Teachers voted to strike Thursday afternoon. The move escalated the tension in a messy labor dispute and created uncertainty for parents of the city’s 3,700 public school students.
“Moments ago, my fellow members and I voted to authorize a strike beginning on September 13 if the board fails to come back to the table and stay there until we reach an agreement for a contract covering this school year,” said Fran Brock, Burlington Education Association president, in a press release issued late Thursday afternoon.
Brock, a Burlington High School history teacher, lashed out at the board for imposing contract terms last Friday and also accused the board of neglecting student needs.
“We are done standing by while a shrinking percentage of the district’s budgets goes to student instruction. And we are done standing by while this board prefers condescension over collaboration,” Brock said in her statement.
Board chair Mark Porter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The board disagrees with the union’s assessment of the situation. Members have said they are trying to increase instruction time to pull underperforming students up to grade level — with resistance from the union.
The board voted 9-1 to impose a contract for the 2017-2018 school year that offered an average $1,702 raise for teachers, representing a percentage increase of about 2.4 percent.
Burlington teachers earned an average of about $69,000 last year. Top pay was $84,750 and entry level pay was just more than $43,565.
Teachers rejected the imposed terms.
Over the course of some 17 contract meetings, the board developed a number of charts that suggested recent teacher raises and local school taxes have outpaced what taxpayers can afford.
This year’s strike vote echoes the discord that soured that start of the school year in 2016, when the board also imposed a contract and teachers took a strike vote. But at the last minute, the two sides were able to hash out a one-year agreement and there was no strike.
It’s unclear how things will play out this year.
Brock said teachers truly want a solution.
“We don’t want to strike; no one ever does,” she said. “What we want is for this school board to recognize our determination for a contract that works to keep the very best teachers so our city’s children can thrive.”
Related Stories
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!
Is the Burlington Education Association (Teachers Union) making itself irrelevant? Each contract cycle, they behave exactly the same: Refusal to meet. Refusal to compromise. Attack the integrity of the school board and administration. Attempt to create a crisis by running the clock out. If the BEA wont come to the table ready to negotiate realistically, why should the school board and administration waste so much of their time coddling their bad behavior. Burlington teachers make an average of $70,000 a year, get generous health care, pension and other benefits and summers off. Their complaint is that they couldnt get 1% more?
Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. It is time for the School Board to stand up for the taxpayers in the City. Parents, don’t let a few greedy teachers hold your children hostage. If teachers don’t want to teach, it’s time to replace them.
I really wish the school board could pull a Reagan (air traffic controllers) and fire the whole bunch of them. I bet there are plenty of folks looking for teaching jobs.
As a Burlington taxpayer I support and applaud our school board for taking a brave stance and standing up against the greed and underhanded tactics of the teacher’s union. it is astounding that $70,000 salaries for working part time (six months/year, FIVE months if they take their month of sick days!) is not enough, then they can quit.
These teachers have zero empathy or understanding for the struggles of their community to meet their endless demands, most of us working 12 months/year with few or no sick days, at salaries that are significantly lower. Unions have bankrupted entire cities and huge multinational corporations desperately trying to meet their endless demands. I am pleading with the school board to please hold firm for the sake of taxpayers who cannot breathe under the weight of supporting these incredibly ungrateful teachers.
Burlington teachers must work 7 hours each day, even if it is for only six months per year let’s give them a break. I bet if we raise their average pay ten percent they’d be very happy. I bet they wouldn’t ask for more next year. Oh sorry, the union tells me they always ask for more. It doesn’t matter how much they make they will always ask for more. Never mind.
Teachers only work 6 months? Teachers only work 7 hour days? It seems there is a lack of understanding as to what teachers do and how they help communities, at least by the last two posters.
Instead of imploring teachers to quit because they don’t understand your struggles, maybe you should try teaching to see how difficult it is.
