Richmond teachers union votes to approve contract

Richmond Public Schools’ teachers union voted Monday evening to approve a tentative contract that lays out raises and stipends that were negotiated between the union and school district administration.

Last December, RPS staff became the first public schools employees in Virginia to gain collective bargaining rights since the Virginia Supreme Court banned local government workers from unionizing in 1977.

The teacher unit of the Richmond Education Association is one of four units. The other three bargaining units, which voted to approve their tentative contracts last week, are instructional assistants; care and safety; and food and nutrition employees.

The teacher unit’s agreement includes a minimum of 12% raises over the three-year contract, stipends for certain leadership positions and at least three unencumbered planning periods per week.

It also includes a $55-an-hour pay rate for covering another teacher’s class during a planning period or losing planning time for testing duties.

Under the tentative agreement, when a classroom teacher absorbs students into their own class, given a colleague’s absence, the teacher would be paid $55 an hour divided by the number of classroom teachers accepting additional students. If a teacher absorbed an absent colleague’s class for a day, he or she could be paid nearly $400 extra a day under the tentative contract.

“If you want the kids to be treated better, you’ve got to treat the employees better,” said Virginia Education Association organizer Boez Young-El following Monday evening’s vote. “The reality is that the reason why the school divisions are like they are right now is because the employees have not been considered.”

While the Richmond Education Association’s teacher bargaining unit voted to approve the tentative agreement Monday evening, the Richmond School Board would have to ratify the contract in order for it to be valid. The vote is expected to take place at a January meeting.

School Board Chair Shonda Harris-Muhammed, who represents the 6th District, said she knows first-hand as a 31-year educator how dedicated colleagues are to each other in a time of need.

“I fully support compensating our teachers for covering classes during their planning time,” Harris-Muhammed said. “It may never be enough; however, I am thankful and grateful the Richmond School Board made it a priority to approve collective bargaining for teachers.”

Fourth District representative Jonathan Young — who cast the lone dissenting vote last year in the decision to grant collective bargaining rights to RPS employees — said the focus should be on increasing teachers’ salaries and improving working conditions rather than paying teachers extra for working outside of their scope, which he called “sorry money.”

“Radically increasing compensation for our teachers is just morally the right thing to do, and it’s incumbent on us that we increase compensation to be commensurate with what our teachers contribute,” Young said.

“However, if anyone thinks that the principle impetus for why so many of our teachers are so frequently out of the building or why we lose on average more than one in five teachers a year … if anyone thinks that it’s compensation, they aren’t reviewing the empirical data or leveraging anecdotal conversations.”

RPS workers were the first in Virginia to gain collective bargaining rights last December, and Arlington County Public Schools followed in May.

The compromise bill the legislature passed in 2020 — that repealed the ban on collective bargaining for local government employees — allows workers to negotiate contracts only upon approval of individual localities. For public schools employees in Virginia, that means the local school board must approve a resolution to allow negotiations for employees.

The Prince William County School Board granted the local teachers union collective bargaining rights in October, and the union has yet to vote on a contract.

Teachers unions in the cities of Charlottesville, Alexandria and Falls Church and Fairfax and Montgomery counties are at various stages of drafting resolutions, according to the Virginia Education Association. The resolutions would have to be approved by each locality’s school board in order for teachers to gain collective bargaining rights.

Across the state, 19 other teachers unions including Chesterfield’s and Henrico’s are organizing their workers or starting a campaign, according to the VEA.