School Committee, WTA agree to new contracts

The school committee approved new contracts for the district’s teachers, educational support professionals, and nurses at its meeting on Monday night.

The contracts with the four bargaining units come after more than a year of negotiations with the Winthrop Teachers Association. The three-year agreements are retroactive to Fiscal Year 2026 and run through FY28.

Superintendent of Schools Lisa Howard ran through the highlights of the contracts at Monday’s school committee meeting. The agreements include larger percentage raises for educators who have higher steps – meaning they have more longevity – and in some cases add an additional step for the district’s longest tenured educators.

“This was an incredibly arduous but rewarding process. The members of our Union are proud of what we were able to achieve in these new contracts,” said Brian Donnelly, Union’s President and a teacher at Winthrop High School. “For years, the employees in Winthrop Public Schools have fallen further and further behind our colleagues in nearby districts – in terms of pay, benefits, and working conditions. These agreements represent a huge achievement, as we finally begin to make up ground and point our district in the right direction.”

According to the Union, the new contracts include 10.5 percent  wage increases for most teachers over three years, and larger wage increases for secretaries, nurses, and ESPs who it said were paid extremely low wages. The contract also contains provisions which establish two weeks of paid parental leave, address school safety, guarantee respect and fair treatment in the workplace, and increase support for special educators and service providers.

“The people of Winthrop want great schools and supported educators,” said John Cross, the Union’s Vice-President and a WPS parent. “We’ve shown that by passing an override to avoid a crisis in our schools, electing fierce new advocates to the School Committee, and supporting the WTA over the last year. Ahead of us we still have significant challenges to continue to face together – and we look forward to continuing to work as a union to face these issues to ensure the WPS are on pace or exceeding surrounding and similar districts.”

Jordan Deeb, a parent of students at the Gorman Fort Banks School said it is so powerful for students like her children to see their teachers invest so much in fighting for them. 

“Now is the time for our entire community to pick up that fight and continue it together,” Deeb said.

Howard said all four agreements strongly emphasize a number of points including workplace protections, expanded union access and communication rights, increased flexibility around leave and family support, a more collaborative decision-making process regarding curriculum, school year calendars and overall planning, and improved administrative response expectations.

The superintendent said the only current outstanding negotiation process left in the district is with the school administrators, which includes 12 employees.

“They had a one-year contract this year out of respect for the unions that hadn’t settled yet,” said Howard. “We had an agreement that once those were settled, we would come back to the table with them and I anticipate probably a one-hour meeting with a similar outcome.”