CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – The Charlottesville Education Association and City Schools Superintendent Dr. Royal Gurley were able to agree on a plan that CEA will ratify 10.5% in time to include in the School Board’s February 19 budget presentation, but an email the school system sent to the community last Friday is leaving a mark.

“I would like to hear an apology at some point, but if that is not an option, I am at least glad you’ve heard how we feel,” said special education instructional assistant Sydney Reid to a joint meeting of City Council and the School Board Monday night at Upper Walker Elementary School.

“I just want to say I’m grateful we are moving toward the budget as we thought we were getting, but the email Friday was not only hurtful to many IAs and other support professionals, but hurtful to the members of the CEA who worked very hard to get us the agreed-upon decision,” she said.

The letter sent at Friday at 3:30 p.m. stated, among other things, that an agreement in principal had been reached on the 10.5% support personnel pay raise, but “Unfortunately we have received confirmation this morning that the CEA does not intend to give its support professional unit members the opportunity to ratify the contract prior to the Board approving next year’s budget on February 19.”

“Our legal counsel has advised that this failure to submit for ratification negates the agreement that was reached at the table,” the letter said.

“The Superintendent, therefore, will present a budget that includes the regular administrative raise of 3% for support professionals, rather than the 10.5% we had agreed to at the table.”

But Monday night, Dr. Gurley announced, “I am pleased to say we had a meeting today with CEA and they’re going to go ahead and bring our tentative agreement to a vote for its support with the bargaining unit in time for the Board to approve its budget on Feb. 19.”

The speakers at the joint meeting urged Councilors to fully fund the School Board budget with those full pay raises for support personnel, and 5.5% for licensed personnel, but also accused the school system of not being truthful about what happened in the negotiation.

Bryce Estes, a 2nd-grade teacher at Trailblazer Elementary said, “I’m so happy for today’s update that the support staff will receive the 10.5% raise.”

“However, I’m deeply concerned by the district’s communication that the issue occurred due to the CEA not bringing a revised contract to a vote.”

“That message left out critical context as we’ve learned that the CEA attempted to clarify unclear contract language and those attempts went unanswered,” Estes stated.

A Friday evening response by the CEA to that letter said, in part, “CEA never stated that we did not intend to ratify our negotiated contract.”

The letter stated, “In January it came to light that certain terms of the agreement regarding employee contract days were in question’; we reached out to the division multiple times to ask for clarification, and it became clear we were not in agreement on the meaning of language in one article of the contract. so we had to delay ratification until this was resolved.”

The school system said because the contract was not ratified in time, the budget would revert to 3% raises for the unlicensed personnel.

Dr. Gurley said Monday about the resolution of that dispute, “That would give a 10.5% raise to support professionals each for the next three years and that’s truly something I do want to celebrate.”

School Board Chair Lisa Torres expressed a hope of the Board of being able “to move forward with Board, Administration, and our union leadership just with our clarity about our roles, timeliness, when things are due, accountability because I do agree with my colleagues that our staff does deserve fair compensation for the work they do and the processes by which that happens”.

“I’m hopeful we can share some more good news later in the week,” she concluded.

Teachers were the majority of speakers at the meeting, with some of the support staff.

Jackson Via Elementary Shamkia Henson shared that she was one of the individuals who lost their car in the 2024 leaf fire in the school parking lot, and she could not afford to replace it.

She noted while the community set up a GoFundMe to help staff replace the cars they lost, “not one time did the central office or City of Charlottesville ask the people affected if they could do anything, or what they could do to help”.

Some teachers spoke on behalf of support staff who could not be there Monday night because they were working other jobs that help them make ends meet.

“There’s been messages stating let’s help our families whose food stamps are being withheld, now there’s football field that’s just been redone, when will the division start supporting their staff,” Henson said.