November 17, 2019

We have never done a very good job of understanding or appreciating the lives of working people, but on November 18, there is an opportunity to do just that.

The Education Support Professionals (ESP) union, which exists under the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers umbrella, is inviting the public to attend its latest round of contract negotiations with the Minneapolis Public Schools.

It’s a great idea. ESPs occupy the lowest place on Minneapolis’s public education ladder, when it comes to respect, resources and wages. They are the people who ride the school bus with special education students, make class sizes look lower by assisting teachers, monitor recess and lunch, and otherwise act as valued hands-on helpers.

Sometimes, their job is to brush a student’s teeth, or change a diaper. They handle outbursts from students in crisis and, in some settings, risk being punched, slapped, kicked and verbally abused on a daily basis.

Still, most say they love their jobs and want to stay in the Minneapolis Public Schools. Many have dreams of becoming licensed teachers.

But they can’t afford to.

I spoke with two ESPs recently who do not want their names made public because they fear for their jobs. Their stories are essential, though, because students’ learning conditions are directly connected to the working conditions of ESPs and teachers.

The two I spoke with are part of the grassroots organizing going on among ESPs. They have been part of a recent sickout that took place, with numerous ESPs calling in sick as a form of protest.

Now, they allege, the district is using its resources to try and track down who was behind the sickouts. This could lead to ESPs being fired or having a negative letter in their employment file.

Here is some of what the ESPs I spoke with said about their working conditions and why they are willing to risk their jobs to fight for a better contract with MPS.

Working conditions: “This is about our conditions, not just money.”

• Over the past 5 years, we’ve been fully staffed for only 5 days
• We have incredibly high burnout rates. Every year we start out short-staffed.
• We do all basic personal care. When we are understaffed, kids sometimes aren’t getting fed at the right time, or getting their teeth brushed
• Some of our students have violent tendencies; when we are understaffed, we can’t adequately protect the other students.
• This is a taxing job, very emotional and physical.
• I personally have held students while they’ve had seizures.
• It’s very easy for students to fall behind and miss their potential, if there’s not enough staff to give them the attention they need.
• There are a lot of days when you put it down to an hour or two where the students have solid learning; the rest of the day is trying to meet basic needs and control behaviors. If there’s time, maybe we’ll have ten minutes to read a book.

Budget shortfalls hit ESPs hardest: “I have two full-time jobs.”

• Personally, it is hard to pay the bills. I think everyone is having trouble with this. I’m having trouble not looking for another job. Most ESPs have another job, meaning they’re going to work burnt out from their other jobs.
• It’s hard not to look at industries where I could get paid more to do an easier job. I know a lot of people are contemplating leaving, and finding something else to do.
• Finding time to show up for union events has been difficult. Everybody’s working too much.
• Everyone I know here has a second job, and many of us have families. We have to deal with that, too. People work in group homes, or side jobs to make some money. Restaurants, grocery stores, salons.
• MPS has been very upset that we can’t somehow manage to get by. They don’t understand why or how we can’t get things done. They find our complaints tiresome. A lot of us feel like a nuisance at this point.

ESPs connect with students: “I would love to stay at my job.”

• I would love to stay at my job, I’ll say that. I would really love to stay. I love all of my students. We primarily have Somali and Ethiopian refugees, or children of refugees, and immigrants.
• We are pretty much an entirely diverse program; the same goes for our staff.
• One of our students still asks for an SEA (Special Education Assistant) who left last year. He left because he got a job in another district, not because he hated the job or the kids. 
• Our kids are very vulnerable in many aspects. Their success in our program could mean the difference between living in a group home their entire lives or being able to walk and take care of themselves.

Lack of respect: “How we are treated is a reflection of how the district thinks these students should be treated.”

• This is about our conditions, not just money. We’ve gotten some–in the beginning of the year–district people to come help us. Unpaid, unlicensed, untrained student teachers were sent in to help us, and that’s a dangerous situation.
• How we are treated is a reflection of how the district thinks these students should be treated.
• Kids have been getting their hair pulled, their personal boundaries violated, without enough people in the room to stop them.
• Our work is very hands-on, very skilled–but there is a lack of respect and compensation
• It’s a lot of emotional and verbal abuse from our kids, but we have to show up every day and be on point, you know? We are expected to do that. It’s been more work for us. Our work load is bigger, but we aren’t being compensated for that. We’re just expected to take it.
• The way we’re being treated, on top of the pay that we get, and the impact on our students, isn’t retaining anybody. The people who suffer are our kids–especially the kids with incredibly high needs.

Benefits and pay: “We can’t afford to be sick.”

• We’ve been plagued with constant illness and exhaustion. There’ve been many weeks when we’ve had six or seven staff out, and no support to help us compensate.
• We have people coming to work sick, with very intense medical conditions, but they don’t have any more sick days left already.
• All of this is very stressful, physically and emotionally. Many of us are sick and can’t recover, and then our students get sick, and we get more sick.
• Call in sick? You may not get paid. It depends on how many hours you have saved up. We don’t get any maternity or paternity leave.
• We have two ESPs who are pregnant. They will use sick time, vacation days, and unpaid time for their leave. There will be no staff to replace them during their time off.
• The pay is not enough, and they keep freezing our wages. I have been there for over four years, and I have maybe moved one step. Maybe. It may have been a step or a cost of living raise.
• I was told, when hired, that I would be getting steps each year. And now they want to freeze them? And then they wonder why these positions aren’t being filled.
• I have two full-time jobs, and I have a family.

MPS’s role: “MPS says they have no money. We don’t believe it.”

• MPS would say they have no money. ESPs don’t believe it, because we hear all the time about some program they started, where they allot $2 million or something per year for a project that might benefit 20 employees. 
• It’s a matter of choice. MPS is choosing where to put its resources.
• They keep upgrading their Promethean boards, every year. Loads of them are by the doors every year, ready to be put in the classroom. They’ve got to be $3000 per board. Why do we need a new one each year?
• Why are they spending time investigating who started the sickout, who the leaders are? Why not spend money on how to treat us better?

Internal data shows that the majority of ESPs are people of color, a cohort the district–and pretty much everybody these days–says they are trying desperately to “attract and retain.” Yet data also shows that there is nearly a 50% turnover in ESP ranks every two years.

From an ESP with access to MPS’s employee data dashboard:

• There are 689 Special Education Assistants (SEA) in the district, and 358 (52%) of them started either on the first day of the 2017-18 school year or later.
• The retention rate is higher for Associate Educators (another job category under the ESP wing), but so is their pay. They make $2 more per hour than SEAs.

ESPs are asking the public to attend their November 18 bargaining session with the Minneapolis Public Schools, as a way to show support and solidarity for their efforts. This is especially important because so many ESPs will be working at their second jobs and will be unable to attend.

“We love what we do. We like where we work. We think there’s a great bunch of teachers here. We like working with our students, but MPS is taking the love out of the job.

We want a reason to come back to work, the next day.”

The event starts at 5:30 p.m. at the MFT building, 67 8th Ave NE, Minneapolis.