PFT says contract negotiations are slow and a strike is still on the table
PFT officials have decried what they say is a lack of urgency on the Philadelphia School District's part around their contract, which expires Aug. 31. A strike vote has been authorized.
With just 18 days left until the city teachers’ contract expires, the core issue of pay remains unresolved, Philadelphia Federation of Teachers officials said Wednesday.
“We are making some progress” on some issues, Arthur Steinberg, PFT president, said at a news conference, but “still at the top of the page, really, is wages.”
The contract for the 14,000-member PFT — which represents teachers, school counselors, secretaries, paraprofessionals, and other workers — expires Aug. 31.
With a little over two weeks left until the deadline and several local politicians looking on, Steinberg and some members of his union spoke to the media Wednesday to apply pressure to the district.
» READ MORE: Philly teachers say they’re ‘not close’ to a contract deal, and they’re preparing for a potential strike
Steinberg said the district was slow to come to the table. He has said he wanted to have a contract hammered out before the end of the last school year because parents and students “had the right to know that school was going to open uninterrupted, that their educational program would continue unabated, and that they would have somewhere to send their kids when school started.”
PFT members in June overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike if Steinberg determines one is warranted. Teachers are due back in schools Aug. 19 and the first day of class for students is Aug. 25. Orientation for new teachers finished this week.
Both sides have said they believe a strike can be avoided.
District spokesperson Monique Braxton has said the school system “continues to actively participate in conversations with the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers and engage in good faith negotiations with the hope of securing a new contract as soon as possible.”
“There’s significant work that has to be done, but it’s doable,” Steinberg said. “We’ve had much larger gaps to close in the past.”
Still, strike preparations have begun in earnest, with picket sign-making sessions happening across the city.
“Make no mistake about it, if we have to, if we are forced to go on strike, it will not be because of us, and we are structured and organized and ready to do it,” Steinberg said.
‘I don’t see that respect’
Phelishia Comrie gets it: As the mom of a district student, she knows parents worry about the logistic problems a teachers’ strike would create.
But Comrie, who also works as a paraprofessional at Kenderton Elementary in North Philadelphia and is working her way toward a teaching degree, has a family she has to provide for, and school conditions have many employees “at the breaking point.”
“I hear a lot of folks in high positions talk about how important public education is, and how irreplaceable public school educators are,” Comrie said, appearing with Steinberg at Wednesday’s news conference. “I don’t see that respect for our profession reflected in our paychecks or benefits.”
Comrie, a special education classroom assistant, said at her school, perpetual staff vacancies mean special education students don’t always get their legally mandated services.
» READ MORE: Philly teachers vote to authorize a strike
“Understaffing and student overcrowding create conditions that make it more difficult for educators to be effective and for children to learn,” Comrie said. “When students who need specialized attention don’t get it, they become disruptive to the entire classroom. Staff shortages shortchange our students, and they drive out talented and dedicated professionals. We do this work because we love the kids, but we also have our own families... that we need to provide for.”
Brand-new district teachers earn $54,156; so-called “senior career teachers” at the top of the pay scale earn $107,495. Paraprofessionals’ starting pay is $24,658, and their maximum salary is $49,346.
Gemayel Keyes, who also spoke at the Wednesday news conference, spent more than a decade as a paraprofessional in the district. He had earned credits toward a teaching degree, but his low salary meant he couldn’t move forward because he was unable to leave his job to complete student teaching hours.
After helping to put the PFT’s paraprofessional pathway program in place, Keyes was able to move up to his own classroom. But he started with no supplies and had to dip into his own pocket to buy the things his disabled students needed.
With a contract, “what we’re asking for is not a lot,” Keyes said. “We’re just asking for wages that we can survive off of so we can continue to provide that excellent experience for all of the Philadelphia public school students that we service.”
Kate Sundeen, a teacher at the Academy at Palumbo in South Philadelphia and mother of district students, is incredulous that she finds herself “looking down the barrel of a strike here.”
Steinberg has decried a “lack of urgency” around the PFT contract on the district’s part. That’s galling, Sundeen said at the union’s news conference.
“The district that has said through their lack of desire to negotiate that we don’t deserve a fair contract or the things that we are fighting for,” she said. “But let me be very clear on what they’re actually saying. When they say we aren’t deserving, they’re saying our students aren’t deserving.”