Paul Bass file photo
Educators rally outside City Hall for full school funding last March.
City teachers will be getting a 15 percent pay raise over the next three years — while a new math-and-literacy tutoring initiative will be getting $3 million in federal aid to get off the ground — thanks to two recent education-focused votes by the Board of Alders.
Both of those votes took place Tuesday night during the latest bimonthly full Board of Alders meeting, which was held in person in the Aldermanic Chamber on the second floor of City Hall.
Alders unanimously voted to approve a contract between the New Haven Federation of Teachers and the New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) district. That now-finalized union deal will run from July 1, 2023 to June 30, 2026.
The new contract includes a 14.79 percent salary increase over the course of three years, raising the starting salary for New Haven teachers with a bachelor’s degree from $45,357 to $51,421 by 2026.
In addition, the contract will enact between a 2 and 5 percent increase in employee contributions to healthcare plans. It will compensate teachers an additional $42 per hour for covering classes during their prep periods. And it will guarantee union representatives a monthly meeting with NHPS administrators, during which teachers can raise concerns about working conditions.
Finance Committee Chair Adam Marchand summarized these contents to his colleagues on Tuesday, while underscoring “the important role that teachers play with our youth.”
Read the full contract here, and read more about its contents here and here.
Laura Glesby photo
The Board of Alders on Tuesday.
The alders also unanimously authorized the city to spend $3 million of federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding to create a “high-dosage” tutoring program for NHPS students.
Mayor Justin Elicker proposed this tutoring plan months after learning that last school year, 83 percent of third graders performed below grade level in reading and 87 percent performed below grade level in math.
The Elicker Administration hopes to enlist enough volunteer tutors to serve 1,500 students by 2025, with every student receiving at least an hour of tutoring across multiple sessions per week.
At Tuesday’s full Board of Alders meeting, Marchand summarized some concerns among Finance and Education Committee members about the proposal.
“Many [alders] had questions about a lack of details about how the money would be spent … and the administration’s reliance on very many volunteers,” Marchand said.
The committees ultimately recommended that the plan be approved, Marchand said, because of an amendment requiring a review committee comprising an alder, a Board of Education member, and a city staff member to oversee the program’s development.
“We need to be doing everything we can to ensure our students have the resources they need,” echoed Education Committee Chair Eli Sabin.
Now that the plan has been approved, city Communications Director Lenny Speiller said the administration’s next step is to issue a Request for Proposals (RFP) for at least one organization to administer the tutoring program. Speiller said the RFP will likely go out in early March.