'This is not what we wanted': Teachers, employees are dissatisfied with the board's resolution on collective bargaining
PETERSBURG—Juanita Jones has been working for the Petersburg school system for over 22 years. When she first started as a full-time teaching aid in 2001, she was making $10,000 a year. Over two decades later, she still scrapes by, and chooses not to go to the doctor when she feels sick to avoid more bills.
Jones works in Westview Early Childhood Education Center. She assists with everything the teacher needs help with: testing, lessons, facilitating small and large group discussions, taking notes for the teaching strategy, and classroom behavior management.
But her work extends even beyond what her duties require of her on paper. She washes the children's clothes. She does toilet training. She comforts them when they are crying. She helps the children resolve conflict when they don't get along. She talks to their parents. She acts as a second mom.
"Some of our babies even say Ms. Jones, I want to go home with you," she said.
Jones hardly ever misses a day of work, even when she is not feeling well. She is determined to get up every morning for the love she has for the children.
She currently is paid $26,000. Only two years ago, she was making $18,000.
At one point, she managed to raise her three children on her own with her meager salary when her husband passed away 16 years ago, with no help from government programs.
“It was hard but I just didn’t give up,” Jones said.
For extra change, Jones also works as a bus monitor, riding the school bus with the students every morning and making sure they got home safe every afternoon. For that, she gets paid $25 a day.
Jones wants the ability to collective bargain so that she can negotiate to have a livable wage, where she doesn't feel financially stressed. She wants to have the resources to buy healthy food and find a better apartment in a safer neighborhood.
“It’s only fair,” she said. “Why do you think I deserve so less? In the end, I have been here so long. I’m loyal, I’m faithful. So why do you still think that I should be way at the bottom when you got people coming in making way more?”
“Just look at everything that I am doing. I am going over and beyond to try to help these children," she said.
Resolution excludes key points, including the ability to negotiate wages
Petersburg Education Association union members have continuously asked the school board since the beginning of the year to pass a resolution that would allow school employees to have a greater say in their pay and working conditions. At one point, the board stopped communicating with the union and told them that they didn't need to vote on a resolution until August, which caused members to believe that the board was stalling on voting.
On June 21, the school board finally passed a resolution for teachers to have a form of collective bargaining after much pushback, though the terms were a far cry from what members were asking for.
Union members are upset that the board’s resolution excludes other employees of the school system, including nurses, administrators, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, social workers, and others from having the ability to negotiate their contracts and working conditions. Guidance counselors and librarians who hold a teaching license are included in this resolution.
"Not passing the resolution for all of us, it’s like a slap in the face to all of us," said Jones. “We matter too. It makes it seem like it’s all about the teachers. Some teachers, without the help of their assistant, they would not be able to make it in the classroom.”
Furthermore, the resolution does not allow teachers the ability to negotiate their wages or benefits, limiting the scope of negotiations to hours and scheduling, health and safety, and work rules.
It also includes a provision that would allow the school board to terminate the bargained contract at any time.
“Unfortunately, the resolution contains a number of provisions that completely undermine the bargaining process, showing the true intent of the Petersburg School Board is not to promote collective bargaining, but instead to deter employees from collective bargaining at all,” said a statement released by the Virginia Education Association, the group that oversees the school unions.
Teachers in the union have expressed dissatisfaction with the resolution.
Apollonia Gray-Thornton, a teacher at Westview, says that everyone in the school system operates as one team. She isn't satisfied with the terms of the resolution, especially not being able to negotiate her wages.
"It seemed like when there was a lot of pressure on them, then they said, 'Hey, we're going to throw this together...this will keep them quiet.' But it's not keeping us quiet, it started a whole uproar. And this is not what we wanted as far as collective bargaining."
Dr. James J. Fedderman, President of the Virginia Education Association, called the resolution “the most anti-labor resolution in the state."
“The Petersburg School Board had every opportunity to work with PEA and VEA to craft a resolution that could work for all parties, but instead they pushed through this weak and retaliatory proposal," he said in a statement.
Petersburg City Public Schools released a statement calling this move a "historic step." They wrote that they will consider extending collective bargaining to other employees "at the appropriate time in the future."
'I feel like it was a calculated move'
This past year was the worst one for Kimberly Mason since she started working as a nurse for Cool Spring Elementary seven years ago.
More fights were breaking out, more students were acting up, teachers were leaving in droves, and concerns that she and other union members had about getting the resolution passed fell on deaf ears, she said.
During one of the fights at Cool Spring, a Community in Schools staff member intervened but she ended up getting hurt in the process. Mason had to call an ambulance because the staff member couldn’t breathe.
Situations like this could’ve been avoided if they had a security member on staff, she said.
Though she works as a nurse, Mason says the school often brought students to her to help with behavioral issues.
“The children are listening to me when to me when they won’t listen to them,” she said. “A lot of us do a whole lot more than what we are supposed to be doing."
When she found out that the school board passed a resolution that didn’t include her, she felt very disappointed.
“I feel disrespected,” Mason said. “I also feel like my fight was in vain.” She feels like this was a “calculated move” on the board’s part, a response to cool the exodus of teachers.
She does not see this resolution as one that truly allows teachers to collectively bargain, to allow the teachers to have a say in what they want for their working conditions and their wages.
"The school board and the Superintendent are basically going to have say over every step of the way. That's not collective bargaining," said Mason. "Collective bargaining is when both sides come together and negotiate. There's no negotiation there whatsoever. And when the PEA started this, we started it for not just for teachers. We started it for every group of the employees under Petersburg City Public Schools."
Star Hargrove, a counselor at Cool Spring, said she felt the conditions listed on the resolution were restrictive. The whole process has felt like a battle against Petersburg Education Association union and the resolution to her felt like a retaliation against their organizing efforts.
“It felt like, oh my God, are you waging war against the union?" Hargrove said. "The union is speaking on behalf of the employees so in my mind, is this against the employees?"
Hargrove has had her hands tied as the only counselor serving 500 students. At times, she says that she feels burnt out. She was a teacher prior to working in Petersburg, so her teaching license does qualify her to be included in collective bargaining. However, other counselors may not have this privilege.
As part of the bargaining process, she wants a good student counselor ratio. She wants the administration to be more transparent when it comes to salaries and what is going on in the school system. She wants the teachers to get paid better wages so that there is less turnover.
“We want to see that type of responsible leadership to listen to the people," said Hargrove. "You can’t teach the kids without the educators in the building. The teachers cant teach the students effectively without school counselors. How do we feed them without a cafeteria worker? How would the building be led without a principal and assistant principal?"
"Don’t take away anybody’s voice because what they do, it also matters," said Hargrove.
"United we stand and divided we fall," said Jones. "I am too a product of PCPS. I am here with them working and helping them to achieve and reach their dreams, which are the children. The team work makes the dream work."
The union's fight: School union members want collective bargaining. They say the board is stalling to vote on the resolution.
Joyce Chu, an award-winning investigative journalist, is the Social Justice Watchdog Reporter for The Progress Index. Contact her with comments, concerns, or story-tips at Jchu1@gannett.com or on Twitter @joyce_speaks.
This article originally appeared on The Progress-Index: Petersburg school workers are discontent with the board's collective bargaining proposal
