Paras’ Contract Sparks Dissent

By 2023, New Haven Public School entry-level paraprofessionals will earn $23,397 a year, thanks to a $1,000 raise.

Some paras, who are among the city’s lowest-paid employees, say this raise isn’t enough — particularly amid uncertainty about what schools will look like during the pandemic.

The raise is a product of paraprofessionals’ forthcoming new contract with the Board of Education.

The union has formally approved the contract in a controversial process. The full Board of Education is scheduled to take up the contract Monday night.

Critics of the new contract have raised a number of concerns — including the lack of a retroactive pay raise, an increased extent to which paras can be asked to substitute for teachers, and an absence of stipulations that specifically address Covid-19.

Only 87 paras — out of around 450 employed by the city — voted on whether to approve the contract at a session in June. Some paras criticized the ratification process, which took place over Zoom. Some said they were unable to cast a vote.

Paraprofessionals include unlicensed assistant teachers, special education and ESL aides, parent liaisons, outreach workers, and Head Start teachers. A majority are Black and Latina women. Some have worked in the school system for decades without advancing in their pay scale. Many work two or three jobs in order to pay their bills.

Five paras who spoke about the contract to the Independent said their work to ensure that no student is left behind in the classroom is essential, yet chronically undervalued.

“We work with so many kids who are traumatized, coming out of different situations: substance abuse, domestic violence, parents who are incarcerated,” said Angela Walder, a para at Barnard Environmental Sciences Magnet School. ​“We’re taking on responsibilities that are not even in our job description and they don’t want to pay us.”

“I’m blessed to have another job, but I care about my coworkers. I see them working hard,” said longtime paraprofessional Albert Alston, who is also a postal worker. ​“Kids listen to us. We celebrate birthdays. We feed them. We console them. We comfort them. It’s going on 20 years, and we’re still begging to get compensated with the rising cost of living. No one’s listening. No one cares.”

”Less Than You Pay A Babysitter.”

The contracts includes a 2.4 percent raise for the 2020 – 2021 school year, a 2 percent raise for 2021 – 2022, and a 2.4 percent raise in 2021 – 2022.

Salaries for paras who are assistant teachers currently range from $22,313 to $28,370 a year. By 2022, those salaries will go up to between $23,397 and $30,343.

Per the new contract, eligible paras will be able to move a step up in the pay scale in 2021.

Earl Jackson said this will be the first step advancement in his 22-year career working as a paraprofessional in New Haven.

Jackson currently makes less than he did in 1988, when he worked at the Brigham Women’s Hospital in Boston, he said. He works two other jobs, at Yale New Haven Hospital and Continuum of Care, to supplement his income as a para.

Jackson and other paras expressed frustration with limited opportunities for advancement. In both the most recent and forthcoming paraprofessional contracts, there are four salary steps for assistant teachers and two salary steps for Head Start teachers, compared to over 10 steps for teachers and administrators.

Paraprofessionals’ previous contract was valid from July 1, 2015 to June 30, 2019. The contract was initially set to be negotiated in the fall of 2019, but changes in union representation and leadership delayed the process.

While paras will get a raise beginning in the 2020 – 2021 school year, they won’t get a retroactive increase in pay for the 2019 – 2020 school year not covered by the 2015 contract.

“None of us would accept that in our professional lives,” Sarah Miller, an activist with the New Haven Public School Advocates, said of the lack of a retroactive raise. The NHPS Advocates raised this point alongside other concerns about the contract in an email to the Board of Education last week. ​“When a new contract starts, that is just standard practice and it’s really shameful that anyone at the district thought they were gonna get away with this.”

Several paras agreed.

“The raises are absurd,” said Claudine Wilkins-Chambers, who has been a paraprofessional for 46 years and served as the Local 3429 president until last December. ​“We work hard. We are the least paid.”

Several paras and the NHPS Advocates lamented a change to substitution practices in the contract. Under the former contract, paraprofessionals could refuse an assignment to substitute for a teacher for longer than one day. Under the new contract, paras with bachelors’ degrees can be asked to substitute for up to ten days per month. As a newly added stipend, paras with Bachelor’s degrees can earn an additional $45 per day that they serve as substitutes.

According to Miller, outside substitutes earn $95 for each day they fill in for a teacher.

“It’s an insult,” said Wilkins-Chambers. ​“Every day we sub, they’re saving fifty dollars.”

“Forty-five dollars is a smack in the face,” said Jackson. He has a bachelor’s degree, but he said he is worried that paras who don’t may be asked to substitute anyway, without the protections afforded by the contract.

