The leading narrative among the public this year was that the Newton Teachers Association (NTA) was a ruthless, politically cunning entity that always found a way to get what it wanted.
I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry whenever the public talked about the Newton Teachers Association (NTA) as though they wielded considerable political power. This belief that the NTA was a powerful political entity stood in stark contrast to the truth: the NTA’s leadership, helmed by President Mike Zilles, made blunder after blunder that left teachers privately discussing whether there was a way to wrest back control of the union that was supposed to represent us.
As the beginning of the 2020-21 school year approached, a perfect storm fell into the NTA’s lap. Newton leadership (Mayor Fuller, Supt. Fleishman, and the school committee) presented the “plan” that they’d come up with, and it was a doozy. Having obviously been developed without the input of anyone who worked in a classroom, it had a myriad of issues that were quickly pointed out by educators. Outside of those issues, the district was upfront about not having major details figured out. The prime example of this was asking families via a survey to choose between hybrid or the Distance Learning Academy, where they wrote that “details were still in development.”
The NTA, on the other hand, had completed work on a plan over the summer that proposed a phased reopening that began remote and moved toward hybrid or in-person in accordance with the data and science.
It looked like a home run. Communicate the plan to members and the Newton community via official channels and mobilize members to amplify that message, both among colleagues and the Newton community. For a brief moment in time, in the face of the district’s incompetence, the NTA had the ability to seize control of the narrative around reopening. It’s hard to overstate how valuable controlling the messaging is in political advocacy.
This is when I learned of the two critical weaknesses of the NTA’s current leadership:
1. They are unwilling to meaningfully engage membership.
2. They have no public relations apparatus in place to communicate with the community.
Community members were surprised when they learned that the NTA had a plan. They were surprised when they learned that teachers had not collaborated on the district’s plan. They were surprised when they discovered that teachers were entirely in the dark, and the district’s plans and dictates had blindsided us as much as them.
Perhaps even worse, membership was unaware of what was going on. It was summertime, which meant that many teachers were disconnected from the political goings-on in the district. Additionally, teachers hadn’t been in a building together since March, which meant the typical word-of-mouth communication that occurs naturally in the halls and during lunch was close to nonexistent. This was a huge problem; it was vital that membership knew what was going on, was engaged, and was able to unify and advocate for a better plan.
As the district tried to force teachers and students into unsafe buildings with a mockery of a plan, how did leadership try to inform membership that we were literally in a fight for our lives? Every Sunday, NTA members receive a bulletin in their email from President Mike Zilles. Typically, these bulletins include reminders, professional development opportunities, some confrontational bold and italic sentences attacking the district, and notices about upcoming meetings. Up until this year, I used to delete them unread upon receipt unless we were in the midst of contract negotiations, and I can’t imagine that I was alone in doing so.
This weekly bulletin, in an oft-ignored email, was the only place where members were informed over the summer about what was going on. It was the only place to learn that, unless we did something, we were careening full speed ahead toward a district-manufactured disaster with a half-baked plan. There was no attempt by leadership to utilize human chains that are set up to communicate messages. These chains consist of designated people who are each then responsible for reaching out to a list of five colleagues, passing communication to all other members quickly and effectively.
How about the community? Community members were confused, laboring under misinformation from the mayor, and wanted to hear from the teachers. They got nothing but a poorly advertised Zoom meeting talking about the union’s plan, and that was it.
With little time until reopening and zero communication from the NTA leadership, teachers took it upon themselves to organize independently from the NTA’s leadership structures. We wrote articles, posted on social media, and talked to neighbors. We created private groups amongst ourselves where we could work to organize and get our message out in the absence of anything from the leadership. The Facebook group that is now called “Changing the Conversation: Parents, Educators, and Students in Support of NPS” was created by parents who understood that the district was lying to them. It served a valuable role as a centralized location where people could go to hear truth from teachers.
