The Minneapolis Federation of Educators (MFE) has voted to approve a strike, signaling escalating tensions between the union and the Minneapolis public school district over issues such as pay and class sizes.
The local union is no stranger to making headlines from its public pressure campaigns and threats of strikes. In March 2022, the union went on strike for nearly three weeks (17 days), and over 30,000 Minneapolis students were shut out of their classrooms for 14 instructional days. In April 2024, a contract agreement was reached right before a strike-authorization vote, narrowly avoiding a walkout.
The latest move to back a strike reinforces the perception that the union is more focused on making statements than finding compromise. The 2022 contract deal was well outside the district’s budget capabilities, and the 2024 agreement also included significant labor cost increases that put more strain on the district’s finances. Facing a projected budget shortfall of approximately $75 million, the district could once again face pressure from the union to increase labor costs that would deepen its deficit.
Since union members passed a strike vote, MFE will need to give the district a 10-day notice before a walkout can commence. As we await a decision, union members wasted no time demonstrating outside the district office yesterday. Negotiation talks resumed today.
What is the union asking for?
While the district has accepted the union’s proposal for smaller class sizes, it has stated that the reductions to the levels the union wants “would force students to move schools” and would push other schools “to their limits,” according to The Center Square. The union summarized the district’s cap proposal as “not enforceable” because “class sizes would have to exceed the ‘cap’ by 6 students before a new section is added.”
The back-and-forth on class sizes is likely fueled by an analysis that found one in five Minneapolis elementary classrooms are over the class size limit. Yet, as my colleague Josiah Padley reported, 52 percent of the buildings in the district are underutilized. The mismatch is apparently due, in part, to a cost-savings plan that included higher class sizes to help balance the district’s annual budget. It is also a result of uneven student distribution across schools.
The union’s pay increase proposals include additional hourly wages for education support professionals (ESPs) who have worked in the district for eight or more years, an 8 percent raise for ESPs for the first year of the contract and a 6 percent increase for the second year, the “same pay as the rest of their licensed teacher peers” for adult educators, and a 7 percent raise for teachers during the first year and a 6 percent raise for the second year. This would be in addition to the salary increases already built into the union’s salary formula for “steps and lanes” progression.
“I know that nobody actually wants a strike, but after seven months of bargaining, all we got were delays and dismissals and not solutions from the district,” says MFE president Marcia Howard. “This is a last chance for us to get the contract that we need in order to create a destination district.”
The district currently enrolls around 30,000 students (29,928), and enrollment declines from past years are expected to continue, with projections indicating enrollment will drop to 23,000 in the 2027-28 school year. The district is constructed to serve about 40,000 students. In math, 35.5 percent of students meet grade-level proficiency. Reading proficiency districtwide is slightly higher at 40.6 percent.