LYNN – Teachers Union members gathered in front of Lynn Public Schools Office Administration before the Athletic Sub-Committee Meeting and a Committee of the Whole Meeting Monday to demand smaller class sizes for the teachers and students and smaller caseload for the paraprofessionals, as well as higher compensation for all.
“We must have equity for our students and our educators,” said Lynn Teachers Union (LTU) Local 1037 Sheila O’Neil.
Mayor Nicholson expressed his gratitude to the educators who shared their experiences and said that he looked forward “to continuing to work through these important issues together through collective bargaining.”
The efforts to reach Superintendent Patrick Tutwiler on a short deadline were unsuccessful.
The bargaining process with the administration continued for over a year now,
according to Robin Bradley, occupational therapist for the kids with special needs, who is on the negotiation team from LTU.
Last Wednesday LTU final proposals were denied by the administration, according to LTU First Vice President and a newly-elected Vice President for the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Massachusetts Executive Board Colleen McElligott.
The protesters who initially gathered outside the public schools building then went right into the Curriculum Sub-Committee Meeting and took the remaining seats.
They also stood at both sides of the room, and some of them sat on the floor. Those who entered the room remained quiet before the open mic session started, and those who remained outside continued to chant slogans.
After the open mic session was announced, the teachers and other professionals started to come to express their frustrations that concerned primarily class sizes, caseload, and compensations.
“As of the last two weeks, my largest class has 40 early proficiency students. This is unsustainable, even for our most enthusiastic and experienced educators,” said Alyssa Smiley, who teaches English Learner Biology at Lynn Classical High School.
She said that the national recommendations specify class sizes for English Learner Level One science classes at no more than 18 students.
Dominic Copeland, who teaches at Lynn English High School, said that in at least one of his classes, he was the only one who spoke English in the classroom, and other students had as different native languages as Spanish, Pushtu, and Dari (Persian).
Larger class sizes have their most negative impact on the most vulnerable students, said Sabrina Markham, a teacher at Breed Middle School. She quoted a Princeton study indicating that ACT or SAT scores for African American students rise from 31.8 percent to 41.3 percent with smaller class sizes, while white students drop from 44.7 percent to 46.4 percent.
“Yet, while these minority students and students from lower-socioeconomic levels will reap the most benefit from lowering the class sizes, they are the least likely to get them,” said Markham.
Colleen O’Connell, itinerant speech and language pathologist, spoke on behalf of the speech-language pathologist (LSP) department regarding the importance of a caseload cap. According to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), the nation’s median caseload size was 48 students, said O’Connell.
“In LSP, our average caseload size is 70-80 students. Some of us have had and currently have over 100 students and travel between three schools,” said O’Connell.
Some of those who decided to speak at the open mic session also spoke about compensation. Gary Torres, 25, parent liaison at English mentioned that he was a guardian of his two brothers aged 23 and 18. Another speaker said that she could barely afford to survive and pay her rent.
“We want living wages for our paraprofessionals. We want to make sure that we can raise our full-time paraprofessionals to at least $25,000 a year,” said McElligott.
Some of the speakers, like Elizabeth Jesus D’Amico, also mentioned that they were native to Lynn, and they wanted to give back to the community that raised them, but it was not the same as when they were at school.
“I don’t want to leave,” said D’Amico.
Oksana Kotkina can be reached at [email protected].
