RCSD, teachers ratify new contract. Here's what's in it

Update Jan. 4: The school board and Rochester Teachers Association members both voted to ratify the contract Jan. 3. The school board vote was unanimous, while 80% of teachers voted in favor.

.....

Original story follows:

Rochester teachers and the city school board will vote Tuesday on a new contract that grants a 3.8% pay raise as well as $3,000 in retention bonuses but sidesteps difficult issues regarding class size and social-emotional support staff.

The proposed three-year contract comes after years of acrimonious negotiations between the Rochester Teachers Association and multiple RCSD superintendents. Teachers and other unit members have been working under extensions of the last new contract, signed in 2016. The union declared an impasse in negotiations in 2021 and again in August 2022.

RTA President Adam Urbanski said negotiations picked up steam with the appointment of Carmine Peluso as interim superintendent. Peluso was awarded the permanent job last week.

Urbanski complimented Peluso's approach to negotiations without mentioning the superintendent's predecessors, Lesli Myers-Small and Terry Dade.

"The key thing was that you could trust, when (Peluso) gave his word about something, that it wouldn't change right after the meeting," Urbanski said. "That made communications more meaningful."

From 2021:Dragging its feet? RCSD delays signing teacher, administrator union contracts

More:Carmine Peluso named permanent RCSD superintendent

Raises plus retention bonuses

The raises are retroactive to July 1, and they are benchmarked to the average salary in the five highest-paying districts in Monroe County, as has been the practice since the Clifford Janey administration.

Some other key provisions:

• Members who are still with RCSD on June 30 of the next two school years will receive a $1,500 retention bonus, to be paid from federal stimulus funds.

• Teachers and others responsible for creating students' special education plans will get additional release time to do so.

• Members will be expected to spend 15 minutes — but no longer — helping with student dismissal after school, something Peluso said would help ensure a safe end to the school day.

• The principal and RTA committee at each school will create building-level guidelines for student discipline, to be consistent with the districtwide code of conduct.

• Some of the time now reserved for staff meetings can be used instead for professional development.

Two other points the RTA had been insistent upon are not included in the contract but instead will be the subject of ongoing negotiations. They are a limit on class sizes and the addition of extra social workers, counselors, reading teachers and other support staff in classrooms.

"We both have a mutual agreement that our schools need some social-emotional supports," Peluso said. "What that's going to look like and how that's going to go, we weren't ready to bind that into a contract."

State Monitor Shelley Jallow has pushed the district to increase its student-teacher ratios to those spelled out in the contract. Urbanski has argued that those figures are upper limits, not targets.

The agreement also does not address Jallow's concern regarding how administrators can observe teachers in the classroom. The state Education Department declined to make Jallow available for comment on the proposed contract.

Peluso said that he kept her up-to-date on negotiations, but that she was not at the table for most of them.

Some point to proposal's flaws

Part of the equation on class sizes, Peluso said, is the difficulty of recruiting and retaining high-quality employees, in particular at a time of extreme shortages in some critical areas.

Critics within the union say that issue points to one of the proposed contract's major weaknesses — salaries too low to attract the best teachers and prevent them from leaving for suburban schools once they've gained experience.

By design, Rochester salaries are among the highest of all local educators but are not the absolute highest.

"We’re losing reading teachers to the surrounding districts because they’re offering better incentives," said Audrey Sowell, a sixth-grade dual language teacher at Enrico Fermi School 17. "If you can go from the city where it’s more challenging to a less challenging environment and make more money, we're going to continue to lose teachers."

Urbanski conceded that the outflow of teachers to the suburbs is an issue but said he does not believe money is the main motive. He noted that the two $1,500 retention bonuses would partially close the gap with the highest-paying districts and also with the rate of inflation, which exceeds the proposed raise.

More:RCSD hopes new mentorship program will help retain BIPOC teachers

More generally, teachers who plan to vote against the contract on Tuesday said it fails to provide enough support for the most vulnerable children, particularly after the pandemic.

"If we want to close that academic gap from COVID and heal these kids who are in real crisis, then we need to have the strongest contract in the county," said Claire Labrosa, an English as a second language teacher and organizer of the progressive caucus Rochester Organization of Rank and File Educators.

Building-level guidelines on discipline

On the topic of student discipline, the contract proposal says leaders in each school will develop their own guidelines that are aligned with the districtwide code of conduct. That could include "ranges of discipline that may be imposed for the more commonly seen violations."

Peluso insisted that does not represent a step away from the hard-won code of conduct, which emphasizes a restorative approach to discipline issues, but rather puts an emphasis on the need for data analysis and planning.

"I’m not looking at this as something to do in lieu of restorative practices," he said. "This to me is how you look at your supports and organize (preventative responses)."

The ratification vote was supposed to take place in December but was delayed after schools closed due to weather. Teachers will vote during the day Tuesday, while the school board will vote at its Tuesday evening meeting.

Contact staff writer Justin Murphy at jmurphy7@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: RCSD, teachers ratify new contract. Here's what's in it