As of the 2008-2009 school year, all of Maryland's 24 school districts will start new fully certified teachers at a salary of $40,000 or more.

The victory follows a Maryland State Teachers Association (MSTA) statewide compensation campaign to secure a competitive salary for all represented employees, including a $40,000 starting salary for teachers and a living wage for education support professionals.

Two years ago, only eight districts offered starting salaries of $40,000 or more, and MSTA was determined to hit the 100 percent mark by this school year.

MSTA, a union driven by strong local affiliates, attributes much of its local salary success to member organization, statewide and regional bargaining coordination, advance preparation for local negotiations, and intensive MSTA training of local bargaining teams on everything from the "nuts and bolts" to advanced topics.

With MSTA assistance, locals prepared for bargaining 18 months in advance. During this time, affiliates surveyed members, collected data, developed concepts and priorities, and networked with other school district unions.

"You can't go to the table expecting to win better compensation language if you start all this just a month ahead of time," says MSTA bargaining coordinator Herman Whitter.

The hard work and coordination paid off, and the National Education Association applauds MSTA for its success and supports states across the country working toward the same goal. For its part, MSTA applauds the “combined effort of our leaders, members, and staff” to reach the $40,000 objective.

Through its nationwide salary initiative, which emerges from state-level campaigns already underway, NEA is pushing for a $40,000 starting salary for all pre-K-12 teachers, appropriate pay for all higher education faculty and staff, and an appropriate living wage as starting pay for all education support professionals.

"MSTA is a great example of what our affiliates are doing all across this country:  Engaging members in an effort to improve the learning and working conditions in schools and the living conditions for education professionals outside of school," says NEA Director of Collective Bargaining and Member Advocacy Bill Raabe. "NEA affiliates understand the importance of their members working together to improve the quality of education through collective action.  They also know that it's  right, and professional, for school employees to unite to win professional level salaries for all school employees.  Our members go to school every day with the intent of making a positive impact on the lives of the students they serve, for this they deserve professional pay."

The Middle Yukon Education Association (MYEA) Wins Big

On December 7, 2007 the Middle Yukon Education Association teachers ratified a tentative agreement which included significant raises for teachers in the 2008-2009 school year—an eight percent increase and a $4,000 bonus to be paid in January of 2008.   The Yukon-Koyukuk School District had unilaterally paid 2007-2008 new hires a $4,000 signing bonus but did not offer returning veteran teachers the same compensation.  Given the high costs of living in “bush” Alaska with the increasing freight and fuel prices, returning teachers were outraged.  It was with great relief that MYEA teachers accepted the District’s final counter on salary that recognized their dedication and the challenges of working and teaching in bush Alaska. 

At the YKSD Board meeting in December, out-going Superintendent Chris Simon (who was not on the district’s bargaining team) urged his board to reject the tentative agreement out of hand and then supposedly “tabled” the discussion until the January Board meeting.  His issue—he didn’t want to pay the $4,000 bonus to teachers who might not return for the 2008-2009 school year.  Never mind that the district already paid new hires knowing that approximately 20% of them would not return the following school year for various reasons.  Never mind that these two groups of teachers worked side by side in the same villages with the same high fuel prices and costs of living.  Never mind that this was an issue of fairness for all teachers.

MYEA teachers, President Geoff Johnson and bargaining team chair Hollie Koyukuk began organizing and ignored repeated demands from Superintendent Simon in January to return to the bargaining table—pointing out that they had ratified a tentative agreement and were waiting for the district to do the same.  On January 22, the YKSD board members again brought the tentative agreement up for a vote.  When it appeared that the agreement would be ratified, Superintendent Simon stopped the vote, ordering board members to revote—which they did.  The contract was not ratified and failed in a unanimous 0-7 vote.  Teachers were appalled and demoralized given the year that they had spent preparing and bargaining—especially since it was the District’s own proposal that they had accepted.

With an expired contract and not willing to give up on a year’s worth of preparation and negotiation, the 45 YKSD teachers and MYEA members reached out to their NEA-Alaska colleagues and staff asking for help.  With the help of their UniServ Director Jackie Nelson and the additional assignment of UniServ Director Denise Poole, they began an unprecedented crisis organizing campaign convinced that YKSD board members had failed to live up to Native Alaskan Athabascan values—not to mention committing several unfair labor practices and violating the negotiated agreement.  For MYEA teachers the theme became  “it’s about honesty, fairness and respect”.

Their first challenge was to address how to organize a campaign to overturn the district’s decision while most of them worked in nine river villages in the interior of Alaska that were only accessible by air or river travel (boats in the summer and snow machines or dog sleds in the winter when the rivers froze).  Only two of the villages, the district office in Fairbanks and the Raven Correspondence School offices are accessible by car.  Of approximately 45 teachers, 22 are members in this non-agency fee local.  Additionally they had exhausted their association leave and depleted the association bank account traveling in from villages the previous fall for bargaining sessions.

Their NEA-Alaska colleagues voted unanimously to support a resolution at the January 08 Delegate Assembly condemning the Yukon-Koyukuk  School District ’s actions.  MYEA members urged their colleagues statewide to get the word out that YKSD was not a place that treated teachers with respect or fairness.  MYEA members reached out to their non-member colleagues and together through teleconference calls and emails began formatting a crisis organizing plan.  The goal—while pursuing all legal avenues which included the filing of two unfair labor practices and a grievance on the signing bonus issue, was to convince the YKSD board that they needed to reconsider their vote and treat all teachers with the respect and fairness they deserved. 

