Holyoke schools’ return to local control imperiled by same old receivership with new name, teachers’ unions say

HOLYOKE — With the school district set to emerge from 10 years of commonwealth control in two months, a pair of faculty unions say state structures left in place will impede local oversight and learning.

State education leaders announced changes to Holyoke’s exit plan from receivership, aiming to ensure a smooth transition back to local control. However, the Holyoke Teachers Association expressed disappointment as collective bargaining rights, crucial for retaining qualified educators, were not restored.

Education Secretary and current Interim Commissioner Patrick Tutwiler said these changes include feedback from local people to better meet the district’s needs.

Holyoke Mayor Joshua A. Garcia, who serves as chair of the School Committee, and Superintendent Anthony Soto welcomed the support, as the teachers union expressed anger and dismay over the changes.

“The last thing Holyoke needs is a ‘sink or swim’ approach from the state,” Garcia said.

Meanwhile, Max Page, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, criticized the plan, saying the state showed contempt for educators in Holyoke by effectively leaving all of the worst elements of receivership in place.

Nick Cream, president of the local teachers union, said Tuesday’s announcement was a major breach of trust and a setback in efforts to return public schools to genuine local control. Union members will protest with group walk-ins at their worksites Thursday.

The Holyoke May Day walk-ins offer a chance for educators to voice their disapproval of the state’s plan to keep the most punitive elements of state control, Cream said.

The walk-ins will begin 7 a.m. at Dean and North high schools, the STEM middle school, and McMahon elementary school. At 7:15 a.m., members will walk in at Metcalf Middle School. At 8 a.m., walk-ins are set for Donahue and Morgan elementary schools and Sullivan Middle School. At 8:10 a.m., educators will walk in at E.N. White, Kelly, and Lawrence elementary schools.

Teachers dismayed

“I thought we had a voice,” Cream said.

Cream said the teachers association contacted the state in February, speaking with former Interim Commissioner Russell D. Johnson and followed up with Tutwiler, asking for a full exit from receivership with exit assurances, but were surprised by the new rules.

“We had done so much, and had just been trying to let people know that this should be worked out at the bargaining table as a group of workers and management like any other school district,” Cream said.

“What they basically said to us was ‘nope, we need the superintendent to have control over these very core aspects of your jobs,’ and people are going to view that for what it is — just another version of the state receivership,” Cream said.

The main argument is that teachers want agency and a voice by way of bargaining.

In other districts, a union can negotiate directly with the school district, which was the reason for the teachers association advocating for the end of state control from the beginning, he said.

Holyoke has a long turnaround plan, but the teachers union was focused on five pages outlining working conditions, he said. For instance, a top priority for teachers in Holyoke was to bargain for the length of the school year and day.

Teachers in the district work many more hours than what is required by the state, he said.

School district response

By keeping communication open as the district transitions to local control July 1, the state and the Holyoke School Committee can uphold progress that brought the district out of receivership, Garcia said in a statement.

“Our shared goal must be to continue striving for excellence,” Garcia said. “In life, there are countless examples that show the dangers of abruptly restoring control without a clear, structured transition. Simply giving something back without guardrails or assurances is a recipe for failure.”

Garcia said “exit assurances” proposed by Tutwiler were developed collaboratively with input from Soto, the Holyoke School Committee and the Teachers Association.

“These exit assurances will help support a strong transition from receivership to local control, while minimizing disruptions to the day-to-day operations of our schools,” Soto said.

State reacts

The receivership law lets the commissioner keep parts of Holyoke’s improvement plan for a while after the district leaves receivership to keep progress going, Tutwiler said at a DESE meeting Tuesday.

The main goal of exit assurances is to ensure a smooth shift from receivership to local control. Tutwiler said the assurances are another milestone in Holyoke’s transition out of receivership, as they will allow local leaders and stakeholders to plan for the future more with more certainty.

“While the statute gives the commissioner full authority to determine what the exit assurances are, we know that stakeholders must have a voice in these decisions to best meet the needs of that community during the development of the exit assurances,” he said.

With the support that will be provided by the exit assurances, Tutwiler said he is confident the district will be prepared to resume full governance on July 1 as planned.

Past state takeovers of local school districts have failed, Page said. And with Holyoke set to leave state control, the Massachusetts Teachers Association hoped the state was moving away from this flawed process.

Page said Johnston and Tutwiler only pretended to respect Holyoke educators’ efforts to improve learning and working conditions, including restoring collective bargaining.

“Instead, in a School Committee meeting devoid of public comment, city and state officials rushed through a set of rules that replaces receivership with …. receivership,” he said.

The new plans include most of the strict rules Holyoke educators have faced for 10 years, he said.

Page said the state failed Holyoke in 2015 by starting a 10-year experiment that removed community control of public schools and union rights. This approach, he said, hoped for dramatic improvement without giving the necessary resources for real change.

“If Commissioner Tutwiler were truly serious about empowering Holyoke to take back control of its schools, he would have made sure that educators had the ability to once again voice their professional perspective in meaningful ways, particularly in establishing working conditions and learning conditions through collective bargaining,” Page said.

Strong contracts build strong schools, Page said — a message he said Holyoke teachers told the commissioner repeatedly. Holyoke educators under these exit assurances remain removed from authentic decision-making.

And now, to claim that Holyoke Public Schools are returning to local control is not true, Page said.

Union views

According to Cream, the updates to the exit plan included several changes; other things that remained the same.

For instance, Cream said, throughout the document the title “receiver” was changed to “superintendent.” Something that did not change was the compensation system.

Most school systems offer a cost-of-living raise every year. In Holyoke, this raise is based on an evaluation. If a teacher gets a bad evaluation for over a year, they won’t get a raise, Cream said.

The association believes that if a teacher gets a bad evaluation, they shouldn’t be rehired. But if they are rehired, they should still get a cost-of-living raise, he said.

One element that didn’t change was staffing reductions. The superintendent can reassign educators and other staff, including those who have lost their positions, he said.

Cream said the association is not finished with this issue.

Educators were hopeful about the district regaining full local control and collective bargaining rights. This hope was shared in meetings with the school committee.

Without bargaining rights, the district will continue to see educators working in Holyoke for one or two years before moving to another district to finish their careers, he said.

“We’re going to continue to see that trend because there’s nothing in this document that allows teachers to feel like they have any kind of agency or power over the decision-making process when it comes to their working conditions,” Cream said.

At the last school committee meeting April 14, Cream asked the panel to publicly support and advocate for the teachers’ position for the district’s transition back to local control.

Cream questioned what having a voice really means. “Does it mean being heard and then dismissed? Because that’s not a voice; that’s just checking off boxes,” he said.

The association feels that since February, members been dragged along, spending hours reviewing the contract terms and discussing each other’s concerns.

“We feel like it’s a slap in the face and that they’ve wasted all this time,” he said. “It’s disingenuous to say the least.”

“We anticipated entering an era of meaningful change. Instead, we now feel as if educators were ambushed and excluded from decision-making,” he said.

“We are clearly going to push back against DESE until DESE realizes how harmful this is to the young people of Holyoke because we are just going to lose a bunch of teachers,” he said.

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