Understanding? I understand that with 70k and the summer off you should be more than willing to push through the “difficult” school year…
I think the comments are an accurate representation of how the local communities feel about the teachers’ demands. Most of us respect teachers and want the best for students, but teachers, like the “rich” (which may include some teachers now), need to pay their fair share (in this case, towards insurance). At a time when the president and his secretary of education are doing their best to wipe public schools off the map, teachers should be thankful they have the jobs they have.
“Instead of imploring teachers to quit because they don’t understand your struggles, maybe you should try teaching to see how difficult it is.”
We pay the teachers. You seem to be saying that the teachers’ jobs are more difficult and more important than all of the rest of ours. That’s arrogant and insulting. And obviously untrue.
No one’s saying that teaching is necessarily an easy job. But my job is stressful, too, and I don’t get a guaranteed raise every year. And I don’t get my Cadillac health care paid for. And I don’t get world class retirement benefits (paid for). And I don’t get to hold the children hostage by striking if my demands aren’t met.
You cry that we don’t understand the poor teachers. I say, you apparently don’t understand the words greed and arrogance.
Yes, Burlington teachers work six months, seven hours each day, according to their contract. Instead of being grateful for how generously taxpayers have funded their salaries and benefits to greatly exceed the average resident’s full-time salary and benefits, they continually ask for more. It is never enough.
Vermont pays more to educate our students than any other state. At what point do we stand up for taxpayers? Yes, teachers do important and vital work. Is their work more difficult or important than accountants, plumbers, or daycare workers? I think not. Continually declaring that teachers deserve special status and pay for their part-time jobs is specious at best.
Burlington teachers are very well compensated for their important and difficult work, I think it’s time to fight for Vermont’s average taxpayer struggling to raise their children and pay their mortgage. These are the people who need our help, teachers have been doing very well for themselves for a long time now.
Teachers pay taxes too. If you don’t like your job’s compensation or benefit package then do something about it–form a union, switch jobs, etc.
“I think it’s time to fight for Vermont’s average taxpayer struggling to raise their children and pay their mortgage. These are the people who need our help, teachers have been doing very well for themselves for a long time now.”
I completely agree. The answer is not to reduce the salary of one profession. It’s to raise up everyone else. Wages all over Vermont need to improve. “Quality of life” is not a benefit that should be used in a compensation package.
Here are facts for those posters who seem to have their numbers wrong:
Burlington teachers are contracted to work 7.75 hours/day, 187 days/year (approximately 9+months) – school ends in mid-June and resumes in late August – teachers put in about a week on either end of the student school term – so teachers are in the classroom during 10 of the months of the year.
No BSD teacher I know EVER puts in the minimum (7.75 hours/day – they’re there at least 15-30 minutes prior to students’ arrival and the same post student departure), and the majority take work home.
Most have earned master’s degrees or the equivalent number of credit hours and are required by the state to earn graduate level credits every 5 years to be re-certified (which is also costly).
However you feel about the current situation and either side’s positions, post and base your comments on facts, please.
Surprising isn’t it, that Governor Scott could not get out of the gate with legislators to even consider having teachers’ contracts negotiated by the state. Charters can be changed. I think January 2018 will be a prime time to revisit Scott’s idea.
“most of us working 12 months/year with few or no sick days, at salaries that are significantly lower. ” – so a job is a job is a job? If those are your working conditions they should be everyone’s?
Do you have a master’s degree and 15+ graduate credits beyond that? Do you foster and nurture people’s children-arguably their pride and joy and life’s masterpieces? Teachers are professionals who, by and large, dedicate their professional lives (and some personal) to other people’s children-please introduce me to any teacher you know who got into the gig for the money and the benefits and the respect from the public-I’d like to hear their story.
“Is their work more difficult or important than accountants, plumbers, or daycare workers? I think not.”
Well I think so.
Teachers work is definitely more important than accountants and plumbers (daycare workers are teachers as far as I’m concerned). I think working with children is far more difficult than pipes and water or forms and spreadsheets, to put it simply.
