After more than two years at the bargaining table, Neighborhood House Charter School educators have reached a preliminary agreement with the administration on their first union contract.
The tentative three-year pact covers about 150 school workers and includes measures on wage increases, student-to-teacher ratios ,and opportunities for educators to be involved in decision making, the Boston Teachers Union announced last Tuesday.
“First contracts are complex and often take a long time,” union president Erik Berg said in an interview. “We certainly would have liked it to happen more quickly, but we’re happy that it came together when it did.”
Educators will vote on the agreement early this month. The staff at the public charter school, which was founded in 1995, elected to unionize in February 2024 and started bargaining that June.
“What’s important about having a contract in place is that the ratios, class sizes, and other conditions are codified in such a way that they cannot be changed on a whim,” Berg said. “So, it’s really more about putting in place guidelines that everyone knows and adheres to.”
The school’s executive director, Edverette Brewster, had a front-row seat to negotiations despite stepping into the role after the unionization process had started.
“There was some trepidation because we’re new, and so it was this balancing act of trying to come into a community, get to know and build trust, while also simultaneously going through this process that can be contentious at points,” Brewster said in an interview.
He said his approach to this hurdle was being consistent and collaborative.
Who we are and were at the bargaining table were the same people we were when we left the room, when we entered the room, and we saw them on the next day,” he said.
“I would say,” he added, “that the impetus and rationale for unionization all happened prior to us starting… What was explained to me was that it was a desire to have more voice in decision making and more transparency from leadership in decisions.”
A contentious issue during negotiations was financials, he noted. “Charter schools’ budgets work very differently from traditional public schools… if the boiler breaks, we have to find a way to pay for it,” he said.
The contract calls for wage increases for employees in each year of the contract through a salary scale. Berg said wage increases differ for each staff member, and he could not offer a single percentage figure. Neither the school nor the union responded to questions about the details.
The agreement includes language that states educators’ rights and responsibilities and safeguards against “retaliation” for speaking about workplace or student issues.
“There was a recognition that the students at Neighborhood House come first,” Berg said, “and that getting a stable agreement in place with strong working conditions for educators and transparency around working conditions is going to make a better learning experience for the students, which is what everyone is all about.”
If the contract is not ratified, school and union officials will return to the bargaining table.
The Boston Teachers Union is also in the process of its first contract negotiation with Codman Academy Charter School.
This story is a product of a partnership between the Dorchester Reporter and the Boston University Department of Journalism.