COLUMBUS, Ohio — There is a concern that in less than three weeks Columbus City School teachers could be on a picket line rather than in the classroom.
What You Need To Know
- Columbus City Schools and the Columbus Education Association have been in negotiations since March
- The school board filed an unfair labor practice charge with the state board against the CEA, accusing it of spreading misinformation
- The CEA’s top priorities are wages, fair working conditions, smaller class sizes and more
- In the school board’s offer they mentioned benefits, wages, smaller classroom sizes and fair working conditions
For months, the Columbus City Schools Board of Education has been negotiating with the Columbus Education Association on issues like working conditions, wages, classroom size and safety protocols without an agreement.
“The last two years really did expose a lot of the broken down and bad conditions of some of our buildings and that they really need to step up in some of these things,” said Regina Fuentes, a spokesperson with the CEA.
Both sides have been in talks since March, but the CEA said things recently escalated because its members felt the board walked away from negotiations and diminished their options.
“This is the time of year where we start doing our planning, where we start thinking about our classrooms and we’re just not able to do any of that now because we don’t feel like we’re getting heard by the district, and we don’t feel like they’re really taking our students needs into consideration,” said Fuentes.
The board filed an unfair labor practice charge with the state board against the CEA, accusing it of spreading misinformation to its members. The board said its offer mentioned paid family leave benefits for teachers, a 3% wage increase in the 2022-23 school year and a 3% wage increase in 2023-24 and an upgrade to the heating and cooling system on 16 different buildings.
Board of Education President Jennifer Adair said that the building upgrades should be complete by mid-September and the board wants to come to an agreement before the first day of school.
“There’s a lot of different terms for a final offer,” said Adair. “This is not the final, final offer. There’s another type of offer that can happen after this. The board never left the table. This is all a part of the process.”
The CEA represents more than 40,000 teachers and other personnel and said it is waiting on the board to negotiate. Both sides said they hope to find common ground as the past two years have been rough on teachers and students.
“We know it’s a continual process to build relationships, to build trust, to build respect, to feel valued and I know that we can get there,” said Adair.
The Fuentes said the CEA is also open to work on a solution.
“We want to be back at the negotiation table in this little bit of time that we have left between now and the start of the school years so if the district is ready to do that, then that’s where we want to be,” said Fuentes.
The CEA said that classroom size and heating and cooling issues are their main sticking points.
Columbus City Schools will begin the school year Aug. 24.
