The New Teachers’ Contract is More Complicated than You Thought

Adam Piasecki is the president of the Ithaca Teacher’s Association (ITA), which recently came to a long-awaited settlement with the Ithaca Board of Education (BoE). The 2015–16 school year, which was astir with teachers and community members who rallied for better ICSD educators’ salaries, ended with a new contract that supposedly addressed many of the hardships teachers had faced over the years.

 

James Yoon ’17: Why is this contract so important? What went into this contract?

Adam Piasecki: So it’s been a whirlwind of a year, and it’s been confusing not only to students but also the 600 or so members of the association because it’s been a fast timeline and a lot has happened. If you recall, we, as a group of teachers, entered the 2015–16 school year under the old contract without a new one, and the district and the ITA declared impasse back in November. And then we were in a process to get to some type of settlement. What happened in the February–March time period was that the two parties came to an agreement: a one-year deal retroactive to the beginning of that time period, which was July 1. We settled in March so there were only April, May, and June left in the school year. So, we needed to immediately start negotiating to reach a new contract. In mid-June, the school district and the ITA had entered the “Facilitated Intensive Negotiations Process,” during which both parties agreed to start and end with an agreement within a timeframe of three days. And that process seemed to be a more effective way to reach a settlement, one which many ITA members hadn’t experienced before. So it was a new way for us to do it and we hope that if a similar process is needed in the future, we’ll know that it’s available.

What that did was, by June 17, there was a “Tentative Agreement” which was signed off by myself and the superintendent, that was going towards ratification. So I had to put forward the information to the membership, a large portion of which was already up to speed as to the details of the tentative agreement. The communication about what goes into the negotiation stems from the membership’s feedback. The tentative agreement was ratified by the membership on June 24 and was approved by the district at the June 28 BoE meeting, which meant that the contract for 2016–19 went into effect on July 1.

 

JY: What is the greatest challenge you faced as president of the ITA?

AP: There were many challenges. The contract is a big process that involves a lot of work with not only a team of your colleagues, but also reaching out and working with everybody to come up with proposals to figure out what needs to be addressed. A lot of time goes into it and and it’s challenging because sometimes, people don’t realize that it isn’t as simple as just writing down proposals in a few hours—no, it can take many, many days over the course of the year to get a contract. Also, when you reach that point, we have certain laws that we have to follow and I have to make sure that I am communicating those out because a lot of people who are not fully trained don’t understand what should happen and what can or cannot happen. It’s hard because my colleagues in the association are busy and this is another world that you have to somehow follow and learn about. So I think making sure that everyone understands the process is tricky.

The other thing is that the process is not a science. There are different ways to negotiate with the district. The facilitative intensive negotiations were a new way to negotiate and we weren’t sure how it was going to work. Neither was the school administration. But we just needed to do it. And we were hoping that it would work. So talking and having those conversations with people about the fact that the negotiation process is not a science and telling them “Here’s why we need to do this” can be challenging because we’re all in 12 different buildings and some of us live outside of Ithaca. Not everybody is hearing and reading about the news at the same time. When you’re in that state, it’s really hard because anybody wants everything that they want and that’s unfortunately not how it works. That’s why it’s called negotiations, and that’s why it’s called a settlement; we have to reach a compromise, which can be a challenge.

There were also challenges that we faced during collective bargaining. In my capacity of being the president of the ITA, there are a lot of things that I do on a daily basis that are confidential and are very personal, so I can’t always disclose those. I’ve always had to deal with legal issues, which cannot be heard so much beyond a few sets of ears. I think that that’s always been an issue: having people recognize the amount of work that goes into running the association. Basically, we’re a non-profit organization and I’m largely responsible for making sure that we’re following all of the laws regarding things like taxes and income-filling.

 

JY: In what ways was the facilitative negotiations process different from previous approaches to negotiating contracts?