But none of this was enough. Without the NTA-proper’s resources and organizing structures, we were unable to cobble together a strong message that was widely heard throughout Newton.
In an embarrassing display, the Newton School Committee approved a plan, then un-approved the plan, opting for another plan instead. Their reopening plan forced elementary and special educators into buildings almost immediately, with middle school teachers returning after, and high school remote “for the foreseeable future.”
“Divide and conquer” was a phrase thrown around a lot at this time. By forcing back only some educators at the beginning of the year, educators who were not being forced back had less of an incentive to engage with what was going on. Some may not have even known that colleagues were being forced back; they only knew that they weren’t. I honestly don’t think the School Committee was savvy enough to utilize what was actually a powerful strategy against the NTA intentionally, so I’ll chalk it up to an unhappy accident. (It’s been a while, so as a reminder, teachers did want to return to buildings, but district leadership refused to administer a 3rd party assessment of our ventilation and refused to implement a testing program, forcing students and educators into unsafe environments.)
Regardless, the window for action was short. At this point, we had about a week until the first educators were forced back in. We needed the NTA to act right then, lest they forsake their responsibility to protect their members.
Hearing nothing from leadership, NTA members collected enough signatures to force a general meeting to discuss actions to fight the district on their reckless decisions. A meeting created this way must be scheduled within thirty days of the signatures. Zilles chose to schedule the meeting for the maximum thirty days away to prevent us from forcing union action. By that time, elementary and Unit C educators would already be back in buildings, removing any real leverage the NTA had with the district. Whether it was hubris, poor political instincts, or frustration, Zilles’s decision was the final nail in the coffin condemning our teachers.
The most frustrating element of our leadership actively thwarting the will of the membership was that the NTA had the ability to stop the district. As anyone who has tried will tell you, hiring teachers this year has been nigh impossible. The NTA leadership was negotiating with the school committee from a position of absolute power, and they lost. They lost because they couldn’t communicate, stymied members instead of mobilizing them, and, because they had no support from the community or from members, were unable to take the type of large, meaningful actions necessary to protect teachers from the district.
The community at large, still woefully misinformed, seemed to believe that the union had come out on top, winning more than they should have. The school committee and David Fleishman leaned hard into this, scapegoating teachers with code words like “staffing shortages” to explain why the reopening plan changed. In fact, the district had full information from a survey earlier in the summer about who was able to return. Lies from Fuller, Fleishman, and the School Committee piled up, and the NTA leadership was too dysfunctional to call them out on it in a way that the community would hear.
The school committee talked disdainfully and disrespectfully about teachers. The NTA leadership viewed the contingent of members who advocated for a stronger communication strategy and action plan as problematic troublemakers. Many in the community blamed teachers for everything that had gone wrong so far
Within the NTA, many members were still in the dark about what was going on. At a general assembly meeting scheduled to take a vote of No Confidence in Supt. David Fleishman, the first vote garnered only 61% support. Leadership seemed surprised by this outcome, and opened the floor to questions. Members asked questions that clearly demonstrated they had no idea Fleishman had fumbled reopening. Some thought, like the community, that the NTA had worked on the reopening plan with the district. Some were unaware of the degree to which teachers had been shut out of the process. In general, there was confusion and a lack of urgency stemming from a lack of information about the situation. A second vote was held, which brought those in support up to a still-measly 67%. After additional questions and confusion, a third vote was conducted via email, which yielded a bit above 70%, but with only around half the membership weighing in, reflecting the remarkably poor levels of information and mobilization that had been the hallmark of the Zilles leadership team.
(Fun Note: Privately, conducting a vote of no confidence in Mike Zilles came up in multiple conversations among those who were in the loop.)
