Unknown at this time if district will appeal ruling.
On Monday, April 28, the Newton Teachers Association (NTA) announced that an arbitrator had ruled in its favor regarding its grievances against Newton Public Schools (NPS) relating to the reduction in Kindergarten aides following the 2022-2023 school year. The NTA, then and now, maintains that the Unit A and Unit C Memorandum of Agreements (MOA) reached with NPS in Year 2019, following NPS’ decision to expand Kindergarten from half-day to full-day, stipulate the placement of full-time teacher’s aides in Kindergarten classrooms with 14 or more students. (See Article 19, Section 2 of the linked Unit A MOA.)
While the recent arbitration denied the NTA’s grievance related to back pay of Kindergarten aides, it granted the NTA’s demand for full-time aides to be restored to all Kindergarten classes. This decision came in the form of a cease-and-desist order for NPS to discontinue its current practice of not having full-time aides in every Kindergarten class, effective the beginning of the 2024-2025 school year.
Key to the arbitrator’s decision, according to his ruling, was the notion that although by Massachusetts law school districts retain ultimate authority over “educational policies,” the reason NPS gave last year for reducing Kindergarten aides was budgetary rather than related to educational policy — specifically the March 2023 operational override failing to pass. The current school year’s (FY 2024) budget was passed in May 2023 following intense debate over staff reductions, including Kindergarten aides. Therefore the district was not able to successfully argue that it had the statutory right to eliminate Unit C Kindergarten aides, which were bargained for as a working condition for Unit A teachers in 2019.
The 2019 MOA language regarding Kindergarten aides was not amended in the recent February 2024 Memorandum of Understanding following the teachers strike, and the…