Miller also criticized the contract’s $14.50 hourly pay for extra duty work, which includes staffing before-school, after-school, and summer-school programs.

“That’s less than you pay a babysitter,” Miller said. ​“They should be making what janitors make, at least.”

Representatives from Local 3429, the union representing New Haven paraprofessionals, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) declined to comment on the content of the contract, following standard practice during negotiations.

”We Are Essential Workers”

The contract took shape during a time of uncertainty for New Haven’s school system, as the district weighs how schools can educate students while maintaining public health precautions during a pandemic.

The new contract does not guarantee hazard pay, personal protective equipment, or other safety stipulations for the Covid-19 era.

The necessity of social distancing will likely significantly alter the way classrooms are structured for the 2020 – 2021 school year, and it is unclear how paraprofessionals’ role will adapt.

The town of Hamden recently announced plans to open in-person classrooms for four days per week. In order to ensure that kids can social distance, half of the students will be present inside the classroom at any given time; the other half will be in a separate room, where paraprofessionals will assist them in accessing the classroom remotely.

This past school year, when fears of Covid began to reach New Haven, Head Start paraprofessional Dyann Munroe stocked up on antibacterial cleaners not just for herself but for her classroom.

“I was looking for sanitizer for my school and my home,” she said. ​“I’m trying to keep myself and the children safe. We were all doing that.”

Angela Walder, a para at Barnard Environmental Sciences Magnet School, spent the end of the year working remotely after the school system closed, helping her classroom’s teacher with Google Classroom software. The prospect of returning to school during a pandemic is daunting to her.

“There’s no way that we’re gonna be able to work with those students from a six-feet distance,” said Walder.

Walder was recently diagnosed with a pulmonary embolism, which could put her at higher risk if she contracts Covid. She has also had trouble breathing from inside a mask and can’t imagine having to wear one all day.

In the past, Walder has supplemented her income as a para through a job at Walmart. She said she can’t rely on a second source of income anymore; she said she left her second job in the spring after multiple co-workers contracted Covid and one of them died.

Alston expressed doubt that all students would be able to wear a mask throughout the school day, particularly some of the kids with special needs he works with.

Munroe echoed this concern. Paras’ work involves close contact with kids; Monro often finds herself changing her preschoolers’ diapers.

“How am I supposed to have a preschooler put a mask on six hours a day?” she asked.

Jackson and Wilkins-Chambers said they wished negotiations had been delayed until New Haven’s school system finalized plans for the school year and determined the role that paras will play.

“We are essential workers,” Alston said. ​“The time has come for us to stop being treated like second-class citizens.”

”Not Able To Vote”

Paraprofessionals also complained of barriers to participation in the process of ratifying the contract.

Due to Covid, the union needed to adapt its usual in-person voting process to social distancing restrictions. It decided to hold discussions and meetings on Zoom and to run the actual vote via SurveyMonkey.

Several paras reported that they were unable to cast a vote due to technological snafus. Only 87 paraprofessionals voted on the contract — 55 in favor and 32 against — out of 445 individuals in the union.

“That’s a lot of people not being able to vote on a contract that’s gonna affect them for the next four years,” said Albert Alston, who has worked as a paraprofessional for 20 years.

When it came time to cast his virtual ballot, Alston could not access the link to vote on the contract, he said.

Union members had from 4:17 p.m. to 4:35 p.m. to cast their votes. As he realized he couldn’t access the poll, Alston found a piece of paper and wrote in all-caps in bright green marker: ​“I am not able to vote!” He held the sign up to his web camera.

Alston wasn’t alone. Wilkins-Chambers also said she couldn’t vote. She, along with Earl Jackson and Head Start para Dyann Munroe, reported receiving calls from colleagues who said they couldn’t vote.

They said that people messaged in the Zoom chat feature and called Local 3429 president Hyclis Williams about an inability to vote as well.

Jackson and Munroe both said that when the voting period finished and AFSCME Council 4 representative Emily Demicco heard that some were unable to vote, Demicco laughed and said, ​“Oh well.”

AFSCME Council 4 spokesperson Larry Dorman denied this account.

“At the very end of the call, one of the Local Union officers privately messaged Emily to say she had wanted to speak in favor of the contract, but hadn’t been able to unmute herself,” Dorman wrote in a statement. ​“Emily was fully aware that she was still on video and unmuted, and she responded to the officer directly, laughing and saying (to her recollection) something like ​‘Oh no! Oh well…’ At no time did Emily laugh at the members.”