At every general assembly meeting of the NTA, I argued for a stronger public relations response, and I was not alone. The leadership nodded and agreed, yet nothing changed for the rest of the year. Frustrated by our leadership’s unresponsiveness, I worked with a group of parents and educators to set up two community forum discussions. While both received much positive feedback, the damage had been done: teachers were teaching in unsafe buildings being ignored by both the district leadership and the union leadership. Perhaps even worse long-term, community trust in teachers had been badly damaged by the NTA’s unwillingness to combat the district’s narrative framing us as the villains.
At least, I told myself, Zilles’s term was ending this year. With the weirdness of the pandemic, I wasn’t sure when elections were being held, but assumed that the information would be communicated to the membership in a timely manner. After all, as a democratic organization, it is in the interest of everyone to have an engaged membership. In hindsight, I sound like an idiot for trusting that they’d do the one thing they’d refused to do all year and communicate with us.
Up until early June, colleagues would casually ask when elections were happening, or whether a previous opponent of Zilles’s would run again. Having heard nothing from the leadership in June, I asked when elections would occur.
Apparently, they happened in March.
I scoured my email and found only one that contained the word “election” – it was the ballot.
Unless I’m missing something pretty huge, the NTA’s leadership team scheduled elections without informing anyone, sent out a ballot to members in which all but one of them were unopposed, and they renewed their terms for two years.
EDIT: It has been brought to my attention that I (and many others) did, in fact, miss the single email that was sent out notifying membership of the election timeline. This only supports my point - that leadership feel one email, in a pandemic year, was sufficient to let people know about nominations, is further proof that they have a communications problem. For comparison, my wife, who is also in a union, received weekly reminders on election timelines, four emails with voting links, and had the opportunity to attend two Q&A sessions with candidates.
If this was intentional, it’s reprehensible, antidemocratic, and all involved should be removed. If this was unintentional, then it’s the latest in a long line of examples of a complete inability to communicate.
There are two oft-contrasted models of representation: the delegate model and the trustee model. In the delegate model, an elected official acts as a mouthpiece for their constituents. In the extreme, they would have constituents vote on every issue and cast their vote accordingly. In the trustee model, an elected official acts as they see fit, even if doing so goes against the desires of their constituents. Realistically, while elected officials might fall closer to one end of the spectrum or the other, most are somewhere in the middle – they ran because they wanted to do what they believed in, but if they want to be reelected, they can’t go totally off the rails.
From the last year, it seems that Zilles favors the trustee model, except that he’s veered beyond that into patently undemocratic territory. It’s one thing to occasionally act against the wishes of your constituents because you believe they’re wrong on an issue (ex. civil rights). It’s another entirely to actively suppress your constituents, shut them out, and schedule elections without voters knowing.
Unions serve a vital role in America. They protect workers from things that you’d never even think they’d need to be protected from. Without unions, employers can and will push every envelope and exploit workers to the greatest extent allowable by law (and beyond). Even the modern weekend only exists thanks to unions. Even a union as dysfunctional as the NTA was eventually able to convince the district to fix the ventilation and implement a half-hearted, lackluster surveillance testing program.
But unions are at their strongest when they are united. They’re at their best when their members feel represented, safe, and empowered. They’re at their most potent when members are mobilized instead of silenced, communicated with instead of dismissed.
As I’ve done repeatedly over the course of the year, I call on the leadership of the NTA to scrap whatever their approach to communication is and rebuild it from the ground up, or just resign and let somebody do the job who wants to do it well. We can’t be caught flat-footed the next time the district decides to throw us to the dogs, and that means we need ways of getting the support of the community and the membership by communicating information to them directly and effectively. Frantically trying to catch up and undo the lies and misinformation of Mayor Fuller, Supt. Fleishman, and the Newton School Committee is a recipe for continued failure.
Consider this my vote of no confidence in the NTA leadership. Despite what they seem to believe based on their actions this year, the NTA membership does not exist to serve as a rubber stamp for whatever Zilles and his team want to do. This is our union, and our voices need to be heard. Our rights need to be protected. Our leaders serve us, not the other way around.
We expect better because we deserve better.
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