Hub Teachers Rally for Contract

“Talk to Teachers” was the message as 1,000 Boston teachers, paraprofessionals and their supporters rallied outside of Boston School Department headquarters. The educators were out in force on a cold January night to urge school officials to get serious about negotiating a new contract.

Negotiations have dragged on for nearly two years while substantive issues, including a demand by the Boston Public Schools that teachers work a longer school day with no additional compensation, remain unresolved. Meanwhile, educators say that the city’s increasingly antagonistic tone towards the men and women who teach the city’s children is taking a toll on them.

“Teachers work very hard, and we are deserving of our wages,’’ Adeline Dajuste, a teacher at the Kenny Elementary in Dorchester told the Boston Globe. ‘‘We come in early, stay late, work through our lunch, tutor children after school, and correct papers at home. We have gone above and beyond what we are asked to do. At least give us a cost of living increase.”

Negotiations are scheduled to resume later this month and continue in early February. Boston Teachers Union president Richard Stutman says that while some limited progress has been made, the union’s goal remains unchanged. “We want a contract that is good for students, affordable to the city and fair to our members,” says Stutman. “We can’t get there on our own. The city needs to talk to teachers.”

To make sure that the School Department gets the message, the BTU has sent a traveling billboard across the city in recent days, from Readville to Charlestown through Roxbury, from Brighton to Dorchester through Jamaica Plain, and from East Boston to City Hall. The message: “Talk to Teachers.”