On Nov. 12, teachers at the Paul Cuffee Lower School filed for unionization under the National Labor Relations Board, mirroring unionization efforts at charter schools across Providence.
Teachers at the Lower School filed to unionize with the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals. On Dec. 2, the teachers will hold an election to determine if the RIFTHP will represent them in future collective bargaining.
“Conditions over these past eight years have just gotten worse from the point of view of the educators,” said Jeremy Sencer, the RIFTHP communications representative. “They’re looking forward to the opportunity to protect their community, to have a voice over the conditions for students,” he said.
Frank Flynn, the outgoing RIFTHP president, observed a lack of dedicated funds to support charters.
The RIFTHP has voiced opposition to certain charter school practices and the fact that when students leave the traditional public school system to attend charter schools, funding originally allocated to public schools gets reallocated to the charter school the student now attends.
Despite this, Flynn said the federation wants “to support the teachers that work there because we think it is in their best interest to be unionized (and) to have a voice on the job.”
The shift toward charter school unionization began in August, when the Highlander Elementary School voted in favor of unionization with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
According to Claribel Mejia, a teacher at Highlander who has taken on an informal leadership role within the movement, teachers feel left out of structural decisions within their schools. “We were just told on a random day: ‘Your calendar is going to change now,’” Mejia said.
Highlander teachers first attempted to unionize in 2019, but the vote failed. Their recent vote in August passed with 88% support.
On Oct. 29, the Cuffee Upper School received their Certification of Representation from the NLRB, becoming the first independent Rhode Island charter school to unionize with the RIFTHP.
“When I first started at Cuffee in 2017, there were always whispers of unionizing, but it had not been successful the first go around,” teacher Katherine Wilson said. She added that discussions of unionization began in the Lower School in 2015, but Upper School employees were not interested in joining. “This was before the Highlander unionization, so everyone was under the assumption that it had to be K-12 in order to unionize.”
Employees at the Cuffee Lower School say they seek an improved work-life balance, better pay and benefits. “But I think really what we’re focused on is making sure that there is clarity in roles, that students are getting the support they need and that the classrooms are balanced,” Wilson said.
The Cuffee School did not respond to a request for comment.
Michaela Wnuk, another teacher at Highlander and informal leader in the organizing process, explained that Highlander chose to organize with the IBEW, despite it not being primarily an education based organization, because of difficulties getting in touch with other groups.
“When we first started thinking about this, we did initially reach out to traditional teacher unions and they did not respond to us,” Wnuk said. “My personal opinion is that it was probably because of a political divide between traditional public schools and charter schools.”
Wnuk and Mejia said that working with the IBEW has been a productive and gratifying experience. “They give us the legal framework, the legal backing to be heard, but they rely on us, the employees of the school, to be the experts,” Wnuk said.
In addition to wanting more input in how the school is run, Wnuk said that inadequate compensation was another reason they felt unionization was a logical step for the elementary school. “Over the years, the pay gap between our school and traditional districts has grown,” Wnuk said. “Teachers were leaving because they were experienced; they were able to make more money elsewhere.”
High turnover rates are a problem for charter schools across the country, and affect both the Paul Cuffee Schools and the Highlander Charter Schools, Sencer and Mejia said. Both schools hope that unionization will improve working conditions and reduce turnover.
“At Cuffee, they had stable faculty for a relatively long period of time, and there's been a significant amount of turnover over the last several years, and part of that has to do with marginalization of the teachers themselves,” Sencer said.
“We’re not here for each other, we’re here for the students. So if those teachers do stay, longevity is key, retention is key. It just builds that community with the families that know their rights and are able to advocate for their child because they feel comfortable,” Mejia said.
Wilson said that unionization in charter schools is somewhat of an “anomaly” and that they hope “a lot of other schools take this step.”
“I think there’s going to be a change in a lot of charter schools unionizing for the future,” Mejia said. “I really do see that.”