Williams also vouched for Demicco. ​“I must say that Emily has been nothing but respectful and helpful to members,” she wrote in a statement. ​“At no time during this whole process was she unprofessional.”

Dorman said that a few paras who had been unable to cast their votes remained on the Zoom call as Local 3429 President Hyclis Williams and AFSCME representatives sent the link to vote to their personal email addresses. ​“We confirmed over Zoom message and through members giving us thumbs-up over Zoom video that those who had said they were having difficulty voting were able to vote,” Dorman wrote. ​“We did not close the Zoom call until each person who had said they were having difficulty voting indicated they had gotten through.”

Alston and Wilkins-Chambers maintained that they were unable to vote. Alston said he received the email that Dorman mentioned, but ​“when I finally got in, the vote was over. It was too late for me to vote.” Both said they would have voted against the contract.

“The voting process was a total sham,” said Alston. ​“It reminded me of voter suppression.”

Several paras expressed frustration that all members, aside from union leadership, had been muted during a question-and-answer session about the contract over Zoom, which took place for an hour before the vote commenced.

Members had been given the opportunity to submit questions via the Zoom chat feature, but Wilkins-Chambers said she did not see that option. Munroe said she tried to submit a question about the voting process through the chat but never received an answer.

The union sent out an email about the vote to a mix of members’ personal emails and official New Haven Public School emails, according to Dorman, who said that the representatives were doing their best with the contact information they could access. Jackson criticized the use of Board of Education emails for union matters, which he said went against typical practice.

Wilkins-Chambers and Munroe said they hadn’t seen the email about the vote; they had found out about the Zoom call through Jackson, who had called to notify them.

Jackson said the pandemic posed other challenges to participation in the contract process aside from the technological hiccups. ​“I tried to rally some people, but for a lot of people, this just wasn’t a good time,” he said. Some colleagues lacked adequate Wifi access. Without school or camp, some have been busy taking care of their children. Some have been worrying about finances, particularly as summer programs — a crucial source of income for many — have been canceled. ​“People lost loved ones,” Jackson said. ​“People weren’t worried about negotiations.”

Going forward…

The Board of Education’s Finance Committee reviewed the contract this past Monday and unanimously voted to pass it on to the full board.

“I was kind of glad we got this deal done because it did take a very long time,” said CFO of schools Phillip Penn. ​“The indication coming away was that the negotiation teams on both sides were happy with how the deal played out.”

Finance Committee member Larry Conaway raised concerns about critiques of the contract brought up in the NHPS advocates’ email to Board of Ed members.

“Those were some very outstanding points that were made,” he said. ​“It sounds like what you’re saying is one thing, the advocates are saying another thing, and I just want to make sure those 500 paras feel this Board is representing them appropriately.”

Penn replied that the Board of Ed’s role is to cast ​“an up-down vote on the contract that’s presented and ratified by their union.”

“If the board were to reject it at this point, it would go to arbitration and cost each side [tens of thousands of dollars] in legal fees,” Penn added.

Miller said that, at this point, the NHPS Advocates are not advocating for a new contract to be drawn up, as a renegotiated contract might put paras in a worse off position. Instead, she said, they are looking into ​“some kind of agreement that’s an addendum to the contract that made some of these changes.”

Conaway told the Independent he would be open to such an agreement if paraprofessionals want one.

“I just want [paras] to be treated fairly… I just want to make sure that they can live, particularly in this climate of Covid and uprising and systemic racism,” he said.

Board of Ed representative Darnell Goldson said an addendum would not be enough. ​“Suggesting some purely cosmetic changes to the contract is the worst kind of politics that I will not be a part of,” he wrote in a text message.

Goldson said that paras have reached out to him with concerns about the ratification process. ​“For the last several months I and a few other board members have argued for real substantive changes to help improve the workers lives, at less that the cost of one administrative position,” he wrote. ​“The majority has not been willing to do so, and the negotiators have used that unwillingness to convince the union leadership that they did not have board support, which has led to this lousy contract where they are basically at the same place three years from now.”

For now, Alston has moved to withdraw the agency fee he pays to AFSCME. He and his colleagues have bolstered their activism.

“My name has been all around the city,” said Jackson. ​“I have been contacting people, Facetiming people, just trying to rally people to not let this happen.”

The full Board of Education is scheduled to discuss the contract at its bimonthly meeting on Monday night.