Teachers union opposes Newberry charter conversion 

Education First for Newberry (EFN), the nonprofit organizing a campaign to convert three Newberry schools into charter schools, released staff and teacher packets earlier this week. 

The packets promise improved wages and the same benefits as Newberry city staff, but Carmen Ward, president of the Alachua County Education Association (ACEA), said if the schools convert, teachers would lose the guarantees and protections the union provides them. 

The proposed conversion, for which teachers and parents will begin voting on April 12, would change Newberry High School, Oak View Middle School and Newberry Elementary School into charter schools. Each school has a separate vote, and each vote can only succeed with the support of a majority of parents and a majority of teachers. 

“The people that are contacting me are worried,” Ward said in a phone interview. “And I’m trying to empower them to know that teachers have all the power, in this vote in April, to say no.” 

EFN’s teacher and staff packets propose to use the current teacher and staff contracts, negotiated by ACEA, as a baseline for discussions. The final contract would be shaped by a teacher task force, open for staff and teachers to join, and up for final approval from the future governing board. 

Because all teachers would change from district employment to employment by the nonprofit, they would be considered “newly hired.” That means each teacher would be given a one-year contract. 

As a protection for teachers, EFN says it will offer “just cause” contracts, meaning termination would require the employer to provide just cause and go through due process. 

The teacher packet says the teachers’ workdays would remain 7½ hours long, with a 30-minute duty-free lunch period, though the school’s principal would set the working hours after discussion with teachers and the governing board. 

In the first year of the charter system, teachers who were formerly ACPS employees at the schools can transfer their longevity time into the new charter school. Teachers with at least five years of experience in the current ACPS system will receive the experience stipend, and those with four or less years will receive the stipend when they reach their five-year mark. 

After the first round of teachers, only those with five or more years in the new system will receive the stipend. 

EFN also promises a $300 merit pay for “effective” teachers, and a $600 merit pay for those rated “highly effective,” an increase over the district’s $100 for effective and $200 for highly effective teachers. 

The teacher packet says the development of teacher evaluation tools will be “teacher led.” 

ACPS spokeswoman Jackie Johnson said in addition to the $100-200 performance pay add-ons, the district also spent $114,088 last year on stipends. Those stipends are “almost exclusively” payment to employees for participating in trainings, the one exception being a stipend for overseeing the before-school program at Oak View. 

“Again, they are making comparisons between the ACPS 2023-24 contract and the potential charter 2025-26 contract, although they have no way of knowing what our contract will look like after the next two negotiation cycles,” Johnson wrote in an email. 

Ward said she finds EFN’s statements misleading, as the state’s allocation for per pupil funding changes each year, and ACEA must newly negotiate teacher contracts based on state funding each year. Without knowing what the state will provide, she said EFN cannot make salary promises. 

Ward also expressed concern that the charter schools would begin hiring contractors for some services, such as transportation and food service, resulting in possible loss of jobs for current staff. 

EFN has said it plans to keep food service in-house but hire contractors for bus routes. ACPS has faced bus driver shortages for several years, and though new, more efficient bus routes have helped redistribute the workload, the district is still hiring. 

EFN’s proposed plan also includes increased supplements for staff such as art teachers, cheerleader sponsors, athletic coaches, psychologists and many others. 

ACPS’s Johnson said the district spent $273,611 on the same supplements during the 2022-23 school year. The three pages of supplements listed in EFN’s teacher packet total over $205,000 and are not included in the staff packet. 

EFN’s plan promises health insurance and benefits, offered through the city of Newberry, including medical, dental, vision, health equity/HSA, supplemental life insurance, SwiftMD telemedicine and behavioral health counseling, life insurance and long-term disability, an employee assistance program, legal plan, pet insurance, hospital indemnity and critical illness insurance. 

According to Ward, ACEA’s negotiated contract already offers a zero-premium health insurance plan to ACPS employees. 

If the schools transition, EFN has promised to retain all teachers and staff who want to remain and to recognize employees’ right to unionize, as required by state law. Ward said simply recognizing the right to unionize does not pave the way for employees to actually form a union. 

ACEA has served Alachua County education workers since 1975. The organization represents both teachers and support staff, and Ward said charter employees would have a difficult time starting from scratch. 

“There’s been a lot of years of progress that could be just dissolved,” Ward said. 

Workers would have to start a card campaign to find out if there was enough interest to form a union to represent themselves. The charter school could also choose to give the workers “voluntary recognition” as a union, but that is not something EFN can promise, as the employer would be a separate entity. 

Ward said losing the Newberry schools’ employees would not damage ACEA, but that the union is based on solidarity and strength in numbers. She said she worries that if the schools convert successfully, they will lose teachers, which will impact students. 

“I still think the most important element in excellent education is an excellent teacher in front of those students,” Ward said. “And we want we want to preserve what wonderful educators are currently serving the Newberry schools.”