AP: There were fewer proposals made from both sides for discussion, as we were given limits for the number of times we could bring something forward. Everyone had to commit to the days that were set so that no one could say, “Oh, my schedule isn’t looking good that day. We’ll move it to tomorrow.” So our goal was to reach a settlement at the end of those three days and not prolong the process beyond that. Before, meetings would get moved or people couldn’t make it to them, so we’d try to have the session anyway but then people would be missing. Having a process in which we could have everyone at the table in a room encouraged us to listen and to discuss instead of knowing that we had an infinite amount of time to keep negotiating.

 

JY: What were the best and and the worst moments of your job last year?

AP: The best thing was knowing that I had the support of my colleagues while going through the process of negotiations to impasse, to the one-year settlement, and then right back in this new progress that we were experiencing. I was very happy to hear from my colleagues that they were proud of my bravery and happy that somebody with this role was willing to continue the conversations with the district administration and make sure that their voices were being heard. It was my voice as well, but obviously, my first priority was making sure that their opinions and concerns were being brought forward. I was thanked over and over again and that was a great, great thing.

No matter what settlement comes out, it’s really hard to satisfy 100 percent of the people because of the compromise factor, but the negotiations team did everything we could to make sure that the feedback was met by the team.

 

JY: What is most rewarding about your role?

AP: I have learned so much about all the different areas that my colleagues do. We aren’t just classroom teachers. We are also psychologists, social workers, counselors, therapists, physical education teachers, music directors, pre-K teachers, AP teachers, regents teachers, and all of the educators in every grade level. We are all working very hard and it’s been very valuable to be able to communicate out to the district: this is what all of our colleagues are doing and these are the struggles that they have.

The other thing is obviously helping people. This role is one that is of great help to other people. We play a huge advocacy role for people in many situations; not just salaries, not just benefits, but how they can get or renew their teaching certifications, how they can go about maternity leaves, how they deal with medical leaves, or communicating with a colleague over a disagreement with or a violation of the contract. So it’s a big advocacy role and I’ve learned a lot about how to advise people.

 

JY: Are teachers happy in their jobs?

AP: Overall, teachers love teaching because that’s who they are and chose to be. Nobody goes into the field just to see if they’ll like it. Teachers have had teaching in their core. I’ve talked to many teachers who said that they wanted to become teachers even from an early age. We get a few here and there who became teachers as a second career thing but most of us had teaching in mind right from high school. But as an upperclassman, you probably have learned that being a teacher is not an easy job. It’s not easy for any of the fields that I just named. It’s hard for pre-K teachers. It’s hard to be a psychologist. It’s hard for special educators, and so on. They’re all tough jobs and that’s why we want to make sure that we’re being paid professionally and that we have schedules that allow us to still have families and be able to take care of ourselves, because we have demanding jobs that require countless hours in a week and weekends just to keep our heads above the waters.

But what’s happening to the teaching profession is not necessarily because of students or curriculum or the duty of teaching, but it’s the stuff that comes down from legislators, governors, state-education officials like the Board of Regents that is not in line with the reality of what it really means to teach. The arguments in the past few years have been about state-standardized assessments, Common Core standards, and obviously the teachers’ evaluation systems. And those can hit teachers really hard.

 

JY: What were the problems that motivated the ITA to reach this contract?

AP: Well, it is within the law that the district and the association that represents the employees come to an agreement. There are loopholes through which we can go for a long time without a renewed contract. The problem with our contract is that when we don’t have a renewed contract, our salaries are frozen. We also don’t have a step system, so you don’t get a little bit of a bump just because you have years of experience or anything else in terms of the quality of your work. So that prevents us not only from earning more money, but earning the same money. So if you are a teacher and your salary is frozen into the next school year and the insurance rates go up, or other type of tax rates go up, you actually make less. So for many of us, in the start of the 2015–2016 school year, we took home less money than before and that was really hard. The goal is to always reach a settlement at the end of that contract year so that you’re not operating under an expired contract. It’s the goal every single time.

 

JY: What positive effects have already taken place or will have taken place in the next three years due to this contract?

