Youngstown teachers strike officially over after both sides approve deal
The Youngstown Education Association and Youngstown City School District Board of Education officially ratified the tentative agreement from Saturday during separate meetings on Monday and the Youngstown teachers strike is officially over.
Youngstown Educations Association spokesman Jim Courim said the deal was overwhelmingly passed while Youngstown City School District spokeswoman Stacy Quiñones said the board’s vote was unanimous.
Here is a statement Youngstown City School District put out Monday night:
Youngstown City School District statement
The Board of Education and its Administration team entered contract negotiations with the Youngstown Education Association (YEA) with three overriding goals:
● Work with the YEA to find a middle ground that allows us to delete and move past the “academic distress rights enhancements” in the labor contract, but still maintain enough flexibility in our labor agreement to provide targeted and intensive support to our scholars by assigning the most qualified teacher and not just the most senior teacher in key classes and programs.
● Ensure that we have enough required time for teachers to provide direct interaction and educational opportunities to our scholars, especially in the elementary and middle school levels where academic foundations are built.
● Enter into a financially responsible agreement that does not impact the ability to provide future services and programs.
We are pleased to say that this new agreement does just that. This is a labor contract that keeps scholars at the center of all we do and supports our Board’s educational mission for the turnaround plan and leaving academic distress.
Together with YEA, we have created a new agreement that recognizes the critical role all YEA members will have to play in achieving our mission of advancing out of academic distress and pursuing academic success.
For example, this one-year agreement commits to:
A 3% raise for all teachers. Additional money is also being paid to k-8 teachers in exchange for mandatory increased student interaction time of 30 minutes more per week. For all k-8 teachers, they will work their same daily schedule, but during the day they will have more mandatory student interaction in the elementary and middle school levels where academic advancement is critical for our scholars.
Our Administration team also agreed to meet the union in the middle regarding its demand to remove the “academic distress rights enhancements” in the labor contract. Our new approach moves the focus from general management rights to more targeted teacher placement and selection rights focusing on the most intense classes that require remedial instruction and assistance, and a dozen or so additional classes every year. For these classes, the Board secured the ability to place the most qualified and not necessarily just the most senior teacher where our scholars need it most. Our team held firm on maintaining this targeted flexibility to review who is teaching the most critical classes for our turnaround plan, and not just a blanket removal of 3302.10 rights.
Mr. Batchelor commented on the compromise, “We were able to focus on ten core class areas and another dozen discretionary classes, which can be targeted every year to make the best selection for implementation fidelity. This moves the focus from general rights to more targeted ones, focusing on important instruction and assistance.”
And finally, we were able to take a significant step towards potentially avoiding future strikes by adding the fact-finding process back into our contract. After 30 years, collective bargaining efforts will be more transparent due to the addition of the fact-finding process, which will mean that in the future, the parties last offers before impasse and the party’s positions will be stated before a neutral fact finder and then published for the approval or rejection of both parties before a strike could ever occur. The fact finding process will create a greater sense of transparency of the entire process. Although the last few weeks were difficult, the long-term gains for this school district will be lasting.
Mr. Batchelor notes, “although we all would have liked to reach agreement on a new contract and end the strike quickly, our team had to balance the contract demands from the YEA against the long-term impact that such changes would have not only on our current scholars, but also on our future scholars, Boards, and Administrators. We could not simply lose all control over the district and management decisions just to end the current strike; nor could we spend more money than we have to end the current strike. The new agreement finally meets that middle ground that allows us to delete and move past the “academic distress rights enhancements” but still gives us key changes we need to turn around the district and keeps enough current flexibility to meet our academic improvement goals.”
To all community members, parents, and caregivers, thank you for your commitment to supporting our children. We look forward to working with our children now that they are back in their schools.
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This story was originally published September 19, 2023 at 4:00 AM.