Credit: Ainsley Jay

For the past three weeks every Friday teachers gather before school, demonstrating  to bring awareness to their contract enjoins. Educators walk into the high school Together  m at 8 a.m..

Due to disagreements between the teacher unit Wayland Teacher Association(WEA) and the school committee, contract negotiations remain ongoing. The Teachers Assistant Unit and School Committee already came to an agreement.

One unresolved request from the WEA is a Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) to salaries, based on attempts to account for inflation. According to a statement sent to the Wayland community from the WEA, on Friday, May 15, for the past five years Wayland educators COLA was 2.87%, with the regional inflation rate being 4.62%.

“I think both sides, the school committee and the union, came to the table with a number of pretty hefty requests, and we’ve been able to work productively to go back and forth and compromise and be creative about solutions to a number of those requests,” Pitcairn said. “It’s just really a couple of them that remain in the conversation and so first of all there are only a few things left to discuss, which means we can be more focused in our conversations.”

While the WEA is emphasizing COLA, the School Committee is focused on maintaining fiscal stability for the district.

“If School Committees enter into contracts that are not fiscally aligned with the overall town budget, it often results in having to reduce staff because the biggest line item for school budgets are personnel,” School Committee Chair Gibbons wrote in a statement. “This is something that we don’t want to do.”

According to Gibbons, the contract for Unit B of the WEA, consisting of teaching assistants and clerical staff, was agreed upon by the School Committee and union. Unit B’s contract was included in the school operations budget, which was approved at the annual town meeting on May 4.

The WEA Unit A, consisting of teachers, and the school committee had a negotiation session on May 26th and will convene next in early June. If both parties can reach an agreement, there would either be a special town meeting, which occurred three years ago, or the vote on transferring funds for the contract for the 2027 Annual Town Meeting.

Starting May 8, the WEA established a “May Matters” campaign to bring awareness to contract negotiations. The campaigns include “Work-to-Rule” actions, so teachers don’t respond to emails outside of work hours, and don’t advise student activities outside of contract hours, from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m..

“We hope families, as our negotiations continue, continue to support the teachers and the school system,” Bishop said. “Because we definitely need their support and it’s important to us and we have always felt their support and now we just, we want to make sure that that continues.”

The WEA said in its May statement advocating for a new contract, that Wayland risks becoming a “‘stepping stone’ district where we train talented teachers only to watch them leave for more sustainable careers just a few miles away,” due to other towns offering better compensation packages.

“The quality of education that students get here comes [down] to what makes this town great,” Member of negotiations team and wellness teacher John Berry said. “The school system is kind of the number one thing when people consider why they would choose this town to move here. We have amazing staff, we have amazing students, we have amazing families and it’s a great combination to set students up for a successful future.”

As Building Representative for the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA), english teacher Kelsey Pitcairn is in charge of communicating information from negotiations to the WEA.

One of the requests from the school committee was for elementary school teachers to work longer hours, and the WEA and school committee are still negotiating this.

At the Annual town meeting on Monday, May 4, the school budget was approved. The salaries and COLA are funded from the school budget.

“I’m incredibly grateful to our negotiations team,” Pitcairn said. “I think they’ve been doing a really wonderful job of speaking up for what our staff needs to do their best work for our students. I’m grateful to the school committee too, for sitting down across the table from us and trying in good faith to come to some sort of agreement.”

 

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