Teacher Contract Case Study

To end the period of no contracts for the teachers of the Warwick school district, I propose that the teachers’ union and school committee sit down together for one final time until the rules of a new contract can be agreed upon by both parties. The meeting should not be dismissed for any reason other than emergency to ensure that the conflict is fully resolved. Currently, the problem is that the school committee and the teachers’ union have yet to come to a compromise over the contract. Usually, the contract lasts for about two to three years, from the beginning of September to the end of August the following school year. In August of 2014, the teacher contract expired, and there have been multiple meetings to discuss new obligations,

The alleged suggestion was a 30 percent pay increase over the three-year period as opposed to the 6 percent increase that the union claims to have made. This radical suggestion caused the superintendent, Dr. Phillip Thorton, to leave the mediation in frustration as he believed that the union was not taking the discussion seriously. In the words used by Dr. Thorton, “There really is no point to other details because this is so outrageous” (Kozma, 2016). Despite his claim, the teachers’ union as well as the discussion’s mediator believe that this was a misunderstanding and that Dr. Thorton simply misinterpreted what was being

Although this may be true, it is not always shown by the committee’s members. Besides the issues with the contracts, there is also a several problems with the recent consolidation of the district that began last year. Of the over 20 schools in the district six schools were majorly affected by the consolidation including Aldrich, Winman, and Gorton junior high schools, as well as Pilgrim, Toll Gate and Warwick Veterans high schools. Aldrich and Gorton were closed down and Warwick Vets took their place as a junior high. The distribution maps were then redrawn to compensate for the change in the schools, where the students still enrolled at Warwick Vets at the time were distributed between Pilgrim and Toll Gate depending on where they lived. During the end of the 2016 school year and summer afterward, the school committee began the process of refurbishing the schools for the higher student population, but it was not started early enough to be entirely finished by the beginning of this school year. The school committee also ignored the pleas of students and parents when regarding how to go about it. The murals that once adorned the hallways of Pilgrim High School, painted by many students over the school’s 50-year history, were all painted over except for certain memorials, much to the dismay of the students. The murals were an important piece of the school’s heritage and many of the artists have