Christopher Peak Photo
Hyclis Williams addresses school board Monday night.
Working conditions for teacher’s aides have been ignored for too long in New Haven, especially as vacancies force them to lead classes they’re not certified to teach on their own, the newly elected president of the paraprofessionals union said in her first message to the school board.
Hyclis Williams said that during Monday night’s Board of Education meeting at King-Robinson School, a few days after being elected to lead Local 3429, which represents teaching assistants and social workers in city schools.
“They come in and they work tirelessly, day after day. They are the backbone, and they are the the heart of most of the classrooms, most of the time in most of the buildings,” she said, in a three-minute public comment. “They’re not given the proper recognition, and they’re not given the proper treatment, not to even think about the pay we receive.”
Williams is an outreach worker at Dr. Reginald Mayo Early Learning Center. She’s a volunteer for food banks and a regular at school board meetings. She lives in the Edgewood neighborhood, where she raised three kids after quitting a career in law enforcement in New York City almost 15 years ago.
Williams said she decided to run for the union post because she has seen “no change” in the district’s treatment of paraprofessionals.
“Everybody seemed to be helpless,” she said.
During last Wednesday’s union election, Williams won 69 of the 110 votes cast, beating out Claudine Wilkins-Chambers, the former president, and Deborah Daniels. She will serve a two-year term.
“My first order of duty is to address some of the big concerns that most members have,” Williams said. “Most of the staff are being shuffled around, are being treated like nothing. People are being told that they have no representation, that they have no union.”
“Most people, they get to the point where they’re just tired. They just don’t know what else to do,” she went on. “I’m here to beg and to urge board members to look into what’s going on in the buildings with paraprofessionals, especially assistant teachers.”
About 450 paraprofessionals work inside city schools. Just before the start of last school year, the union was hit with a round of layoffs, losing three assistant teachers and four student retention specialists.
Under the last collective bargaining agreement, which expired this summer, the union membership’s 10-month salaries top out at $28,379 for a classroom assistant, $33,798 for a parent liaison and $42,125 for a Head Start teacher.
The union contract explicitly says that paraprofessionals can supervise classrooms for “short periods,” like when a teacher has to go to a parent conference or a special-education meeting. But past violations of that provision were so routine that the school district had to enter a settlement with the union in 2009. That deal now lets paraprofessionals refuse to cover an absent teacher’s classroom for more than one day without consequences.
Williams said those rules are still routinely being broken, as this school year began with dozens of vacancies.
Iline Tracey.
Assistant teachers are “subbing for weeks and months and sometimes for the whole school year,” Williams said. “A lot of classes have no certified teachers. They leave and they don’t get replaced.” Even when there is coverage, the substitute teachers often “don’t know what to do, how to manage the classroom and understand the children,” she added.
The assistant teachers feel “broken down and tired, because they can’t keep up with the number of children they have to attend to every day, with their names and everything else that goes with it,” Williams said.
“People are at the stage of feeling helpless, like they’re not heard, they’re not counted as anything,” Williams concluded. “Give us some help.”
After the meeting, Superintendent Iline Tracey said that, when assistant teachers are put in front of the classroom, it’s primarily for “safety,” not instruction. She said she understands the complaints about “the duration of time” they’re being asked to fill that role. She said she’s thinking about raising the daily pay for substitutes, to compete with nearby suburbs.
Board President Darnell Goldson said the school district needs to figure out a better way than assigning classes to paraprofessionals.
“It’s against the union contract, and it’s not the best way to run a school system,” he said.