Public schools are hubs of community. They are at the heart of neighborhoods, offering a productive and educational space for students, but also a sense of pride, service, and common good for the District as a whole. The importance of public schools as a locus for community and a common good for all is driving the Washington Teachers’ Union approach to contract bargaining this school year, starting with our Community Conversations being held in each Ward.
Just like our labor union, we understand that communities are stronger when they organize together; but organizing together does not mean asking for support after the fact. It means actively building a vision and demands together, collectively imagining our goals and then pursuing them with a common voice.
Through our Community Conversations in October, we want to hear from parents, students, educators, and various community stakeholders to collectively develop a vision of strong public education in the District. We will discuss challenges, solutions, and priorities regarding what will make our district one that DC’s communities deserve, and we will explore the ways the WTU contract campaign can be used alongside community involvement to make strong demands that lead to transformational change.
These sessions are to be true conversations that build a movement for a stronger public school system, not simply a space to share an idea and leave it in a suggestion box. The meetings will not open with predetermined topics, but with food provided by the WTU, and time for the various community members to envision their ideal and any challenges or issues that are keeping us from reaching that ideal. We know that each community may have different priorities, and we want to honor that by creating a flexible agenda driven by participants.
As a whole group, we can then narrow down which challenges to tackle that evening, recognizing that we have a limited time sharing a space and want it to be as productive as possible (though all ideas will be captured). From there, participants can choose which issue or challenge they want to brainstorm around, before a collective share-out and final discussion.
Together, we can explore what it means to have healthy learning environments, community resources, reasonable class sizes, appropriate testing, and much more depending on the various needs and ideas participants bring. These conversations are only the beginning. From our Community Conversations, we will be developing a report that will be shared with the community and that outlines the takeaways from the conversations, the priorities articulated, and the solutions proposed.
This report will guide the next steps in our contract campaign – developing the advocacy strategy and the contract language we want to propose in our negotiations. We want to continue connecting with community members who want to be a part of developing our proposals at the bargaining table, and we want to continue to keep everyone informed and involved in the progress to make these proposals a reality. But we also know that these proposals will not become a reality without more organizing with the community, and we hope that with demands developed by and for everyday stakeholders, when it comes time to push the district to do what is right, we can all push together, knowing that we all have a voice and stake in the outcome.
While this form of contract bargaining may be newer to DC, it is not a new strategy overall. Labor unions across the country have found strength in partnerships with the communities they serve, winning transformational changes that benefit workers and those the workers serve. The Washington Teachers’ Union firmly believes that educator working conditions are student learning conditions, and with the vital role our public schools play in the health of overall neighborhoods and communities, it is only natural to work with our parents, students, educators, and the myriad of additional stakeholders to fight for the changes we all want to see.
If you would like to join or volunteer at one of our Community Conversations held throughout October, you can sign up at https://bit.ly/wtuconversation or scan the QR code on our flyer. We look forward to envisioning, building, and organizing with everyone this school year.
Fuchs is president of the Washington Teachers’ Union.
