PROVIDENCE – The Providence Teachers Union is set to vote on a new collective bargaining agreement Friday evening.
Negotiations between the union, the Providence Public School District and the state’s Department of Education have been ongoing since March 2020, following the state takeover of the school district in 2019.
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The contract includes a 1.5% raise retroactively effective Sept. 1, 2020, a 2% raise starting Sept. 1, 2021, a 2% increase in September 2022 and a 0.5% raise on Aug. 31, 2023, the date of expiration of the contract. In addition, teachers that are members of the bargaining unit will receive a one-time payment of $3,000 as part of the new agreement.
The details of the contract were originally reported by The Boston Globe.
The contract also includes a process for the review of, and discipline for, sick leave abuse, guidance for the allowed use of planning periods, a 181-day work year, including a day of teacher orientation, and new rules pertaining to teacher lesson plans, among other changes from the previous agreement that expired in August 2020.
Neither Gov. Daniel J. McKee’s office nor the union immediately returned calls seeking comment.
In a virtual press conference Thursday, Providence Mayor Jorge O. Elorza criticized the tentative contract, saying that it would be a “slap in the face” if the agreement is signed. He said he asked the governor’s office and the R.I. Department of Education to pause before moving forward with the contract so that the community has an opportunity to be engaged.
Elorza claimed the contract “falls far short” of the transformational contract that he said families and schools in the city need. He said seniority is “still king” in the contract, which he says works for adults, not children.
“We said from the very beginning that seniority was the No. 1 that needed to be addressed and it wasn’t even touched,” Elorza said. The mayor also claimed the contract offers no incentives for rewarding and retaining quality teachers, as well as no language that would reduce the difficulty to remove ineffective teachers from the district.
Elorza also said that McKee “made it very clear” that he was not going to rewrite the contract and impose terms “that the union would not agree to.”
“He put himself in such a weak position in terms of negotiations from the very beginning,” Elorza said, “and has been taking his cues from the teachers union.”
Elorza’s comments toward McKee come a day after the mayor was caught by local television cameras confronting McKee before the WaterFire press conference, resulting in Elorza being held back by a member of McKee’s state police security detail. Elorza, when asked by reporters, said his confrontation with McKee was not politically motivated, repeating that the contract is “an issue.”
McKee declined to comment on the confrontation.
Update: Adds paragraphs 7-13 to include comments from Mayor Jorge O. Elorza’s press conference.
