A well-attended rally in front of city hall and dozens of public commenters speaking in support of higher wages for certain Cambridge Public Schools staff resulted in little actual policy change during Monday night’s city council meeting.
The Cambridge Education Association organized the action amidst its ongoing negotiation with the Cambridge School Board to secure a contract — all six of CEA’s bargaining units are working with expired contracts. The union’s possible solutions to the stalemate with the school district are to have the city increase property taxes (which are below the state-mandated levy limit) or tap into its free cash reserves. The impasse is mostly tied to salaries for paraprofessionals, whose starting annual salary in fiscal year 2026 was $32,000. The union is asking for that to be upped to $55,000 – a proposal the school district has called unfeasible.
CEA members disagree. “When we’ve engaged folks about what it is we’re asking for, the vast majority of people find it to be really reasonable,” union president Chris Montero told Cambridge Day.
At the city council meeting, however, FY 2027 property tax rates were approved as proposed with the current school budget. A policy order requesting the city administration to report back on the status of the negotiations, sponsored by Councillors Ayah Al-Zubi and Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler, was voted down. Multiple councillors said that while the union had their sympathies, union salary negotiations were the sole responsibility of the School Committee.
“I want to respect their authority [and] what they were elected to do,” Councillor and former School Committee member Marc McGovern said. “But at the same time, they need to settle this.”
What do paras do?
Nick Watter, a 9th grade history teacher at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, called paraprofessionals the “glue” that holds schools together, assisting both in curriculum goals and in making sure students’ needs are met. Before Watter was able to find a teaching job, he worked as a paraprofessional during the 2019-2020 school year at Rindge Ave Upper School.
“It was the hardest job I’ve ever done,” Watter told Cambridge Day at a gathering of about 25 CEA members ahead of Monday’s rally in front of City Hall.
Watter, like some paraprofessionals, had to receive de-escalation training from the Crisis Prevention Institute for his role, which involved working with kids who have certain social or emotional needs. He said he was paid for the time he took to do the training, but didn’t receive a raise for obtaining the certification, despite being on the lower end of the salary spectrum.
“Within the first week, I had to restrain a kid, and it was one of the most, in my opinion, emotionally taxing things I had to do ever,” Watter said. “I was like, ‘I’m getting paid $32,000 a year to do this.’ … Who would do this job for that low [amount of] money?”
Longtime paraprofessional Valarie Ifill, speaking to a crowd of about 60 who braved the lingering nor’easter to rally ahead of Monday night’s meeting, said the work can also be extremely gratifying.
“Some of the moments that stay with me the most are when a student is so overwhelmed they shut down, and I’m able to reach them when they realize I’m not giving up on them,” Ifill said. “You can see it. Shoulders drop, love comes back, and they find their way to learning again.”
In recent years, educators have noticed the impact learning loss and missed socialization due to COVID has had on students. Ifill said this has made the work of paras all the more challenging — and important.
Students’ needs have intensified since COVID-19, Ifill said. “We’ve seen more students struggle with big feelings during the school day. To learn, they need support in real time, and that support helps classrooms stay calm and focused.”
CEA bargaining items are not limited to raises for paraprofessionals, though. Other items include bringing staffing rates back up to one paraprofessional per elementary school class, increasing health insurance coverage for newer staff, and ensuring paid parental leave for employees who have been with CPS for less than a year. While multiple cost estimates were mentioned at the meeting, union members assert that their current list of demands would result in a six percent increase in the CPS budget — and thus a two percent increase in the total city budget.
Council support extends only so far
Dozens of people spoke on behalf of the union on Monday night — all in support of paying paraprofessionals higher wages.
“We can and must find the money to ensure that CPSD paraprofessionals, clerks, and substitutes will always pay a living wage. If that money needs to come from an increase in property taxes, then please increase our taxes,” said teacher and Cambridge homeowner Jo Quest-Neubert. “I would rather pay more in property taxes than know I am funding a system that does not fairly compensate the workers.”
“Nobody’s hands are tied,” said Cambridge resident Piper Winkler, also during the public comment period. “It’s a question of political will.”
But the road to what becomes a Cambridge Public School staff member’s salary is long — with multiple bodies holding sway over the course.
The School Committee, in collaboration with city administrators, sets the Cambridge Public Schools annual budget in the spring. City council has the ability to authorize or not authorize the budget, but has no say on how much is allocated to individual line items. Over the summer, the state does an assessment of commercial property values that determines property tax rates, which are proposed by the City Manager’s office. The council also has to vote this up or down, but historically has not made changes to what city administrators propose. School committee members who are also on the bargaining committee must negotiate with CEA members on their contracts, but those are not always run in conjunction with the budgeting process, which can create frustration.
The policy order before the council was not an appropriation for staff salaries, which is outside council’s authority. Rather, according to Al-Zubi, requesting the report back to council on the status of the negotiations was an opportunity for the council to be “informed on the process.”
“I really don’t think we can keep doing these tennis matches where we’re told that this is not the council’s authority, even though we declare the budget, and then the school committee says ‘we don’t have money’ and then it goes back and forth,” Al-Zubi said. She also noted that the city’s law department had approved the policy order.
Questions of intent
But other councillors, some of them former School Committee members, saw other intentions.
“While technically this policy order is not directly about negotiations, it undermines the school district negotiations,” said Councillor Patty Nolan, a former School Committee member. She added that while the policy order was technically “not about appropriation, it was made exceedingly clear that the intent is to express support for additional funding for CPS, and that passing the policy order means the CPS budget would go up.” Nolan also noted that the lowest-paid paraprofessionals’ salaries are slated to go up by 60 percent over the next two years under the school committee’s current proposal.
Several councillors said they were in favor of paying paraprofessionals more — but the union and its supporters were simply asking the wrong body.
“I personally think that paraprofessionals should make more money,” said Councillor Tim Flaherty. “I support a living wage, and I support the work that they do. But I’m not part of the collective bargaining team, and I think passing this policy order would create a bad precedent.”
“It’s important to remember that the city council does not have any line item authority with the school department,” said Councillor and former School Committee member Marc McGovern. “So we could give them $5 million more, $20 million more, $100 million more, and we have no say in how that is spent.”
In the end, Al-Zubi and Sobrinho-Wheeler voted in favor of the policy order, with McGovern and Councillor E. Denise Simmons voting present, Vice Mayor Burhan Azeem, Councillor Cathie Zusy, Flaherty, and Nolan voting no — meaning the policy order failed to obtain the majority necessary to pass. Because she is a School Committee member, Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui recused herself from the discussion and the vote.
The school district released a statement that read in part “The Cambridge School Committee agrees with the CEA that in a school district as fortunate as ours, all staff should be paid a competitive wage” and that the school committee’s proposals did this. “It is our hope that the necessary reasonable conversations can occur in the near future to amicably conclude the negotiations and keep the focus of the school system on our students.”
Cambridge School Committee member and paraprofessional for Somerville Public Schools Luisa de Paula Santos noted that it was difficult to set expectations for meetings like Monday’s, because of the diffuse nature of where the power to set teacher salaries lie. She noted that elected representatives are not the only ones with power over funding schools.
“It is hard structurally,” Santos said. “The school committee … decides on the budget, the city council accepts it, but who really controls it at the end of the day is the city manager, and he’s not elected.”
The next bargaining sessions between the union and the district are scheduled for October 7 and October 21, for Units A – E, and a date for negotiation with the district’s safety specialists of Unit F has yet to be scheduled, Montero said.
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