The School Committee and the Needham teachers union have reached an agreement on a new three-year contract that provides the educators with a package that includes a mix of salary increases and enhanced benefits, particularly when it comes to paid leave policies.
Financially, the agreement increases all 14 salary steps by 4% and contains other adjustments that raise the values of particular steps. It provides cost-of-living adjustments of 0.5% in fiscal 2026, 1.5% in fiscal 2027 and 1.75% in fiscal 2028.
The agreement also eliminates the current first step of the salary scale, which raises the entry-level salary from $57,129 to $62,283 and creates a ripple effect at higher steps.
At the other end of the scale, the highest non-doctoral salary step will increase from $118,577 to $127,481.
The contract covers Unit A of the Needham Education Association, comprising most of the district’s professionally licensed staff — mainly teachers, but also counselors, nurses, school psychologists, speech pathologists and others.
The contract applies to 582 of the district’s 850 full-time equivalent positions, or 607 people.
Both sides expressed satisfaction with the agreement when it was discussed at the June 17 School Committee meeting. School Superintendent Dan Gutekanst described it as “a contract that meets the needs of our staff, our community and most importantly serves our students.”
In listing the contract’s “highlights,” Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources Alexandra McNeil referred to more competitive salaries and expansions of parental leave “specifically for non-birthing parents.”
On the union side, Mike Hirsh, the NEA’s vice president for negotiations, said, “It is a testament to the very long tradition we have here in Needham of the association and the School Committee working together to do what’s in the best interest of staff and the public schools and the people of Needham.
“In a good negotiation, nobody gets everything they want. But both sides listen to each other, understand and give a little bit, and get to a solution that I think is good for the district.”
The agreement creates a new benefit, a Catastrophic Family Medical Leave Substitute Bank which, in the case of an illness of a family member, allows a staffer access to their sick and/or personal leave accruals during the leave rather than going without pay if the leave extends beyond 10 days.
Additionally, the Parental Leave policy also was upgraded to extend beyond the first 10 working days currently paid by the district. Parents giving birth will now be able to tap into accumulated sick and/or personal leave for up to 40 days. And the agreement extends the same opportunity to “a member who is a non-birthing parent and who has an established and documented legal responsibility for a child entering the family.”
Budget can handle it
Andrea Longo Carter was one of the four School Committee members who participated in the negotiations, along with Matt Spengler, Connie Barr and Liz Lee, who stepped in after Barr stepped down from the School Committee in April.
The negotiations began in mid-January, but Carter said the School Committee’s planning actually began last June. She said the negotiated raises were mostly anticipated and will not require any adjustments to next year’s budget.
“We knew this was going to be an expensive contract because we knew that our salaries had fallen behind,” Carter said. “This was factored into our budget.”
Of the 21 school districts Needham considers its peers, Needham’s salaries ranked ninth at the lower salary ranges and 12th at the mid- to higher ranges.
Carter also said the salary step schedule had inconsistencies that needed to be “rationalized.”
“One of the things that we’ve tried to do in the last few contracts with pretty much everybody is to make things more consistent,” she said. “So that when you have a step increase, it’s a consistent increase.”
Carter joined the chorus of those praising the collaborative nature of the negotiations, an element she says has been a constant in her experiences having now participated in three teacher contract negotiations. “It does feel like it’s very collaborative, and we’re there to problem-solve together,” she said.
It’s also an element that has not always been present statewide in the past few years. Since 2022, there have been at least eight different teacher strikes in Massachusetts, despite state laws prohibiting such actions.
In 2024, a Newton teachers strike lasted 11 instructional days and led to the cancellation of that year’s February vacation and more than $600,000 in fines being imposed on the union.
Save as PDF