You may have heard that teachers have been protesting by wearing red and picketing before and after school, but what’s the issue at hand?
Since June, more than one thousand BSD teachers and specialists have been working under an expired contract. This was following the end of the 1 year continuation of a 3 year contract that expired 2 years ago. The Brandywine Education Association, or BEA, is the teachers’ union that has been negotiating with the district since June to find a compromise with a contract that will bring teacher salaries up to inflation without losing working conditions.
Delaware is a no-strike state, so teachers have protested outside of their working hours. On Tuesday, December 10th, teachers picketed at Mount and Little Mount, with elementary school teachers at MPHS in the morning and middle and high school teachers at MPE in the afternoon.
The contract that teachers are operating under now was implemented in 2020, and U.S. inflation has raised prices by 22% since then. Based on that inflation, Brandywine teachers now could be making 18% less than they were relative to 2020. The BEA holds firm that they will not trade working conditions for money, and won’t accept cuts to any teacher salaries.
More recently, the BSD has proposed mediation to solve the contract issue, which would involve the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) to assist in settling the dispute. BEA president Steve Rulon says that the union is going to give mediation a try, but currently it is unclear when those negotiations would start. Until a settlement is reached, teachers will be having designated days to work bell-to-bell, meaning that they will not be doing work outside of their clocked hours. This includes things like responding to student messages outside of school hours.