I believe most parents would essentially agree. If not, ok, but most parents I know value their children and their children’s education above anything else. I think we don’t spend enough on education: here’s an interesting article:
http://www.businessinsider.com/education-military-spending-comparison-2016-9
Try spending some substantive time in a classroom ASAP when you can and invite a teacher to join you at your job when they can. We could all do with more mutual understanding even if we have different priorities.
“Burlington teachers are contracted to work 7.75 hours/day, 187 days/year (approximately 9+months) – school ends in mid-June and resumes in late August – teachers put in about a week on either end of the student school term – so teachers are in the classroom during 10 of the months of the year.”
This is false, the contract is publicly available and I urge people to inform themselves. Beyond their three month summers off and 7 hr workdays, teachers get entire weeks off throughout the year, spring vacation and winter vacation et al. I notice you didn’t mention the 5 weeks of sick days. This all adds up to an amount of work days that is not considered full time in any other industry.
And those of us who work 8 or 9 hrs each day also show up for work early and leave late. And continuing education is a requirement for many professions. Excusing their unreasonable demands with weak arguments like this only proves our point. $70,000 is enough, taxpayers with masters degrees who work 12 months/year with five sick days deserve to have relief from teacher’s excessive benefit and salary demands. VT NEA’s team of highly paid negotiators ought to be requesting a rollback in pay, if they had any concern for our community. They do not.
Yes, please inform yourselves, this is not false:
BSD calendar:
http://district.bsd.schoolfusion.us/modules/groups/homepagefiles/cms/2383192/File/SY%2017%20-%2018%20Calendar%209-12.pdf?sessionid=e1f1b08e9e4be9ade681116c72360809
3 month summers off?
Most current contract:
http://human-resources.district.bsd.schoolfusion.us/modules/groups/integrated_home.phtml?gid=2364460&sessionid=e1f1b08e9e4be9ade681116c72360809
Article VIII, section 8.7
“…seven hours, forty five minutes…”
page 18 of contract, page 21 of document
Article XVII, section 17.1(b)
“…187 school days…”
Calendar is ultimately established by the board
Regardless how one feels about the overall situation, facts are vital to any substantive discussion!
I do not have any interest in debating each and every one’s gripes, disagreements, etc…sorry.
I do, however, feel it necessary to call out misinformation and a glossing over of facts.
There are few professions with a more important job than teaching. To see others so easily demean them is disheartening.
I know of some great teachers BUT I know some who shouldn’t even be in the school teaching our children.. $70,000 a yr with summers off, time off with pay for schools vacations. Teaching isn’t always easy, They wanted to teach, the thing I am not crazy about, they’re there to teach, then they need to teach, my nephew graduated from HS he did not know how to write nor spell hardly at all.. the teachers sure didn’t do their job…Why ???
I resent the accusation that we demean teachers if we don’t agree with their demands.
We all appreciate and respect teachers and the work that they do. Quibbling over whether they get 60 or 80 days of vacation each year or work 7 or 7.5 hours each day is not the point. The point is they get much more money than the average Vermonter for working fewer days. And that isn’t even a problem, nobody here is arguing they shouldn’t get more or work less.
People are upset because teachers aren’t happy with their higher salaries and Cadillac benefits and many days off. They feel it isn’t enough and they should get more. Saying this isn’t about money and benefits is not what their union says, every year it is precisely about the amount of their raises and the level of their benefits.
As teachers continue to exceed taxpayers salaries and benefits by larger amounts, resentment will grow. Especially for those of us who work two jobs and 16 hour days with 15 days of vacation. It is pretty upsetting to see people argue over 7 hours or 7.5 hour days. 60 days of vacation or 80 days. People respect teachers but that will change if teachers don’t respect taxpayers. I think their union could care less about how hard it is to meet their rising demands every year.
