The Charlottesville community has been clear in its full support of unionized teachers and support staff at our Charlottesville City Schools and the recent School Board efforts to smear Charlottesville Education Association are truly shocking. We won't soon forget these anti-union actions. However, it is not too late to honor the negotiated 10.5% raise, instead of a bare bones 3% raise for support staff. We urge the School Board to right their egregious wrong, head back to the bargaining table, and pass a fair contract and 10.5% raise for support staff. Our community will be watching.

Urgent Calls to Action:

• Send a letter to the Superintendent, School Board, and City Council voicing your full support for the union!
• Come out for the joint School Board and City Council Budget Work Session this Monday, 2/9 at 5pm at the Walker Upper Elementary cafeteria. Stand in support of pro-union speakers!

Background:

Late last week, the Charlottesville City Schools (CCS) community received an email stating that, due to decisions made by CEA, the School Board was not moving forward with the terms of the negotiated contract with support staff and that a proposed 10.5% raise was now off the table. Instead, the School Board would only advocate for a 3% salary increase.

The message included smears against CEA, with misrepresentations of the bargaining process, misleading information about efforts to ratify the proposed contract, and falsehoods about whether CCS administrators could budget for a yet-to-be-ratified contract despite the fact that an unratified contract was budgeted for in the previous year’s budget. Without question, these are anti-union, anti-worker, union-busting tactics.

As the statement released by CEA makes clear, allegations put forth in the School Board statement are untrue and do not comport with recent precedent. Further, there is still the time and the will to finalize the tentative bargain reached by City School representatives and CEA members in October that would give support staff a 10.5% salary increase, fair wages, and paid holidays.