A parent came across a stack of these flyers in a hallway at Newton South a few days ago.
They were told that “people” were handing them out at the gathering of all Newton teachers that morning. It sounds like the teachers’ union may be trying to stir up their membership for the next round of salary negotiations.
Next will be the handout that they wont stay afterschool to help their students or do anything “extra” until they get the contract they want.
Maybe they should transfer over to one of the other communities- OH but then they lose their tenure and they might be out of a job in a year. Now maybe they should consider that part of the equation.
Well lets hope that the SC puts into the contract that all teachers need to maintain a website with up to date homework like they do in Natick.
And isn’t there a rule against about handing out Union information in a school building??
This kind of material can be emailed or snail mailed to members so the pointed direction is to parents (residents). The numbers are what they are, why not buy a few stamps and send them directly? Otherwise we’ll wonder where you got the orange paper…school source?
Sincere good luck w the contract, this leaflet thing is too old school.
Probably the last thing that I’d want to do on the last unofficial day of summer is to print out teachers’ contracts from all of these districts and compare them, though the contracts all seem to be online. So, I”ll leave this task to someone more analytical.
What I will say, as a broad stroke is: ALL OF THESE DISTRICTS NAMED BY THE TEACHERS UNION NOW HAVE FULL DAY KINDERGARTEN — MEANING A SCHOOL DAY FOR KINDERGARTNERS THAT IS NO DIFFERENT THAN THAT OF OTHER K-5 STUDENTS.Belmont charges fees for this. Perfectly fine. At least they are offering this possibility. The last time that Newton parents were surveyed, they overwhelmingly wanted full day K, though there has been ABSOLUTELY no progress towards this under David Fleishman’s leadership[ (even though he said that he was in support of it when he was a candidate for his current position).
Generally, these districts have also made much greater strides in restoring world languages in the elementary level.
I’d also object to the districts that we are being compared to by the union — we are not a “W” community, as supported by the facts:
Median Household incomes:
Weston = $208,087
Wellesley = $155,000
Wayland + $136,594
Newton + $113,416
So, I’m really willing to make the Brookline and Belmont comparison, but let’s keep in mind a couple of other important considerations:
Brookline is on the GIC (as is Weston) a cost-saving insurance pool among Massachusetts municipalities and the same insurance that all MA state employees receive.
Belmont has ONE carrier – Harvard Pilgrim. They offer a 50% split on PPO and 80% on HMO vs. Newton’s 80% for grandfathered hires and 75-25% split offered to new hires.
Brookline charges a notable “materials” fee for non-resident staff that send their children to their schools. Belmont limits the number of staff children to 22 per year, with their teachers’ contract stipulating a lottery, if necessary. Newton currently has no such limits or fees, even though our schools are so compellingly overcrowded that we needed to pass an override.
I am not for charging fees to teachers and believe that when teachers have their children in our system, they become even more powerful stakeholders. Still, it can not be denied that this benefit has a significant monetary value, allowing teachers to pay Waltham or West Roxbury mortgages while their children receive premium Newton educations. Similarly, I can’t justify having the taxpayers of Newton pay more than what they need for health insurance when it is more efficiently and and economically provided under the state GIC program.
This means that one cannot simply look at a salary scale. Other benefits including all of the early release days, weekly early releases, and minimal required conference time with parents must be considered.
There are people whose jobs it should be to compare contacts and determine what is fair. I’m not against our teachers making more money, but not more money for no added value to our children’s education. We are lagging behind other systems in areas such as full day kindergarten and elementary world languages. I can’t see paying our staff more than systems that provide such programming.
As a taxpayer, I’ll not just pay more for what we already have. If the teachers want a raise, they need to directly link it with an improvement in the education offered by our system to Newton’s children.
Are the above numbers for salary alone or salary and benefits? While I value our teachers, I also agree with KarenN above, especially about the health insurance. Teachers have way more choice than those of us in private sector. We as a city need to provide full day kindergarten and all teachers should have a current website, with daily homework listed.
We are a more diverse city than Wellesley and Weston. I know our household income is not that of a Weston income. We have way more apartments than Weston. I think we should be a great public school system, however there is no reason to be on the top of the salary pile. We attract and keep and many great educators.
There one thing about a union the size of NTA; you better get your statistics right or they will absolutely be used against you at the table. Of course they have the right statistics! The sample they chose is very directional and meaningful in terms of proximity to Newton (they didn’t pick Nantucket), and relative demographics. Here are the 2014 average property values and tax bill for single families homes:
Property Value Avg Tax
Weston 1,400,790 17,832
Wellesley 1,080,522 12,469
Newton 817,396 9,907
Belmont 782,665 10,566
Lexington 740,204 11,481
Wayland 598,679 10,974
Brookline = residential exemption; no DOR data
This is from the DOR databank. Brookline has a residential exemption and the DOR does not use their data within the databank.
Not sure what Kindergarten has to do with average teacher salaries. There must be a relatively small number of Kindergarten teachers in those stats.