Every time this issue comes up, someone on here makes the simpleminded suggestion that instead of criticizing the public school teachers’ union for its arrogance and greed, we should all just ask our employers to give us the same salary, benefits, and working conditions as the teachers. Problem solved!!! See how easy that was?!!
Knowyourassumptions has used reductio ad absurdum to try to draw attention away from the fact that basically all professions in Vermont pay less than they do elsewhere while the cost of living in Vermont is just as high as those other places.
Vermont teacher salaries are around the middle in terms of what other states pay. There is plenty of room for them to earn more. The same is true of all professions in Vermont and of course the solution is much more involved than just asking for a raise.
No, the only thing that’s absurd is the simpleminded suggestion that all of us non-teachers can just improve our salaries and benefits by asking, demanding, or taking a better job. Even if that were an appropriate answer to the greedy teachers union (and it’s not), it’s not possible because we’re trapped in a non-competitive economy. And the tragic irony is that the anti-business attitude that is partly responsible for making the Vermont economy so uncompetitive (for non public sector employees) is foisted on us by the same bleeding hearts in the Legislature who are owned and controlled by the VT NEA. “No” to business but “yes” to the unions. The deck is stacked in favor of the union and against the taxpayers.
“There is plenty of room for them to earn more.” That might be true if the federal government were paying their salaries. Apparently you don’t get the fact that it is the Vermont property taxpayers who are being forced to pay them. And those taxpayers are maxed out. So, no, there is no more “room” for them to earn more. Get it now?
So you’ve identified the problems (sort of), knowyourassumptions. Now take an appropriate action that does not involve bringing others down because you can’t earn what you should be able to.
Consider the alternative of Vermont’s School Choice Tuitioning governance. When parents can choose the school that best meets the needs of their individual children, public or independent, the labor debate disappears from the political lexicon and saves us all the aggravation of having our personal points of view attacked – not to mention the time and money everyone would save.
You persist in your simpleminded response: “Instead of complaining about the teachers’ greed, just earn more money yourself.”
At this point, I can only assume that your let-them-eat-cake attitude about teacher greed is either ignorance of economic reality or deliberate indifference to the have nots in this debate.
You’ve missed my point and you’ve assigned a quotation to me that appears nowhere in my words below.
Property taxes are basically based on income so the crippling impact of paying those teacher salaries are adjusted according to income.
I know people who work in IT, just as an example, that earn 60% of what they would make in a city like Boston. Cost of living in Chittenden county is very comparable to what it is in Boston. I know doctors and nurses that had to leave Vermont because their pay rate was much lower than elsewhere.
Teachers also make less here in Vermont than they do in many other places.
I am saying that there is no reason professions in Vermont can’t approach what the same professions pay in other places. Teachers are included in this.
No, I certainly did NOT miss your point. It’s as clear as a bell: tough luck if you don’t want to pay the ever increasing demands of the teachers union; get a better job. That’s the only solution you’ve offered.
You make the simpleminded suggestion that we “all” could/should make more money than we do in Vermont. How thoughtful. But you simply ignore why that historically hasn’t ever happened in VT and can’t happen. You’ve offered nothing except the wish that Vermonters could earn higher salaries.
There’s a very good reason that IT professionals earn more in Mass than they do here. Mass. doesn’t tell businesses, “You can’t build that here (factories, highways, housing). You ignore that reality completely. In fact, you’re a hypocrite: you have railed on these pages against development.
In the meantime, teacher salaries in VT are disproportionate to Vermonterers’ salaries and ability to pay, and you offer no solution except “shut up and pay.”
You’ve missed the point. That’s too bad.
Knowyourassumptions has missed the point but that shouldn’t stop him from trying to make up what Philo is saying and then dispute it.
Philo has railed against the kind of development that the mall represents. I have always understood his point as being the mall development is not the kind of development Burlington needs. Burlington needs something that will advance the economy, not make one person richer. At least that’s what I’ve always taken away from what he says. It’s hard to write a political treatise in the comments section of the Seven Days as you are asking him to do.
