November 11th, 2019

We, the Non-Tenure Faculty Coalition #6546 AFT/IFT/AAUP, express our full solidarity with the Decatur Federation of Teaching Assistants (DFTA) #4324 AFT/IFT/AFL-CIO in their fight for a fair contract with the Decatur School Board. We call on the Decatur School Board to negotiate in good faith a fair contract with the members of DFTA. 

Since April of 2019, DFTA members have been negotiating with the School Board for a fair contract. Teaching assistants represented by DFTA face inadequate wages, rising healthcare costs, and obstacles to taking unpaid family leave. Faced with these and a host of other issues, the teaching assistants hoped to bargain in good faith with the Decatur School Board. Instead, their current contract expired, and DFTA was forced to call on a federal mediator to aid in negotiations. Now, after several sessions with the mediator, DFTA members are forced to withhold their labor in a strike.

DFTA represents over 275 teaching assistants in Decatur School District #61. These teaching assistants provide invaluable labor everyday in Decatur schools. As fellow educators, we call on the school board to respect the labor that the teaching assistants provide and to demonstrate this respect by negotiating a fair contract.

In Solidarity,

Non-Tenure Faculty Coalition #6546 AFT/IFT/AAUP