The school year started a month ago, and South Portland educators are still without a union contract.

Typically, contracts are renewed in the spring, but this year, negotiations between the school board and the South Portland Teachers Association have been dragging on since March, debated behind closed doors in executive sessions throughout the summer.

The process has been slow, partly due to the change in district leadership, according to Sarah Gay, president of the SPTA. In the past seven months, two school board members — including the chair — and the previous superintendent resigned.

“We’re negotiating with a different team than when we started, and it’s not a team we have necessarily spent a humongous amount of time with at the table,” Gay said.

The tone shifted dramatically after former Superintendent Tim Matheney recused himself from the team, according to Gay.

“The new team really shifted the direction of negotiations away from the really collaborative tone,” she said.

“I walked in on the June 10 meeting fully expecting that we were signing on the dotted line, bringing it back to our members, ready to celebrate,” said Sarah Drake, a math teacher at South Portland High School and chief negotiator on behalf of SPTA.

The SPTA filed a request for mediation following that meeting.

“We didn’t feel like we were moving forward in the negotiations,” Drake said. Throughout the negotiation and mediation process, the SPTA has had three main sticking points: health and safety, use of leave time and layoffs.

Mediation stalled, and the SPTA started a fact-finding process last week — six to 10 weeks in which both the district and the union gather evidence and language in support of their demands before presenting their proposed contract at a hearing. A panel of representatives from the Maine Labor Relations Board will make a recommendation.

Negotiations between the district and the SPTA can continue throughout that process, so an agreement could be reached sooner.

Since educators started the school year without a contract, they’ve been working with rates lower than what they are due, according to Gay.

“We have members who have shared with us that they are struggling,” Gay said. “All of our costs, our living costs are going up, yet the pay did not.”

And many teachers are anxious about whether they will receive back pay, or the negotiated salary increase retroactive to the first month of the school year. Without an active contract, back pay is on the negotiating table, according to Gay.

Interim Superintendent George Entwistle said he was not able to speak about the contract negotiations before meeting with the school board and the school’s attorney next Monday.

Board Chair Tandy Ratliff did not respond to requests for comment prior to the deadline.

HEALTH AND SAFETY

In the most recent contract, there wasn’t specific language about workplace health and safety, according to Gay.

“We’re really looking for a simple baseline acknowledgement that if there is a health or safety issue, we can hold them accountable for it,” Gay said.

She said, for example, if there was extreme heat in a school building, something that has become more common at the beginning and end of the school year recently, “we should be able to say that we cannot work under these conditions because it’s unsafe.”

This language is increasingly critical when state and national workforce safety protections are being cut, infrastructure continues to age and climate change becomes more pressing.

“Right now, we don’t really have any mechanism other than asking nicely,” Gay said.

USE OF LEAVE TIME

In this round of negotiations, Gay said, the union hoped for clearer language about flexible use of leave time that “isn’t hindered by process.”

Under the previous contract, each teacher was entitled to 15 sick days per school year, and permission to pull time from the “Sick Leave Bank” had to be approved by the school board or superintendent. New parents could use up to six weeks of accumulated sick leave to care for a newborn or newly adopted child.

Each teacher was given three days of paid leave for religious, household, family or emergency matters, all requiring superintendent approval. No more than two teachers from the same school could use this type of leave at one time.

The SPTA is advocating for more flexibility with leave time. 

“We want to ensure that educators could use their time when needed to take care of themselves, to take care of their loved ones, to adopt or have a new baby, to heal after an injury and really to be able to be functioning human beings,” Gay said. 

LAYOFFS

For those on the SPTA negotiation team, last spring’s budget season is still front of mind. 

“We had one of the worst staff reductions in our district’s history,” Drake said. “It felt like chaos.” 

After contentious budget negotiations, nine full-time equivalent positions were cut. But during the budget process, 29 South Portland employees received layoff notices. 

“Knowing that another tough budget season is just around the corner, we need to protect our staff’s seniority rights,” Drake said. “We would like to take the subjectivity out of it as much as possible so that everyone knows where they stand and everyone understands the process.”

The SPTA is mobilizing affected educators and concerned community members to go to the school board meeting on Monday and make their voices heard.

“This is just not how South Portland treats their schools,” Drake said. “I know this is a city that cares deeply about education, educators, and the kinds of experiences our students can have at school, and the supports that our schools can offer beyond a great education.”