DANVERS — A crowd of 150 teachers, students and parents walked together into Essex North Shore Agricultural & Technical School on Thursday morning to bring attention to stalled contract negotiations with the school’s administration.
They stood outside the school with signs that read “Bargain in good faith” before heading into the building at 7:15 a.m. Their demand: To have open contract negotiations with the district before the teachers’ contract expires on June 30.
“Because of our refusal to hide what’s happening during negotiations, the district won’t sit down at the table to negotiate,” said Debora O’Reilly, a biotechnology teacher at the school and president of the Hathorne Teachers Federation Local 1269, which represents Essex Tech teachers.
This is the first time the union has called for an open negotiation to be a part of the contract negotiation’s ground rules, O’Reilly said. That way, union leaders can more effectively keep students, parents and teachers informed about the process and whether negotiations are going well, she said.
Traditionally, the school district’s lawyer represents the interests of Essex Tech administrators during negotiations.
“(The lawyer) doesn’t know our school, our experiences,” O’Reilly said. “It makes more sense to negotiate through conversations with the administration directly, but this isn’t happening.”
Essex Tech administrators and the teachers’ union have “a long history of bargaining in good faith and reaching agreement,” the district said in a statement.
“Unfortunately, the current leadership of the union is more interested in public relations than following a proven process to get to a fair agreement,” the statement said. “The district is ready to continue negotiations in a way that will most effectively meet the needs of teachers, students, families and taxpayers within the district.”
The change in negotiation style is the first of several improvements teachers hope to make at the school through a new contract.
Over-enrollment has caused class sizes to be an average of 24 or more students, which is not conducive to the learning environment, O’Reilly said.
The district also recently shifted to a six-period schedule. Because students rotate between academic classes and vocational ones every other week, teachers instruct nine classes out of 12 periods over the course of two weeks.
“We can be responsible for more than 200 students in a two-week period,” O’Reilly said. “If you think about the fact that you only have an hour a day to prep five classes some weeks, that means that teachers will have to do more work at home.”
The union is asking to reduce the number of classes to eight over a two-week span so that teachers will have two blocks to prepare each day, O’Reilly said.
The number of students in shop classes has also increased, O’Reilly said. While more teachers have been added to these courses, the district has not enlarged the shops.
“They’re overcrowded. (Students) are not getting the one-on-one hands-on experience that you need in those classes,” O’Reilly said.
Along with adjusting class sizes and addressing space concerns, the union is calling for fair compensation, transparency in school operations, safe and clean facilities, increased educator diversity and other demands to be addressed.
“(The district) has our agenda items, they just won’t sit at the table,” O’Reilly said.
Essex Tech Superintendent Heidi Riccio said the district has been trying to work with the union regarding the negotiation’s ground rules.
The district has met formally with union leaders once, she said.
The district has also worked to solidify negotiation ground rules with a union that represents clerical workers, custodial staff, farm maintenance workers and other staff at the school, Riccio added.
“For us, our biggest thing is to be collaborative and work with the teachers,” Riccio said.
Contact Caroline Enos at CEnos@northofboston.com and follow her on Twitter @CarolineEnos.
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