After more than a year of negotiations, the Cambridge Educators Association (CEA) and the Cambridge School Committee have finally come to an agreement on a new three-year educator contract. This contract comes after over 20 bargaining sessions, as well as a long process of state-appointed mediation between the two parties.
The CEA and School Committee ran into three major points of contention throughout the negotiations, which held up the process: compensation, school day length, and educator evaluations. “[The School Committee] wanted these three things and they were not willing to budge,” said Ross Benson, a CRLS math teacher, to the Register Forum. “This has always been the case in my years here in Cambridge: they’ve never done a good job of listening to the educators.”
Compensation was one of the most hot-button topics of this year’s negotiations, with the CEA hoping for a cost-of-living (COLA) increase equivalent to inflation levels, and the School Committee refusing to budge on their initial 2.5-3.5% COLA offer.
Eventually, they settled on a compromise—teachers would get a pay increase of 17.25%, but the K-12 school day would also be accordingly lengthened by half an hour. This school day increase has been something that School Committee members have been trying to implement for years, despite opposition from educators.
“Our cost of living increase that we’re getting is only relative to increasing the school day,” CRLS English teacher Erik Scott told the Register Forum. “That’s not really a cost of living increase if you’re increasing the amount of time.” However, Scott added that he wasn’t in the profession for the money, and wasn’t opposed to the extra time with students as long as it was used well. The CEA, to answer Scott’s concern, has expressed high hopes for the longer school day. “All across the district, there’s a chunk of time that will be dedicated to educator collaboration,” said Dan Monahan, the CEA’s president, to the Register Forum.
The bulk of this extended time will be dedicated for educators, with the school day only lengthened by five minutes for the high school and thirty minutes for K-8. The CEA initially expressed reservations about lengthening the amount of instructional time for elementary school students but ultimately agreed with the School Committee’s proposal.
One of the final points of contention was educator evaluations. Initially, the School Committee proposed evaluating teacher performance via MCAS scores. The CEA strongly opposed this plan, which resulted in its exclusion from the final contract. “I think that remains a topic on which there’s not widespread agreement on, but it was needed to cross the finish line,” said Rachel Weinstein, a School Committee member, to the Register Forum.
Looking toward the future, educators are hoping to see compensation for the Educators of Color Coalition, which the new contract compensates for the basic expenses they spend on meetings, such as food, but not for their work around anti-racist education. However, on the whole, most are happy with the final product. “It’s definitely the best contract that I’ve seen in Cambridge,” Monahan said. “I think it’s the best contract in the state right now.”
This article also appears in our December 2023 print edition.
