by SPFE’s campaign “for the schools St. Paul students deserve.” Together, they turned parts of the city into a sea of red, marking the latest stop in the nationwide #RedForEd fight to fund public education.

Kera Peterson, president of the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation, speaks at a rally in Rice Park.

It’s what happens, St. Paul Regional Labor Federation President Kera Peterson said, when you bargain for the common good.

“We know what you guys are fighting for, and we’re with you every step of the way,” Peterson, whose organization represents 100-plus local unions with over 50,000 members, told educators during a massive rally in Rice Park Wednesday.

With school cancelled, students flocked to union events as an opportunity, Harding junior Paris Smoot said, “to show student voices are also very powerful.” Her classmate Ashanti Williams said it’s inspiring to see students and educators joining together “to make a change and create a better environment for people.”

Many students carried signs supporting the union’s efforts to funnel more resources into mental-health supports for themselves and their schoolmates. Smoot, who attended the rally Wednesday, said she experienced depression and suicidal thoughts last school year.

“I didn’t even know Harding had a therapist,” Smoot said.

Harding juniors Ashanti Williams (L) and Paris Smoot join their teachers at a strike rally.

Faber acknowledged the new contract, if ratified by members, won’t fix every problem they set out to address. But educators are going back to work “ready to keep fighting for their students,” he said.

“That energy, we’ve heard from our members already this morning, they’re not putting it away,” Faber added. “It’s not going back in their pockets.”

More, union leaders hope the strike — and the public support union members received — delivered a message to board members and administrators that they won’t get away with ignoring educators’ concerns.

“People were out in the rain for this,” bargaining team member and science teacher Todd Marder said. “The power of that was just heartwarming and touching. Thank you.”

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St. Paul educators set March 10 strike deadline

February 26, 2020 by

SPFE members hold informational picketing outside Adams Spanish Immersion.

What would 3,600 St. Paul teachers, educational assistants and licensed professionals on strike look like?

Minnesota’s second-largest school district got a preview this morning, when members of the St. Paul Federation of Educators held informational picketing outside many school facilities.

Later in the day, educators delivered notice to the district that unless they make progress in upcoming negotiations, the picket lines will be back March 10 – this time for the first teachers strike here since 1946.

SPFE leaders say they hope the strike deadline will force school administrators to match the urgency educators have been bringing to contract negotiations since talks began last May, when union members began bringing forth 31 proposals to address the needs they see in their classrooms each day.

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Educators are demanding a contract that guarantees their students more mental-health supports, that ensures non-English speaking families can access school services and that reduces special-ed caseloads.

And SPFE members are willing to strike, if necessary, to force the district to address those concerns at the bargaining table.

SPFE members and community supporters line the sidewalk outside Highland Middle School.

In a strike-authorization vote Feb. 20, rank-and-file members signaled strong support for their bargaining team. About two-thirds of all members participate, according to SPFE, and 82% voted “yes.”

“Nobody wants to go on strike,” the union’s executive board wrote in an e-mail to members announcing the vote results. “That is why we’ve spent nearly a year engaging with the district on our student-centered proposals and on wages and benefits for our members.

“However, we refuse to accept the district’s position that our students and educators already have access to all of the supports they need to thrive.”

Teachers strikes have swept across the country over the last two years, as the #RedForEd movement pushes officials to address decades of disinvestment in public schools and the working people who staff them.

Last year alone, 237,400 teachers in North Carolina, West Virginia, Los Angeles, Chicago, Kentucky and Oregon went on strike, fueling a historic surge in major work stoppages. Federal labor statistics released last week show the average annual number of workers participating in major strikes over the last two years – 455,500 – reached a 35-year high.

Long before the #RedForEd wave swept the country, though, St. Paul was the site of the first organized teachers strike in U.S. history, a 30-day work stoppage between Thanksgiving and Christmas of 1946.

The city’s female teachers, members American Federation of Teachers Local 28 (still on SPFE’s union charter today), led the charge not just for pay increases, but a more equitable allocation of school resources and new investments in school facilities. They called it the “Strike for Better Schools.”

Today, it’s a fight for the “Schools St. Paul Students Deserve.”

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TAs win access to training in deal with St. Paul schools

February 13, 2020 by

St. Paul TAs, members of Teamsters Local 320, celebrate their new contract. (Local 320 photo)

About 750 members of Teamsters Local 320 who work as teaching assistants in the St. Paul Public Schools will vote soon on a proposed two-year contract with the district. The sides finalized terms of a tentative agreement last Wednesday.

TAs targeted more access to professional development as their No. 1 priority in negotiations, and they refused to give up on the demand as bargaining dragged on for more than eight months.

Finally, the district agreed to language making professional development available to TAs whenever it closes school to offer trainings for its teachers. The current school calendar includes seven such days, Local 320 rep Josh Loahr said.

That’s a win not just for TAs, who assist early-education teachers and work individually with students who need extra help. It’s also a win for St. Paul students and the district as a whole.

“We want to learn how to serve our students better,” Dallas Robertson, a TA and member of Local 320’s bargaining team, said.

Previously, TAs had to seek out training opportunities on their own time, Robertson added, “even though we work with students all day, every school day.”

The district’s negotiations with Local 320 took place as the district also negotiated contracts with the St. Paul Federation of Educators, covering about 3,600 district employees. Both unions put student-centered proposals at the forefront of their contract campaigns, and they teamed up to turn out more than 100 supporters to a rally before a school board meeting last month.

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

SPFE remains without a tentative agreement, and the union has scheduled a strike vote Feb. 20.

Although Local 320’s last contract with the district raised the minimum wage for TAs to $15 an hour, they remain among the district’s lowest-paid employees. But the new contract, Loahr said, would give more TAs access to the trainings they need to climb into higher pay lanes.

“The real meat of our wage scale is based on career advancement,” Loahr said. “If TAs take professional-development courses, they can earn a lane advancement, which means more money. But because TAs have never been offered those courses, 46% of our (bargaining unit) is still at the first lane.”

The proposed contract would make it possible for a TA who takes advantage of every training day on the calendar to advance a full lane in just one year. That could translate into a wage premium of $1.50 to $3 per hour.

The proposed contract also includes wage increases of 1.5% retroactive to July 2019 and 2% in November 2020.

After a meeting Feb. 26 to review the contract, Local 320 members will take a ratification vote by mail. Ballots will be counted March 6.

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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.”

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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.”

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: , ,
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