NTA eBulletin: February 15, 2026

Question of the Week (new)

Answers to last week's question: 

Do you think we, as members of the NTA, should be preparing for increased ICE activity in our city?

I found these results perplexing. I had thought that the membership of the NTA would be largely unified around the need to prepare for increased ICE activity. However, 25% of respondents saying 'no' must be taken very seriously.

There are two things I noted in the wording of the question that may have elicited a no vote: (1) I asked if the NTA should be preparing for increased ICE activity in our CITY and, (2) I did not ask if the NTA should be COLLABORATING with the City of Newton and the Newton Public Schools to prepare for increased ICE activity. 

For this reason, I am going to re-ask the question to see if rewording it elicits the same or a different result. I am also attaching a link to a google form for members to provide in their own words their reasons for their answers to this current revision of the question.

So the revised question: Do you think that the NTA should collaborate with the City of Newton and the Newton Public Schools to prepare for increased ICE activity in our schools? 

yes

no

Link to Google form to explain answers.

Budget Freeze/Cuts (new)

On Wednesday of last week, NPS Chief Financial Officer Liam Hurley informed all administrators in the district of a "Non-Essential Staff & Purchasing Plan."  The plan calls for:

"1. Immediate freeze on posting and hiring for all NPS positions unless required by a Students [sic] IEP and approved by the Superintendent

2. Immediate freeze on all non-essential purchases that are not grant funded for the remainder of the year."

Assuming that spending continues as it does now, there will be a $1.8 million deficit.

The stated sources of the deficit are concerning: 

• "Health insurance (more plans and more family plans than anticipated),

• Addition of unbudgeted aides across the system

• Substitute Staffing costs projected to be $1 M over budget.

• Higher than anticipated utilities costs due to the delivery rates."

Health Insurance

This time of year, the district regularly says that there are more health insurance plans and more family plans than anticipated. That this happens regularly is a problem, especially since it usually happens at the beginning of budgeting season, and just before the NTA enters into contract negotiations with the school committee.

How and why does the NPS regularly underestimate the costs of providing health insurance, a contractual benefit, in its budget?

Addition of Aides

Our students are still experiencing a mental health crisis, which often results in behaviors that make learning extraordinarily challenging. The need for more aides should have been anticipated. These needs will not go away. The budget cuts will heighten the needs, the challenges, and the behavioral expression of those needs.

Coverage

The over budget costs for substitute staffing is particularly concerning. Ryan and I have been investigating the use of Precision staffing. The district regularly outsources Unit D and Unit C bargaining unit work to Precision. In fact, Precision is now providing more substitutes to the district than the district hires as ISS (unit D) employees.

Nor does hiring through Precision actually save the district money. Precision employees receive the same daily rate as ISS employees PLUS Precision charges an administrative fee for each substitute they provide. In the NPS contract with Precision, the costs of that fee go up every year. The more and the longer the district relies on Precision, the more substitute coverage will cost.

The district also currently provides coverage by utilizing unit C members, which means those same unit C members are not available to support their own students. The extent of this is pervasive, and, if knowledge of this were public, it could and probably would make the district liable for providing compensatory services to students who did not receive services because their teaching assistants or behavior therapists were providing coverage for another educator. 

The combination of Unit C members covering for Unit A and C members and Precision substitutes currently provides the lion's share of all substitute coverage in Newton. 

Finally, attributing the budget deficit to overages in the substitute budget perpetuate the narrative that educators in Newton take too many days off. Provided only with the district's narrative, who could blame the public for believing that the problem is that NPS educators ABUSE their sick days? 

The public does not (yet) ask: (1) Why doesn't the district budget for and provide quality substitute coverage instead of blaming my children's educators for the problem? (2) Why didn't the district budget enough for substitute coverage in this year's budget? and (3) Why are so many of these substitute positions outsourced, often to unqualified individuals, so that my children are not receiving the quality education they need every day?

Overall

This hiring freeze, after so many in years before, is unacceptable. It leaves decisions about what positions are essential up to central administrators, leaving open these, among other, possibilities:

• If an educator goes out on parental or medical leave, or if someone leaves the district mid-year, no one will be hired to substitute for that employee; instead, central administrators will instruct building administrators to draw from their existing and inadequate pool of day to day substitutes to provide long term coverage. 

  • How do unit B folks, team specialists, principals or any of the folks who already do the dance of finding coverage every morning do this on top of the burden of an already existing crisis?

  • What happens in a similar scenario in the high schools, where there are no substitutes? How exactly are our department heads, vice principals, and principals going to manage this untenable situation?

Liam's memo also says that if an IEP requires someone to be hired, the superintendent must authorize that hire.

