Let’s Talk About Our Next Contract

Part 1: The Money Part - A Check is Temporary. A Raise is Permanent.

Let’s Talk About Our Next Contract

(Part 1, the Money Part)

Hola, it's me again!

As many of you are reading this, you may be adjusting to the first few days of school. So first, welcome back! I hope you had a great summer and enjoyed your Labor Day. Labor Day is usually the unofficial end of summer. We have our cookouts, spend time with family and friends, and enjoy one last long weekend before getting back into the routine, but Labor Day is about much more than that.

It's a day meant to honor the achievements and contributions of workers, and in my world, those workers are paraprofessionals. For months, paraprofessionals have been fighting for something that should never have been controversial: Better pay for the work we do every single day.

The RESPECT Check is now law. The $10,000 payment is supposed to provide some immediate relief to paraprofessionals who have been struggling with stagnant wages, rising costs, and years of being undervalued. The courts are going to weigh in on this, so stay tuned, but I strongly believe we have to be honest about what comes next.

The $10,000 cannot be the finish line. It has to be the starting point. A one-time payment does not fix our salary issue. It does not change our pensionable earnings. It does not fix longevity, and it does not change the fact that paraprofessionals need a real career wage.

Rumor has it that the union and the City/Mayor are already talking about this. I honestly don't know if that's true or if it's just another rumor, but when the next round of contract negotiations begins, we need to be clear about what paraprofessionals need. A permanent increase to our base salary. A serious look at longevity, and additional pay for paraprofessionals assigned to specialized and high-need work.

First, the $10,000 needs to become part of our salary. Period! Let’s make this really simple.

A check is not the same thing as a raise. Yes, a check helps you right now. A permanent raise is different. A permanent raise becomes part of your salary. You receive it year after year. Future raises are built on a higher salary. Your pension and retirement are connected to your actual salary. That's why the $10,000 should become part of our base salary through collective bargaining. The RESPECT Check can help us today. A permanent $10,000 base salary increase can help us today, next year, and throughout our careers.

Why should we have to choose between temporary help and permanent progress?

We shouldn't.

Second, longevity needs to mean something. So, let's talk about longevity. Longevity is basically the way we recognize and reward paraprofessionals for staying in the profession. Yes, some of us want to finish our career as teachers. Period!

If you've been a para for years, or even decades, you know that experience matters.

We build relationships with students, support families, work alongside teachers, and learn how to handle situations that can't always be taught in a training or a textbook. That’s experience. Right now, there are big gaps between longevity milestones. That means a paraprofessional can work for years without seeing any new financial recognition for those additional years of experience. We can do better, so let’s add more longevity milestones.

Currently, there are longevity milestones at certain points in a paraprofessional's career.

What if the next contract added more?

Here's what that could look like:

• Less than 5 years — Current

• 5 years — Current

• 10 years — New

• 13 years — New

• 15 years — Current

• 18 years — New

• 20 years — New

• 22 years — New

The goal wouldn't be to just add more numbers to the salary schedule but to make sure paraprofessionals are recognized throughout their entire careers. Before anyone says, ‘That's why we got retention bonuses in the last contract, let’s talk about that. A retention bonus and a longevity increase are not the same thing. A retention bonus gives you money. That's helpful, but again it's temporary. Longevity is connected to your years of service. It is part of your ongoing compensation and recognizes your experience year after year.

Think of it this way, a bonus says, ‘Here's some extra money.’ Longevity says, ‘You've dedicated years to this profession, and your salary should reflect that.’ That's a big difference. Just like the RESPECT Check, a retention bonus may help you in the moment, but longevity helps build a career. That's why we shouldn’t believe bonuses and longevity should be treated as the same thing.

I know what some people are going to say. ‘That sounds great, Alyson, but how are we going to get all of that at once?’ Maybe we don't. That's where actual negotiating comes in. Instead of trying to get every new longevity milestone immediately, we could phase them in over the life of the contract.

