Boston teachers held "walk-ins" outside five schools across the district Thursday morning as they continue rallying support amid ongoing contract negotiations.
The Boston Teachers Union is fighting for better pay for teachers and paraprofessionals. They’re also asking for what they’re calling “inclusion done right” -- they say the district needs to properly staff the inclusion model used in classrooms for students with special needs and English Language Learners.
The union, whose contract expired on Aug. 31 right before the start of the new school year, has been in negotiations with Boston Public Schools since February. Right now, 8,000 educators are without a contract in the district.
Thursday's protest is a continuation of last month's citywide "walk-ins," which are meant to draw attention to the union's ongoing contract battle and demand movement in negotiations with the city without going to the extreme of going out on strike.
These demonstrations also happen before the school day starts so as not to impact students or time in learning.
Brighton High School teachers were among those taking part in Thursday's demonstration.
“We’ve been working without a contract for almost two months now, and we’ve been in negotiations for 9 months,” said Danielle West, a Brighton High special education teacher and BTU executive board member. "Many of our paras are lifelong paras and they can’t afford to live in Boston, many of them work two or three jobs coming in at 7 a.m. and working until 6 or 7 or 8 at night to afford to live here.”
Aside from pay, another major sticking point is the "inclusion done right."
“If we have too many students in a classroom, it’s really, really hard to teach all of the students, especially we want inclusion," said Brighton High Spanish teacher Ramon Trinidad. "We want to be able to teach students that have different backgrounds in the same classroom, and if we want to do that, we’ve got to do it with a classroom that a teacher can manage.”
Seventh grade English Language Arts inclusion and English Language Learning teacher Melanie Allen says while she’s licensed in all three areas, she’s a perfect example of why the current B-P-S inclusion model doesn’t work.
“I’m not three people though, I’m just the one person," Allen said. "And to ask one person to do three jobs simultaneously is not inclusion done right, it’s inclusion done cheap.”
The union says these walk-ins will be held on a rolling basis throughout the district until a contract agreement is reached. There is a negotiation session scheduled for later Thursday.
