Newton teachers strike, arguing city can afford better pay and staffing

Newton public school educators walked off the job Friday, canceling classes for thousands of students at nearly two dozen schools in the district.

The Newton Teachers Association, which counts 1,700 members, alleges that despite the city’s high tax revenue, many educators — especially its classroom aides — are struggling to meet the state’s fast-rising cost of living.

Newton is just the latest school district in Massachusetts to be caught up in a wave of teacher strikes in the last 18 months. But with nearly 12,000 students and a per capita income over $90,000, it’s also the largest and most affluent of those to experience a strike.

The strike marks the culmination of years of tension between the Newton Teachers Association union and Ruthanne Fuller, Newton’s mayor since 2018. The union, which has been bargaining for more than a year and working without a contract since August, voted to authorize a strike Thursday evening.

The NTA’s demand for higher pay for classroom aides — who are sometimes known as paraprofessionals — echoes demands in other recent educator strikes, including ones in Haverhill, Malden and Woburn.

The starting salary for classroom support staff in Newton is around $26,000 a year, according to a union report from November. And while their salaries can climb to nearly $42,000 after several years of service, many aides leave their posts after just two or three years, according to union leaders.

On Friday afternoon, thousands of students, educators and families convened outside Newton City Hall to voice concerns about staff pay and conditions. Several aides spoke to a need to hold multiple jobs in order to pay their bills.

Newton educators are also seeking higher cost-of-living adjustments, social workers in every school and better substitute-teacher coverage.

David Bedar — a union official and history teacher at Newton North High School for the last 17 years — argued that Newton is well-positioned to meet the union’s demands.

“A city like this should be able to afford to have social workers in elementary schools, when even young kids are struggling with mental health,” he said. “What are we doing if we’re not willing to fully fund the schools and take care of them?”

In a statement Friday, the NTA highlighted inadequate mental health support as another cause for the strike. “Our youngest students need mental health support at levels previously not seen,” they wrote. “As long as we keep failing to pay a living wage to behavior therapists and aides, student needs will continue to go unmet.”

As of 4 p.m. Friday, no negotiations had taken place. Union president Mike Zilles said his team arrived prepared to bargain starting at noon, but that the city’s team had no proposal to offer, instead offering to present a “market analysis” comparing educator salaries in Newton to those in similar municipalities.

Meanwhile, in a statement Friday afternoon, Fuller noted that strikes are illegal under state law. (In the past, striking unions have incurred hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines associated with their actions.)

Fuller asked union officials to “engage with Newton's elected School Committee which is ready and waiting to settle a competitive, sustainable agreement.”

Zilles said he expects negotiations to resume in earnest over the weekend. If no agreement is reached, school could be canceled again Monday and into next week.

According to the latest available state salary data, the average full-time educator in Newton earned roughly $93,000 in the 2020-21 school year, ranking 69th statewide.

The other school districts in Massachusetts that went on strike in recent years all reached agreements though in some cases only after a week of school closures.