Plainfield EA brings home groundbreaking contract 

By Kathryn Coulibaly 

Bargaining a new contract in 2023 and 2024 was personal for the Plainfield bargaining teams. The school community, which includes more than 14 buildings, 1,300 all-inclusive association members and nearly 10,000 students, had previously seen decades of acrimonious bargaining. But for the past five years, the association has been working hard to develop relationships and change the climate.  

 “We approached this from a very simple perspective,” Maryanne Rodriguez, the NJEA field representative who works with the Plainfield Education Association (PEA) team, says. “We are all here to do good work for Plainfield’s children and good working conditions lead to good learning conditions for students.”  

 The association’s bargaining team, led by PEA President Keith Coston and PEA Vice President and negotiations team chair Melissa Logan, had two main priorities: improving the financial and benefits package for the lowest-paid earners and veteran teachers who had dedicated their working lives to Plainfield’s children.  

They achieved both of those goals and more by developing a positive working relationship with administration and the board of education.  

Rigorous preparation yields results 

They also rigorously prepared for negotiations, creating a representative bargaining team, attending the NJEA Jim George Collective Bargaining Conference, working in tandem with Rodriguez and communicating with the membership about their needs and priorities.  

 The results speak for themselves.  

 “Our salaries weren’t competitive for certificated staff and in a teacher shortage, that’s a problem,” Logan says. “One of the highlights of our new contract is that in Year 5, we’re going to be the first district in the state with an $80,000 starting salary. Six years ago, our starting salary was just under $54,000.”  

 In a contract filled with highlights, the PEA is particularly proud of what they were able to do for assistants.  

 In 2023, the district had 31 five-hour assistants and 164 six-hour assistants. These members include bus assistants and teaching assistants. The five-hour assistants had no employer paid health care and, if hired after 2011, had no pension. They were enrolled in the Defined Contribution Retirement Program (DCRP). Their annual salary was approximately $31,000. The six-hour assistants hired after 2011 also had no pension, and an annual salary of approximately $36,000.  

 The PEA negotiated an offer for all of the assistants to move to full-time assistants. This resulted in the following improved package for the assistants: 

• Health insurance eligibility.  
• Enrollment in the Public Employees’ Retirement System (PERS) (35 hours/week). 
• A single-step guide, earning a $38 hourly wage in 2024 (over $47,000 per year) and increasing over the five-year contract to $43.61 in 2028 (over $57,000 per year). 

 In addition, the PEA negotiated:  

• 3.5% per year, five-year contract, plus guide enhancement for certificated staff and support staff on the Non-Instructional guide (these are various specialists who work in human resources and other offices, grant-funded case managers, information technology, etc.) 
• Certificated staff: first in the state to have a starting salary of $80,000, commencing in the last year of the contract.  
• BA guide for certificated staff breaks $100,000 a year in the first year of the contract. 
• Eleven-step guide, elimination of five steps on certificated guide over the life of the contract. 
• Opportunity for nurses, professional school counselors and child study team members to become 12-month employees. 
• 10-month drivers, assistants and security officers will be paid their hourly rate for summer work (previously a set stipend rate that did not keep pace with an increase in the workload over the years). 
• Full-time release president provision for ESPs: When an ESP is PEA president, they will be paid on the Non-Instructional-2 guide for the term of their presidency. If, after their service as president, they return to their previous position, they will go back to their old salary guide. 
• Increased sick day payout to maximum allowed by law. 
• Increased longevity payments for certificated and ESP staff members. In 2023, the payment for 20 years of service ranged from $500  to $650, depending on job classification. With the new scale, all staff will receive a $1,250 longevity payment after 20 years. 
• Improved tuition reimbursement. 
• All full-time PEA members will be eligible for tuition reimbursement. 
• There is no lifetime cap on tuition reimbursement. 
• An increase in the tuition reimbursement pot from $150,000 to $300,000 per year. 
• A Felician University Partnership program. 
• Reimbursement of mentoring fees by the district to the mentee. 

“Both negotiating teams wanted to do right by our staff,” Coston says. “Everyone was committed to making Plainfield an excellent place to work and learn.”  

 “We’re proud that the improvements in this contract touch every unit, and everyone saw improvements,” Logan adds. “No one was left out.”

A fully representative team 

Not only is the contract groundbreaking for the members, the negotiating team was also able to break a bad cycle of bargaining in the district.  

 “Previously, we worked for five years without a new contract,” Coston says. “From 2011-2016, our members were stalled. We went all the way to super conciliation before it finally settled. This is the first time in more than a decade that we settled the contract before it expired.” 

 Logan believes the negotiations team’s collaboration was a major factor in its success.  

 “By contract, we have seven negotiating team members and three alternates,” Logan says. “We wanted representation by unit, and we had an application and interview process. We asked people to apply to be on the team and then Keith, PEA Vice President Lori Davis and I interviewed the applicants. We wanted to make sure the team was fully representative of our membership—job categories, years in the district, everything.”  

 Logan believes that a good mix of team members is the key to settling a good contract. The association encouraged anyone who did not make it onto the team to participate by helping share information and encouraging attendance at meetings about negotiations.  

 “We set up ground rules and we made sure to use good procedures for our team,” Coston adds.  

 “These are incredible people with different views and opinions, but whatever the group decides, we’re going to work together and move forward,” Logan adds.  

Answering every question 

The PEA leadership is also proud that so many members participated in the ratification process.  

 “The entire general membership was invited to a meeting on a Monday in the gym,” Coston says. “We had previously sent out the contract revisions to every member so they could review it and come to the meeting prepared to ask questions. We took our time to make sure everyone was able to ask their questions.”  

 When the meeting went past the anticipated time, the membership moved to the cafeteria. That night, voting opened at 5 p.m. and closed on Friday. In all, almost 900 members voted to ratify. 

 For Coston, the achievement of an excellent contract is personal. He is a proud graduate of the district and even served as a student representative on the board of education  when he was a high school student. Six months after graduation, he was recruited to work in the district as an administrative assistant.   

 “It’s amazing to have been a student here,” Coston recalls. “From kindergarten to when I graduated, they advocated for me and now I am advocating for them.”

Kathryn Coulibaly is the associate editor of the NJEA Review and provides content and support to njea.org. She can be reached at kcoulibaly@njea.org.