Nuts, sorry about the formating… Trying this
City/Town; Home Value; Tax Bill
Weston; 1,400,790; 17,832
Wellesley; 1,080,522; 12,469
Newton; 817,396; 9,907
Belmont; 782,665; 10,566
Lexington; 740,204; 11,481
Wayland; 598,679; 10,974
Brookline = residential exemption; no DOR data
Hoss – Home value and property taxes have less to do with people’s ability to pay than does income. Most of us who’ve lived in Newton for decades have homes with nominal values that we could never afford to buy today. Median income is a much more meaningful measure of residents’ ability to pay.
Also, Newton has a lot more rentals than most of the other towns on that list. That skews the meaningfulness of home value & property taxes for determining what residents can pay. Having lived in one of the pricier towns further west when I was married, I can assure you that the difference in economic heterogeneity between Newton and places like Weston is quite large (and one of the reasons, IMO, that Newton is a better place to live).
I agree that income is a better indicator of a town’s ability to pay. The home value and tax argument that the NTA always makes(reiterated by Hoss) is not theirs to make and is being made at the wrong time. Essentially, this messaging says that we need to pay a higher rate of taxes on our high property values. That’s not within the scope of their negotiations. There is no political will for an operational override, so they have to work within a finite pot. What they can negotiate is whether we go on the GIC, whether they have a higher deductible. Whether they’d rather have no dental insurance but a raise, etc. They can cut professional development. Or, whether they’d prefer larger class sizes by reducing the number of teachers and/or classroom aides. A tax increase isn’t on the table, so they can compare us to Weston all they want, but what good is it?
There have been very few operational overrides in our peer communities over the last 10 years, so there’s not much hope for us significantly increasing our tax rate. Like our neighboring communities, we’ll only get overrides for specific projects and/or programming that enhances the quality of education in Newton.Brookline’s last override was specifically tied to extending learning time. Before that, to restoring world languages at the elementary level. Wellesley’s recent override was also for restoring world languages and implementing full day kindergarten.
If the teachers’ union is going to point out how much teachers are paid in other systems, someone also has to be pointing out that these systems are also restoring/advancing their educational program while Newton has endured cut after cut over the past 15 years and underspent in maintenance (and paid more later) so that we could try to delude ourselves that we’re the W town that the NTA wants to pretend that we are.
As for the connection of Full Day Kindergarten to the teacher’s contract — our “hybrid” system was devised totally in response to a teacher’s contract, not pedagogy. The half day kindergarten teachers wanted to be paid full day rates without the same class size. Thus, we have the system we have. We could have someone donate enough money to run Full Day K for the next five years but nothing would happen if the NTA decided to oppose re-working the terms for the K teachers.
My advice to the NTA: If you want to win goodwill and support from taxpayers, try less stick and more carrot. That means more conference time or fewer early releases or getting behind an initiative for a debt exclusion override for FDK, arts education, world languages like your peers in Brookline and Wellesley already have.
Thanks for your contributions to this thread, KarenN.
This section was especially pertinent: “these systems are also restoring/advancing their educational program while Newton has endured cut after cut over the past 15 years and underspent in maintenance (and paid more later)”.
After the 2002 override, my children still read from the same ratty books, the recorder program was still scaled back from what my older children had received, the arts were cut and the class sizes stayed the same or grew. And so on. I have not forgotten or forgiven this. Promises, promises.
Very interesting discussion! For what it’s worth, I’d say that this is a prime example of why the entire educational system should be run by the Commonwealth and administrated uniformly across all cities and towns. And funded by a progressive income tax.
Berwick for Gov!
Anyway I just got back last night from Turkey – I tried accessing V14 via a few different ISPs there, but it seems to be blocked (I kid you not!). The government there has a history of blocking websites like Blogger, etc. so if V14 has some hosting affiliation through them, then it could be due to that.
At any rate, I’m catching up on my V14 reading and although there’s been a very interesting mix of articles and discussions over the last couple of weeks, there seem to be very few articles about cycling, transport, walking, infrastructure, etc. save for the streetlight articles – any chance of getting an update on the Greenway, for example? (Sorry for taking the discussion of topic.)
Thanks!
What KarenN said.
Karen – thanks for the great comments.
On KINDERGARTEN, what’s interesting to note regarding Belmont is that, although it is optional and comes with associated cost, the overwhelming majority of kids/parents do take advantage of the full day option. So much so that friends were recently told that their kid would be the only one in the class who wasn’t attending full day kindergarten if they chose to go that route.
It’s pathetic that Newton does not have full day kindergarten or at least offer it as an option.
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When talking about City finances, let’s not forget what happens to school expenditures (at 16K per kid) each time one little house is replaced by a two or more family unit, as in pix above. Or 150 units get built where no child lived before!
Help! I need to fix the pictures!
Isabelle, unfortunately, you can’t post photos inline, but you can post to a service like imgur and include a link.
and we should also remember what happens when the city turns an unsightly parking lot into a developed site with parking, businesses and senior housing.
@Adam: I think there may be people who need reminding, although I’d suggest that this is also what happens when you leave it looking like this.