Today, the Boston Teachers Union has over 10,000 members. These thousands of union members do everything in their power to promote diversity, equity, and inclusivity in the union and in the Boston Public Schools. The road to amassing more than 10,000 diverse union members was winding and often turbulent, and it took decades to achieve.
When discussing the themes below, it is important to note that there were no formal collective bargaining rights for teachers in Boston before the mid-1960s. Despite this, teachers’ organizations and unions found ways to informally campaign for various workplace gains.
Women and the Union
Teaching, especially at the pre-school and elementary school level, has been defined and promoted as “women’s work” since the middle of the 19th century. This gendered shift in the educational workforce – which became majority-female in the late 19th century and has remained so ever since – can be traced to patriarchal ideas that women are more suitable for the profession due to their natural maternal disposition. Catharine Beecher, an advocate of equal educational opportunity for women, did more than perhaps anyone else to promote these ideas in her various essays and speeches.
Despite women's dominance in this field since the late 19th century, they have faced interpersonal and systemic discrimination on the basis of their sex. Teachers in Boston during the early to mid-twentieth century were not spared from this discrimination. For example, in 1919, the wage gap between women teachers and men teachers was obscene: male high school teachers’ salaries were more than double the salaries women elementary teachers received. Until the early 1950s in some schools, women teachers still ran the risk of losing of their teaching jobs once they married or became pregnant.
In order to combat this discrimination, some women joined the Boston Teachers Union, and with the help of BTU, women educators were able to start addressing these problems. In 1947, two years after its founding, BTU supported a Boston ballot initiative promoting equal pay for equal work. Then, in 1957-58, the BTU played a part in the passing of the single salary scale; a more fair pay scale for educators. Previously, teachers at certain levels and in certain subject areas had earned much more than their equally-credentialed and senior counterparts in other classrooms, professional divisions that very often reflected the gender composition of faculty in those particular fields.
Expanding Educator Representation
Today, BTU represents more than just teachers. Paraprofessionals, nurses, substitute teachers, guidance counselors, and psychologists are just several of the many educational professionals the union represents. However, into the 1970s, many of these professions had no representation, and thus no one to protect them or fight for them in the Boston Public School system.
Paraprofessionals
Paraprofessional educators perform a wide variety of educational work. Some assist the head teacher with tasks around the classroom, while others provide direct support to students. They may focus their attention on special education students or they may share their attention with students in various classrooms. All in all, paraprofessionals are an integral part of public schooling. At the same time, some paras have been looked down upon, even by teachers, for having less formal training or credentialing. Paras – then called “teacher aides” – became part of public education in the mid-1950s. Why did they lack union representation in Boston schools until 1972?
Jenna Fitzgerald, a retired BPS paraprofessional and BTU member, gives insight into these issues in the video interview below.
Nurses
School nurses are among the many professionals in public education that have experienced workplace injustices. The essay below, provides further insight into some of the many injustices school nurses faced in Boston.
On June 10 the news media in Boston carried the story of a report made by the Boston Municipal Research Bureau recommending that the school physicians and nurses in the Boston School System be replaced by paramedics and medical students as a means of saving money...If Boston school nurses are spending too much time doing paper work and routine screenings it is because they are not given the necessary supportive personnel. Certain school policies and state laws require written records and reports, and specific screening procedures. If the school does not provide clerical and nonprofessional assistance, the nurse is required to perform these duties, a waste of her skills. It is the responsibility of the school system to provide supportive personnel. It is quite possible that computers would be useful in record keeping, but neither modern machines nor unskilled personnel can or should replace the professional school nurse."
School nurses were officially allowed to join Boston Teachers Union in 1970. With the help of BTU, nurses have won the right to earn raises with each additional year of experience. Also with the union's help, the ratio of students that school nurses are in charge of has decreased from 800:1 to 700:1. All in all, having union representation has helped the school nurses of the Boston Public School System achieve a better work life by directing public's attention to the unfairness being pushed upon on them and their profession.
Educators of Color
When BTU won the right to represent Boston teachers in 1965, the workforce was overwhelmingly white. As Black and Latinx Bostonians struggled for school equity in the decade that followed, a few more educators of color were hired, but it was not until the Morgan v. Hennigan decision in 1974 that significant numbers of Black and Latinx educators were hired, at the order of Judge W. Arthur Garrity. The educators who joined the Boston Public Schools, and the BTU, in the years after 1974 faced many challenges, including racist hostility from some of their colleagues.
Helyn C. Hall, a retired BPS teacher and BTU member, gives insight into her experiences as a Black educator in the video interview below.
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