AP: The 2015–16 settlement actually solved around 20 or so issues of the contract, not just those proposed by the ITA but also those that the district wanted to address. The thing is, just over the course of the contract, things can evolve. For example, laws change so you have to update it to make sure that the contract matches the law. The 2015–16 contract updated many things, which was great, because when we went into the new process, it allowed us to focus on the major points, which were salary and insurance and things like that. So I think for the next three years, we’re really looking at a lot of things that were addressed in the contract and that will compel us to collect more information about what still needs to be changed, so that we’re prepared to enter the spring of 2019.

 

JY: Are there problems that the agreement failed to address?

AP: I don’t think any agreement ever fails to address something, because that’s how the negotiations process works. Some things get brought to the table and just become null and void proposals. They go off and you bring them up either individually or address them next time.

 

JY: What is your vision for the ITA? What will the ITA look like in five years?

AP: So I have many visions, but I am only one person and the ITA only has one administrative assistant. The other officers and chairpersons who assume roles within the organization are busy because of their teaching roles. There is not a lot of time to keep addressing all of the goals and visions that we have. So each year, we adopt a resolution to work on something and different committees set some goals to accomplish things.

Hopefully, in five years, we won’t have to deal with another expired contract. But we never know. I would also hope that in five years, we will be beyond the issues that come down from the federal and state levels. Hopefully, those will be resolved through the other actions that teachers and parents do around the state.

I see us being a really involved association in the community. Right now, teachers don’t have so much time to do that but it’s always a goal of ours to stay active. For example, this past year, we held a storytelling event for our students, and we’ve supported other organizations like the tutoring program. We’d like to extend the roles we play in the local community.

Another piece is—and I’ve talked about this with a few of my colleagues—trying to figure out how we can support and push social justice and human civil rights issues. And we’re working with the community and students on that.

 

JY: Are there new statistics about where the median ICSD teachers’ salary stands, percentile-wise, both in NYS and nationally?

AP: Well, that obviously became a huge discussion over the year and a half here: the difference between median and average salaries and so on. And we’ve dealt with all that during the negotiations process, especially since this is not a science either, even though you might think that it is since it deals with numbers. But what one data report shows may not be the information that all districts put in.

So I think the district and the ITA will start using the data sources that we have agreed upon, and we’ll have to see where we are in a few years. But we probably will discover that we still haven’t closed the gap and that’s obviously something that will have to be raised. This settlement was not a be-all and end-all settlement, and we left the settlement knowing that.

 

JY: How does the contract attract good new teachers and help teacher retention?

AP: So that was exactly why we went into impasse last fall. We were trying to communicate to the BoE that because of the salaries and the percentages we paid for our benefits, we were losing people. And that led to many conversations about where and why teachers are going and leaving. We, as an association, emphasized that we not only want teachers and educators to come here, but also to stay here as well. And we brought that argument up and I think that’s one of the reasons why we got a lot of support for proposals. We need to make sure that the district does something to help this problem.

The association doesn’t set the salaries. It comes out of the negotiations process. This three-year contract is starting to address both the recruitment and the retention problems and we’re thankful that it’s been recognized by the district.

 

JY: Would you give me specifics about how exactly the new contract helps recruitment and retention?

AP: The new contract sets the increases for the returning teachers and sets the incoming starting salaries for new teachers.

 

JY: Was whether or not teacher salaries impact student performance ever in the discussion?

AP: No. There isn’t so much data out there that can draw a correlation between those two things. But if it were true, then our salaries really needed to be increased because the quality of education students get here is very, very good. So if we were to look at that, we did kind of read it up in terms of the district giving awards, the high percentage of graduation rates; if that’s going to be looked at, then yes, teachers should be paid professionally and respectfully.

 

JY: Do you think there will be more teacher protests?

AP: Well, not in the next two years, because we’re in a new contract, but that doesn’t mean that there won’t be any conversation around where we still are in terms of salaries. But in terms of protests, there was never a protest. There was a rally; it’s a way to bring the community together for their support. But what we saw last fall is not something we should expect to see in the next two years.