A group of 55 adult educators has reached a tentative contract agreement with the Minneapolis Public Schools, teachers union president Greta Callahan said Friday.
“We’re really excited about it,” said Nate Hart-Andersen, who teaches math and reading to adults studying for a high school equivalency diploma, and who was the lead negotiator for the adult educators.
He declined to share details of the agreement, as he said members need to review it first. The adult educators’ priorities had been equal pay with K-12 educators and updating the contract to better reflect new online teaching duties, he said.
“We’ve not yet reached the goal of equal pay but I think we’ve made good progress towards the goal,” he said. Two years ago, during a three-week educator strike, Hart-Andersen told Sahan Journal that adult educators earn as much as 30% less than their K-12 counterparts. The agreement also takes important steps to modernize the contract, he said. “I’m definitely feeling proud of the contract and I expect that it’ll be well received by our members.”
The Minneapolis Federation of Teachers and Educational Support Professionals represents three different contracts. The educational support professionals have their own contract and bargain separately. The teacher chapter negotiates two contracts, one for K-12 teachers and one for adult educators. The adult educators provide classes for people pursuing their high-school equivalency and for immigrants learning English. That contract represents a much smaller group of educators than the K-12 teachers; according to Minneapolis Public Schools data, the adult educator contract represents 55 staff, while the K-12 contract represents more than 3,000.
“I am just feeling so hopeful,” Callahan said of the tentative agreement. “This did not happen two years ago.” The adult educators’ contract was the last item to be settled during the 2022 strike, she said.
RELATED STORIES
“We are excited that we’ve reached a tentative agreement with our adult educators and look forward to continued collaboration with MFT to ensure that our MPS adult education program attracts and retains passionate and committed staff to serve our adult students,” Aviva Hillenbrand, Minneapolis Public Schools’ executive director of community education, said in a statement.
The deal came at the end of a marathon 30-hour mediation session with the state Bureau of Mediation Services that started at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday and ended at 3 p.m. Thursday.
It also comes as Minneapolis Public Schools is facing a $110 million budget shortfall. The district has proposed cuts to programs like fifth-grade band, K-8 world languages, and contracted mental health services. The district has said that any additional funds for settling union contracts would result in even steeper budget cuts.
‘That felt like the opposite of the strike’
In a news release Thursday, Minneapolis Public Schools stressed its commitment to reaching an agreement with the teachers, and said the union had refused to share any timeline of any potential strike vote.
“MPS requested to continue mediation but MFT declined without providing a counter to the current proposal,” the district said.
Callahan denied that. She said the mediation session had been “productive” and that the union wanted to meet again as soon as possible. The mediator had not scheduled another bargaining session until April 23, she said, but she hoped the teams would be able to meet sooner than that. In the meantime, she said, they hoped to have a “sidebar” on special education workloads and share proposals over email.
The district’s tone did not reflect how the union felt about the mediation session, Callahan said. She suggested that because many of the district negotiators were new, “maybe they don’t understand how great this is.”
She described the teams passing proposals back and forth on pay, a top priority for teachers and a sticking point in the 2022 strike.
“We are not that far apart on salary,” she said.
Since the teachers have been in mediation for more than 30 days, their executive board can call for a strike vote at any time. But at their executive board meeting last night, no one motioned to do so, Callahan said.
“We made a ton of progress,” Callahan said. “That felt like the opposite of the strike.”
Clarification: This story has been updated to reflect newer data from the Minneapolis Public Schools on the number of adult education teachers covered by the contract.
