Minneapolis teachers reached a tentative deal early Friday to end a two-week strike as politics, the pandemic and pay complaints continue to drive demonstrations in California.
Minneapolis Public Schools announced on its website that thousands of teachers and students will return to classes on Monday morning, pending a union membership vote to ratify the deal.
Union leaders claimed victory.
“These historic agreements contain important wins for our students and the safe and stable schools they deserve,” the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers and Education Support Professionals said in a statement.
The strike in Minnesota’s largest city began March 8 as months of negotiations stalled over union demands for better pay for teachers and support staff, multicultural protections for teachers, class size limits and more mental health staff.
Teachers in nearby St. Paul reached a deal on March 7, narrowly averting a similar strike.
However, a strike continued Friday in California’s capital, with the threat of another one looming.
Teachers walked off the job in Sacramento on Wednesday, demanding better pay and mental health conditions amid COVID-19 stress.
“We are on strike because every student deserves a teacher in their classroom in a fully staffed school,” the Sacramento City Teachers Association said in a statement on its website. “We are facing a severe staffing crisis in our district. It’s time to prioritize our students.”
The union claims on its website that 3,000 students in the Sacramento City Unified School District lack substitute teachers and nearly 600 students “go without any instruction” each day due to a shortage of tutors.
Despite having a budget surplus of “hundreds of millions in federal funds” that could be used to recruit and retain staff, the union also claims the school board in California’s capital has demanded “cuts in the average educator’s take-home pay of $10,000 per year.”
A spokesperson for Sacramento’s school district referred The Washington Times to a Wednesday statement that outlines the ongoing 2% salary increases and other concessions it has offered the union.
“The district has offered a good faith proposal that gives SCTA-represented employees a reasonable raise, fully paid health plan for all staff and their families, bonus payments, and additional paid days of professional development,” the Sacramento City Unified School District states on its website.
Meanwhile, the Mount Diablo Education Association in Contra Costa County is poised to go on strike after more than 250 days without a contract, according to the California Teachers Association.
Also in the San Francisco Bay Area, more than 300 members of the Rohnert Park Cotati Educators Association in Sonoma County recently ended a March 10-17 strike amid demands for a pay raise.
In February, the government-funded California Center on Teaching Careers reported that burned-out teachers taking early retirement have created more than 30,000 vacancies in the state’s public schools.
Similar strikes have recently ended elsewhere. In the Chicago suburbs, teachers from Proviso District 209 returned to work Monday after their union reached a tentative agreement on a three-year contract for employees in three high schools.
Experts say politics and the pandemic have contributed to the teacher burnout fueling the strikes, with school districts reporting thousands of vacancies nationwide as teachers have increasingly quit the profession since COVID-19 lockdowns began two years ago.
Last Thursday, the American Psychological Association reported in a study that teachers and administrators have experienced a rise in violent threats from students and parents during the pandemic.
“Many problems were already on the rise, such increasing demands related to helping children experiencing mental health needs, and conflict-related working conditions where teacher concerns have gone unaddressed,” Tammy Hughes, APA fellow and a psychology professor at Duquesne University, said Friday. “Unheard voices tend to get louder and louder under this kind of stress.”
Sara E. Rimm-Kaufman, a professor of education at the University of Virginia, said many teachers reached the end of their ropes this year when students returned to campus from two years of virtual learning.
“Students have come to school with more needs than ever having experienced stress, trauma, and inconsistent conditions due to the pandemic,” Ms. Rimm-Kaufman said. “Plus, students have learning gaps. It’s hard to teach addition and subtraction of fractions if students didn’t learn about fractions last year.”
She said trust between teachers and families has further broken down in recent battles over school mask policies, gender pronouns and racial justice lessons.
“We’re seeing that schools have become a political battleground and that is taking a toll on teachers,” Ms. Rimm-Kaufman said. “Masks or no masks, teach racial history or not, for teachers, they are increasingly operating in a space where they feel unsupported by the families of the students whom they teach.”
Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of the history of education at the University of Pennsylvania, said the strikes highlight how American families give parents both “enormous demands” and “low status.”
“You don’t have to approve of every decision that teacher unions made during the pandemic to admit that there’s a huge disconnect between rhetoric and reality,” Mr. Zimmerman said. “We call teachers heroes and we pay them like serfs. No wonder so many of them are walking out of school, either in strikes or into retirement.”
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.
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