As far as the teachers, the answer is not to limit their earning. The answer is to build an economy that can support good schools. I don’t have the space, time, or inclination to deliver my treatise on how but it certainly doesn’t focus on shut up and pay.
If Philo has a point other than Stop Complaining, Pay The Teachers What They Want, And Get A Better Job Yourself, he has been unwilling or unable to make it despite 7 posts on this thread so far. I’ve repeatedly asked him to explain how the rest of us are all supposed to do what he instructs — get better paying jobs — so we can continue to feed the ever increasing demands of the teachers union, but he refuses to do so.
Now Lade comes to the rescue with vague platitudes. “Burlington needs something that will advance the economy” and “the answer is to build an economy that will support good schools.” How lovely! Problem solved! That is not an answer to the question of how we afford the greedy demands of the teachers union.
Yes. Philo really should outline his entire political strategy for bringing better paying jobs to Vermont within the 300 word limit he is given even though he is likely not a politician.
Fire them all!!!!!! There are many good teachers out there that would take the job in a heart beat. Teachers don’t teach anymore they just get kids ready to pass state test and they fail at that!!!
Try busting your ass behind a big piece of equipment all day or working in the elements!!!!!!
I don’t feel sorry for any of you!!!!!!!!!!!
Philo’s argument that we should all just demand better pay at our current jobs or, if those demands don’t work, just go out and find better paying jobs, all the while applauding and supporting the ever-increasing pay and benefit demands of teachers is the very reason why resentment is building against teachers in this state.
Yes, Philo, many of us do have advance degrees and our professions require CEU’s for us to maintain our license/credentials/positions. We don’t have three and a half weeks paid vacation between Christmas and the end of April, plus at least six weeks off during the summer. We don’t work seven or seven and a half hour days, but rather we work nine and ten hour days, often taking work home with us at the end of the day.
Oh, and VTreehugger, the next time your plumbing is in need of repair, I suggest you call a teacher. After all, in your world there is no need for plumbers.
I’m not at all saying demand better pay from your current job. Thanks for reading, though.
Currently there is not much supply of “better paying jobs”. This has to change.
Thanks for the deep analysis that Vermont needs “better paying jobs.”
While you insist that we pay the teachers whatever they demand.
And while you oppose job creation and housing development in downtown Burlington.
That’s all very, very helpful.
Thanks for reading my posts and for trying to summarize them.
To clarify:
I don’t feel we should give teachers “whatever they want” but I don’t begrudge them for making the money they do.
I am not against downtown development, just one that creates student housing, parking, and retail stores. I see no substantial, long term jobs being creating with the Sinex/Weinberger project.
I do feel employers in Vermont as a whole pay significantly less than employers in other areas while the cost of living here is comparable to those other areas.
Thank you again for taking such an interest in my posts.
I very much like our BSD teachers and think they should be very well compensated. The point of this post is not to judge, simply provide facts re BSD pay structure. Below is what weve gathered from the BSD and from the State Retirement Board(800-642-3191) assuming a 30 year service career:
Approximately 35% of the Burlington School Budget goes to working teachers(excludes spec ed).
BSD is spending ~$24k per student (includes preschool).
Average salary annual ~ 69k (Start salary ~ $43k, End salary ~ 80k).
Rest of Life Retirement Salary Annual (pension) ~40k per year (~ 0.0167×30 years x 80k (salary final 3 years)).
403B Annual Tax Fee retirement contribution $16k per year prior to age 50, $24k post age 50.
Work Days = 210 days work/50 days off (excludes weekends, assumes a few summer weeks work).
Unused Sick Days = Can Be Saved For Retirement And Paid Out In Retirement(this needs to be checked).
Average Annual Mandatory 5% Pension Contribution = 3.4 k per year (tax deferred).
Rest of Life Medical Insurance = Blue Cross, retiree pays $165 per month (covers rates controlled by ObamaCare 80/20 Rule).