The verdict is in: Charlottesville City Schools will now engage in collective bargaining.
The crowd broke out clapping and hugging as City Schools became the third school division in Virginia to pass collective bargaining.
“It’s been a journey and I’m really pleased to be a part of it,” said Board Member Lisa Larson-Torres.
Last month, the school board announced its support for collective bargaining.
The union originally submitted its proposal last spring after reaching a super majority among City School employees. Almost a year later, the union and the school board will now engage in two bargaining units — one for licensed employees (such as teachers and technicians) and another for all other workers (such as custodians).
Now the union will work out which items — like benefits and wages — it wants to negotiate with the board. Each unit is allowed to negotiate two issues per contract. The first contract will last three years. After that, the two parties can haggle again.
While we can’t cover every story that’s important to you, we do our best to be responsive to your needs. We use tips from readers to choose which stories to cover, to incorporate information into broader reports or to help us decide how to grow Charlottesville Tomorrow. Here’s where you can tell us what you think we should be covering.
More about local efforts to collective bargain
Albemarle County forced to reconsider allowing school workers to collective bargain after more than 100 people descend on meeting
“If we want to keep the best teachers we have in Albemarle County, we have to recognize that this is something we have to deal with,” said School Board member Graham Paige.
Charlottesville is about to become just the third school division in Virginia to allow its union to collective bargain
“I think the fact that it was sticky and complicated and difficult makes it even sweeter. We had to work really hard for it and it feels really good,” said Jessica Taylor, president of the Charlottesville Education Association.
City of Charlottesville workers are first in the area to earn right to collectively bargain
City workers can now negotiate their salaries and insurance.
More local News
Charlottesville’s ‘tooligans’ are teaching people to fix up their homes — and lending out the right tools for the job
The Charlottesville Tool Library offers memberships on a sliding scale, $1 for every $1,000 you make per year.
Charlottesville and Albemarle County residents who need help with rent have short windows to apply in early April
Here’s what you need to know about how to get started with the city and country’s housing voucher programs.
Researchers are still trying to identify the enslaved people buried in unmarked Pen Park graves
They hope making a database publicly accessible by this summer will help them identify the descendants of those who were enslaved on the former plantation that is now a public park.
Fry’s Spring is a mostly residential neighborhood that once had an electric streetcar and an amusement park
It was also yet another area of Charlottesville that used racial covenants to legally prohibit the sale of property to Black people.
Residents rage to City Council on the ‘hidden tax increase’ coming next year
Rising real estate assessment values will inflate Charlottesville tax bills further in FY2024 unless the Council lowers the tax rate.