Ron Fuhrer, President of the state’s largest teacher local, the Anchorage Education Association, donated postcards which every teacher sent to every board member with personal messages about fairness, respect and honesty.  Teachers participated in monthly, twice a month and finally weekly crisis teleconference calls on the NEA-Alaska Meet Me Conference line.  They wrote letters to the editors of various papers, made personal contacts with board members who lived in their villages, contacted village elders and native councils, made parent contacts, “worked to the rule” and made their presence known at the spring school board meetings by joining through video conferencing from the villages.   Fliers were developed targeting the spring job fair in Anchorage and sent to NEA affiliate offices around the country asking members to get the word out.  YKSD Board members and parents saw teachers continue to model Athabascan values in their village schools and continue to teach but they also experienced an association organizing and advocating that those very same values, those of honesty, respect and fairness also applied to teachers.

At their May 9th board meeting in Manley Hot Springs, YKSD Board members finally got the message and moved to reconsider their previous January 08 vote.  On Wednesday, May 14th in the shortest school board meeting on record, YKSD board members voted unanimously to approve the previously rejected tentative agreement.  The district agreed that teachers would receive their bonuses in their June paycheck and that they needed to start the upcoming 2008-2009 school year in harmony working collaboratively with teachers—not against them.

Though small and isolated by geography (the district is the size of some lower 48 states at 65,000 square miles), MYEA teachers demonstrated that organizing around issues can work—even with small numbers and even in bush Alaska.

New York State ESP leader Debbie Minnick looks back to the time her local affiliate boosted starting paraprofessional pay by 50 percent.

We paraprofessionals were the lowest paid in the Ithaca, New York, district. And you know what we do: We work with the most difficult kids in the whole school district. Sometimes, we have more of a connection with the students than the classroom teachers. I’m talking about special ed students; we’re with them more, directly teaching them more.

Respect was such an issue throughout our whole living wage campaign. Not only did we want the pay, but we wanted the respect that went along with that.

I had three different women in my local come to me and say they went to the Salvation Army for dinner. They didn’t have any more food at home and they didn’t have any more money to make it through to their pay day. Three of them happened to run into one another eating at the Salvation Army.

You just get pushed into a campaign like this. What’s right is right, and what’s just is just, and you have to take on this kind of commitment—all of you.

It’s a Ton of Work

We started negotiating with the district in January 2001. We took several months before that preparing for negotiations with staff from the NEA state affiliate. We were very lucky to have a local living wage coalition.

We asked for $11.50 per hour, which I think was a 73 percent raise. When we told him, the assistant superintendent had his own calculator out. He put his glasses down, looked at us incredulously and said, “You do know that’s a 73 percent raise, don’t you?”

Not to fool you—it’s a ton of work. And it was key to have all members on board before we started. We had meeting after meeting, before the campaign, during the campaign, all the time.

Written communications were going out, telling members what we were asking for, telling them what we were getting ourselves into. We told them we could not do this without everybody’s support. If you don’t have your own members on board, it’s going to fail.

Reaching Out to the Community

Our next step was to get the community involved. Throughout the year and a half of this living wage campaign, we escalated our outreach activities—we  held candlelight vigils, rallies, panels with well-known community members, and testimony of paraprofessionals. We told the community who we were, what we did, and what we earned for all of that.

We made a video (Video Part I; Video Part IIand we screened it at the local library, and at the same time, invited a panel of seven religious leaders—including a priest, a rabbi, a minister, and a Tibetan monk--who all read scriptures about the indecency of paying people poverty wages, which is what we were earning.

As the campaign escalated, we had a "Parade for Paras." We ended having 500 people in the parade itself, not counting the people who were watching the parade. We had stilt walkers and jugglers, kids from the schools, kids on bikes with signs that said, “Tykes on bikes for pay hikes.” It was a huge family and community event.

We also sent out petitions, that were very easy to create and get signatures for. We just asked: Would you pay more in your taxes to support paraprofessionals in the district so they can earn a living wage? People were signing left and right. At first, they didn’t know who paraprofessionals were. When we explained what we did and what we were payed, they were appalled.

In just a couple of days, 3,000 people signed -- a tenth of the population. We turned the petitions over to the board members.

You Have to Go For It

Just before we settled, one of our last activities was taking over the school board meeting completely. . . We had about 50 people signed up to speak. The board said, “We’ll take the first couple of people and then we’ll adjourn for executive session,”which they knew would last a couple of hours. “The rest of you can wait until we get back,” they said. Well, the announcement  sent everybody over the edge. We all stormed the microphone, chanting, “Let us speak! Let us speak!”

They were so embarrassed, that the whole nine-member board, the superintendent, and all the school administrators  huddled for about ten minutes, and finally said, “OK.” And then they listened to all 50 of us individually.

You'll Get What You Bargain For

Remember, if you’re asking for 50 percent or 20 percent, who cares what you end up with? It’s better than the 3 percent that you normally get. So you can’t think of any of it as a failure, because you’re going to get more than what you normally bargain for. And, in June 2002, we won  a 50 percent raise in the starting salary at the end of the third year of the contract, and no givebacks!

—From an interview with Dave Winans, NEA Today