PFT’s new contract includes 3% raises, parental leave, and an easier path up the pay scale
Terms of the PFT contract also include an increase in classroom supply budgets and amendments to a staff attendance policy. Members are set to consider ratification on Thursday.
Philadelphia Federation of Teachers members — 14,000 educators, school nurses, counselors, secretaries, and paraprofessionals — would get three years of raises under a tentative agreement reached this week.
If PFT members ratify the deal Thursday night, members will see 3% salary bumps on Monday, and a $1,400 bonus on Oct. 1, as well as 3% raises in 2026 and 2027.
The deal, reached hours before students began the first day of the 2025-26 school year, also includes paid parental leave.
And it would make it easier for educators to reach the top of the pay scale, a status known as “senior career teacher.” Beginning next year, teachers with 10 years’ experience, a master’s degree, and 30 credits would qualify for that status. Teachers used to need a master’s plus 60 credits.
Other details from the tentative agreement, obtained by The Inquirer, include:
The parental leave policy, in the contract for the first time in PFT history, grants members five weeks of parental or adoption leave with pay.
The reviled attendance policy, which penalized PFT members for taking their earned sick and personal time, is not gone totally, but amended significantly. Employees may still receive disciplinary warnings, but not as quickly, and exceptions would be granted for those who have suffered catastrophic illnesses. In addition, principals and the district’s head of human resources would have latitude to give employees leeway “based on an employee’s overall record of attendance or other factors.”
Teachers who agree to work in certain hard-to-staff schools would get bonuses of $2,500 in 2026, $5,000 in 2027, and $5,000 in 2028. (The bonuses had been $2,500 in the prior contract.)
Teachers who work in hard-to-fill subject areas would receive a bonus of up to $2,500 — a new provision for this contract. The superintendent sets the hard-to-fill areas annually, based on district need. (Special education, science, math, and world language are often tough-to-staff areas.)
The successful paraprofessional pathways program, which now gives classroom assistants paid help to earn college credentials to become teachers, would be expanded to secretaries, nonteaching assistants, occupational and physical therapists, food service managers, and teachers in need of recertification. It would be renamed the “Pathways to Teaching” program.
A “Special Education Teacher Certification Assistance” program would be created to help current district teachers gain their special-education credentials.
Teachers’ and school psychologists’ allotment for classroom supplies would jump to $225, from $200. (Most educators say they spend vastly more than that.) Prekindergarten teaching assistants would get $50 for classroom materials “contingent on the availability of funding” in each school year.
School nurses would get $225 for “health education materials,” up from $100.
Newly hired school nurses would get up to $5,000 to obtain their school nurse certifications.
Some paraprofessionals with the least experience would get $2,000 pay increases, in addition to the 3% pay raises.
A joint committee of PFT members and district staff would study the uses and effects of generative artificial intelligence.
A joint committee would study an acceleration bonus program “to recognize school-wide PFT bargaining unit member efforts to accelerate student achievement.” Once developed, the program could give bonuses of up to $5,000, beginning in the 2026-27 school year.
PFT officials said they would have no comment on the agreement until after members meet to discuss and ratify it Thursday night.
Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. has said he believes the contract “both honors the hard work of our educators and maintains our record of strong financial stewardship.”
PFT president Arthur Steinberg has called the agreement “historic” and said “it has something for everyone.”
The PFT’s membership had authorized a strike and had begun making preparations for a work stoppage, but talks, once slow going, accelerated over the weekend, Steinberg said.
Some PFT members had called for higher raises — around 5% — but such figures seemed unlikely, especially given the District Council 33 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees contract reached this summer after that union’s 9,000 workers went on strike for eight days.