“What do we want?!”
“A FAIR CONTRACT!”
“When do we want it?!”
“NOW!”
On Thursday, February 27, this chant rang out across the parking lot of Sharon Middle School. The sidewalk was lined with teachers in red shirts who waved and lifted up their signs as cars drove past. “IAs Deserve A Living Wage,” proclaimed one sign; another, “Poverty Pay Is Not OK!” On behalf of the Sharon Teachers Association, the demonstrators were seeking something that they have gone without for over six months: a contract for Sharon’s instructional assistants.
“Instructional assistants are the staff members who work inside classrooms with special education students,” explained Rebecca Fuller, a teacher at East Elementary and co-president of the STA. “They are there to really help all the students in our classrooms and make the teachers able to reach more students during their class time.” IAs are found in all of Sharon’s school buildings, from the Early Childhood center to the high school, Fuller added.
However, these essential employees have gone without a contract since last summer. “Their contract expired June 30th, 2024,” said middle school teacher and STA co-president Erinne Silver. “We’ve been negotiating on this contract for a year.” Currently, the district is offering IAs 42- and 43-cent raises for the next two years. Silver and Fuller agree: That’s not acceptable.
“When you’re only making twenty dollars an hour, forty cents isn’t going to make a huge difference,” said Fuller. Silver confirmed that the lowest-paid IAs currently receive an hourly wage of $20.05. “They get paid quite a bit less” than teachers, pointed out Fuller, “but have to contribute more for the insurance.”
In addition to a higher pay raise and lower insurance costs, the STA is seeking to include more benefits in the contract, including parental leave and crisis prevention training. The administration has its own proposals on the table as well; according to Silver, they intend to implement a stricter probation, which is a period when employees are evaluated to determine if they will continue to work in their current position. Silver expressed concerns that this provision could negatively impact IAs’ job security.
As Thursday’s negotiations for the new contract were about to begin, Fuller stressed the importance of the demonstrators’ message. “We just want to make sure that the public knows the value of the instructional assistants to our everyday classrooms,” she said. “We literally cannot do our jobs without them.”