For example:

New Contract

Year Longevity Milestones Available

Year 1 Less than 5, 5, 10, 15 years

Year 2 Less than 5, 5, 10, 13, 15 years

Year 3 Less than 5, 5, 10, 13, 15, 18, 20 years

Year 4 Less than 5, 5, 10, 13, 15, 18, 20, 22 years

Let's break that down even more. Year One: Add a new longevity milestone at 10 years. Year Two: Add the 13-year milestone. Year Three: Add the 18- and 20-year milestones. Year Four: Add the 22-year milestone. Now, does that mean this is the only way to do it? No. It's a starting point, a starting proposal. It's something to put on the table and negotiate, and here's the important part, no one loses anything! Is it starting to sound like building a real career ladder for paraprofessionals yet?

Third, meaningful salary differentials for paraprofessionals. Not every paraprofessional assignment is the same. We all might have the same title, but we don't all do the same work. Some paras use specialized language skills, work with English Language Learners and Multilingual Learners, work in intensive special education settings, or work with students with significant behavioral needs. Some provide intensive personal care or have medical or health-related responsibilities. Others have assignments that require significantly more specialized skills, physical work, emotional energy, training, and responsibility. So why should every assignment be treated exactly the same?

We need a simple and understandable differential structure. Tier I: Specialized Skills,

$2,500 annually. This would be for assignments requiring additional skills or expertise, including:

• Bilingual/dual-language assignments

• ENL/MLL assignments

• Other specialized instructional responsibilities

If we expect paraprofessionals to bring specialized language or instructional skills into the classroom, we should compensate them for those skills.

Simple.

Tier II: High-Need Assignments, $5,000 annually. This could include assignments involving significantly greater responsibility, such as:

• Intensive special education

• 8:1:1 / 12:1:1 programs

• Autism programs

• Significant behavioral needs

• Medical or health-related responsibilities

• Intensive personal-care responsibilities

These assignments can demand an extraordinary amount of patience, skill, physical energy, emotional energy, and responsibility. That work needs to be recognized in our paychecks.

Tier III: Special Programs, Exceptional or Hard-to-Staff Assignments, $7,500 annually

This tier could include special programs and the most difficult assignments or schools, including:

• LTA’s

• Extreme behavioral needs

• Highly intensive medical or personal-care responsibilities

• Designated hard-to-staff or high-need schools

• Assignments requiring extraordinary additional responsibilities

These are often the assignments where recruitment and retention can be the most difficult.

If we want experienced paraprofessionals to take on these responsibilities and stay in these assignments, we need to provide a meaningful financial incentive.

The structure is simple. $2,500, $5,000, and $7,500. Three levels. Clear criteria. Meaningful compensation. Period! As paraprofessionals have been saying for a long time, the work we do is not one-size-fits-all. Our compensation shouldn't be either.

So, let's recap. Our chapter should have a very clear set of financial priorities.

1. A Permanent $10,000 Base Salary Increase. Not a bonus. Not a temporary payment. Not something we have to fight for again. A permanent increase to our salary.

2. Meaningful Annual Salary Increases. Raises for all UFT members need to provide meaningful economic progress and actually move workers forward instead of keeping us in place as the cost of living continues to rise.

3. A Redesigned Longevity Schedule. Create meaningful milestones so that experience is recognized throughout a paraprofessional's career.

4. Meaningful Differentials. Create a three-level structure of $2,500, $5,000, and $7,500

For specialized skills, high-need assignments, and exceptional or hard-to-staff assignments.

5. Pensionable Compensation. We need to stop pretending that non-pensionable payments are the same thing as permanent salary.

Let’s remember, this is a starting point. What the paras I've been talking to have laid out here is not a promise. We will not get every dollar. It's not even a promise that every single one of these ideas will be proposed. As I’ve said before, I certainly don't pretend to be a collective bargaining expert, but I do know this, we have to negotiate. We might have to compromise, and we have to fight for what we believe our members deserve.

Will we get everything we ask for? Probably not, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't ask. We should put our ideas on the table, and we should establish a baseline. Then we should negotiate. After all, isn't that the point of collective bargaining? We owe it to our paraprofessionals to start from a position that reflects what paraprofessionals actually need, not from what someone assumes the City will be willing to give us.

This post is only Part 1: The Financial Package. In Part 2, we need to talk about the other side of the contract. The things that aren't necessarily about money but matter just as much. Working conditions. Respect. Rights. Protections. Professional recognition. Having a real voice in our workplaces and especially having a real voice in our union.

Of course compensation matters, but a contract is about more than a paycheck, and if we're serious about building a better future for paraprofessionals, we need to negotiate for both. Until next time, my friends. Adiós!