The Boston Teachers Union and school department ended two years of often heated labor talks this morning after reaching a tentative agreement on a new contract, officials said.
“There was about 30 of us in the room for 11 hours,” Boston Teachers Union president Richard Stutman said in a phone interview this morning. “Something good had to come out of it.”
The two sides wrapped up talks around 3 a.m., Stutman said after the union agreed to the school department’s salary demands in exchange for concessions on several remaining items.
Stutman said the school department agreed to lower class size in two grades in all the city’s under-performing grades, to hire more nurses, to provide schools with social workers the union had requested and equip special education classrooms with more assistants, under certain conditions.
Teachers will receive a 12 percent salary increase over six years. The current average salary is $81,600.
The contract is retroactive to August 2010.
The two sides also hammered out the final details on the implementation of a new teacher evaluation system, Stutman said, which proved to be one of the biggest sticking points as last month Mayor Thomas M. Menino asked the state to step in and try to resolve the acrimonious dispute.
Talks were slated to move to fact-finding before an agreement was reached.
“It’s an absolutely a great day for the kids of the city of Boston,” said Dot Joyce, spokeswoman for the mayor’s office.
Menino, Superintendent Carol R. Johnson and union representatives are expected to hold a news conference at 11:30 a.m. at City Hall to discuss more details of the agreement.
via City, teachers union reach tentative contract agreement – BostonHerald.com.
MNLABOR 