• According to what we are hearing, HR is rejecting these requests, students are left without the services they require, the district is not meeting IEP requirements and putting itself on the hook to provide and pay for compensatory services. The consequences fall on students. Yet, because educators in the NPS cannot look away when students are harmed or put at risk, they are left to do their best for for these students without the supports they need, at great personal cost.

Finally, how is it possible that, amongst all of these cuts, slowing down the pace and costs of initiatives, which are overwhelming educators in Newton, is not even under consideration as a cost saving measure?

NTA Quality of Life and Working Conditions Survey

NTA Quality of Life and Working Conditions Survey results can be found by clicking here. These full survey results contain the redacted feedback you provided in open responses.

NTA Quality of Life and Working Conditions Survey results disaggregated into elementary/preschool, middle school, and high school. (I combined NECP with elementary because it would be too easy to identify individual NECP members if the preschool were disaggregated.)

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Labor Relations

Workers Compensation and Work Outside the Regular School Year

On opening day, I recounted to members the story of an Extended School Year (ESY) Behavior Therapist who was injured on the job and received no workers' compensation benefits for her injury.

As most of you now know, the City of Newton opted out of providing workers' compensation insurance to its educational employees decades ago, taking advantage of a loophole in the law.

Because of this, in 2019 the NTA negotiated contractual provisions to protect members who suffer on the job injuries:

• Employees injured on the job have access to the sick leave bank to cover 100% of the costs of any time spent out of work because of the injury, up to a maximum of 3 years (the remainder of the school year when the injury happened plus 2 more full years).

• Employees have their out-of-pocket medical expenses covered by the district.

I have been working with Anna Nolin to rectify this by ensuring that the contractual provisions for on the job injuries we negotiated in 2019 are extended to cover summer NPS ESY employees. It seemed, in October, that we would easily reach an agreement. But no.

To date, we have not, and unless we reach an agreement immediately: (1) The employee injured in the summer of 2025 will not be compensated and (2) current NPS employees will not be protected if they are injured on the job during the summer (or, for that matter, for anything they do outside the regular school day, including advising clubs, coaching sports, etc.)

This is not hard to fix: we simply need to agree to a provision in the Units A, B, and C contracts that extend their contractual protections for on the job injuries to work done outside of the regular school year or day.

The unwillingness to resolve this problem highlights why we all need the NTA. Without our advocacy, the district historically has done as little as possible to protect and provide for its employees. The failure to provide workers compensation protections to summer employees not covered by the contract is but one example. Here are some others. Note that this list is not comprehensive:

• Summer pay is significantly less than contractual rates during the school year (except for BTs who worked during the school year as well.)

• Long term substitutes who work 21 to 89 days have been paid approximately $175 per day since at least 2010, probably longer. That amounts to a 1/3 reduction in their actual, inflation adjusted pay rate over 15 years. 

• Outsourcing NPS bargaining unit work. First, cafeteria workers; then the attempt to outsource custodial work; currently, Unit D substitute and unit C work. 

The NTA will not abandon this struggle to protect our members from on the job injury losses, even if we are not able to win the battle until we enter negotiations.

Resolution of Bargaining Issue with School Committee

Last week we reached a bargaining agreement with the new Newton School Committee Negotiations Team (Alicia Piedalue, Jason Bhardwaj, Ben Schlesinger). The issue was how NTA member were compensated if their flights were cancelled at the end of winter break because of the coup in Venezuela.

These members were required to use their remaining personal days and then their other days to cover any days they were absent.

We reached an agreement that if members in this group need to use a personal day later in the school year, they will simply have to inform HR, and, with no questions asked, they will be allowed to use a sick day to cover their absence, up to the number of personal days they had remaining before they returned after the Venezuela coup. 

This agreement may seem small in the light of the many, many issues we face as educators and as union members, but it was the first bargaining we did with the SC's new team, and they agreed with us that is essential that Newton Public Schools employees feel protected by the district. 

Bravo to this new Negotiations Committee! While this was indeed a small issue, the stated principle behind the agreement speaks volumes. As our new NTA Negotiations Team forms, we look forward to working with the school committee team in the upcoming negotiations for a successor agreement to our current contracts.

Recording Absences in ESS

Building administrators, including principals, assistant principals, department heads, and others, have been told that they must reject sick day requests unless employees use the drop down menu to list the reason for the absence. This puts these school leaders in an awkward position, where they have to be the enforcer who rejects your contractual paid absences.

That said, the information that HR is asking for is necessary. Being absent for a personal illness is different, contractually, from being absent to care for a family member. Here is how you record the "reason" for you absence when you or someone in your family is ill. Ignore the (optional) choice...it is not optional. Stating that is is seems to be a platform limitation.

In solidarity,

Mike Zilles, President

NewtonTeachers Association