Madison teachers union pushes for better pay, resources amid sta ng shortage

By Francesca Pica CITY NEWS EDITOR

Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) staff union Madison Teachers Inc. launched a campaign to push for additional resources and support to help Madison teachers amid the district’s ongoing sta shortage.

Sta ng shortages in public schools are a nationwide problem, but Madison schools are experiencing shortages more acute than many surrounding Wisconsin school districts, according to Madison Teachers Inc. vice president and eighth grade teacher Andrea Missureli.

“Teachers are leaving the profession in general or are leaving Madison to go to other schools,” Missureli said. “We want them to stay here and be a part of Madison and the great things that can happen.”

Madison Metropolitan School District Communications and Public Affairs Director Tim LeMonds told the Capital Times the district had 88 sta vacancies as of Jan. 23, approximately 3% of the total workforce.

LeMonds did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Missureli said the shortage has stretched many teachers thin, as they are asked to take on more responsibilities to make up for gaps in sta ng.

“Burnout definitely is a big concern,” Missureli said. “There’s a lot of new initiatives, planning time — teachers are asked to do certain stu and not what they need to get done.”

Additional responsibilities have impacted the school district’s ability to hire and retain teachers, whose time is increasingly eaten up by the additional workload, Missureli said.

“A lot of that’s happening outside of the school day, which is really hard to have a family and a life if you’re working all the time and

+EPIC SYSTEMS

not getting paid that great to do it,” she said. “Not many people want to stick around for that.”

Missureli said the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated many of the school district’s problems, including understa ng, educator burnout and fewer resources for teachers and students.

Teachers experienced greater levels of anxiety compared to other professions, according to a study from the American Educational Research Association. The study found the effect was especially severe for those teaching remotely.

In response, Madison Teachers Inc. published a petition urging the MMSD to provide more resources to hire and retain teaching sta

“The pandemic has left our public schools understa ed and under-supported,” the petition reads. “MMSD’s remaining sta are doing more with less, struggling to manage an unsustainable situation from which our students are bound to lose.”

The union launched the “Schools Madison Students Deserve” campaign, aimed at pushing the school district and school board to prioritize student and sta needs in the district’s budget. The campaign called on the school district to halt cuts to sta positions, hire additional support sta , reduce class sizes and increase the pay rate for sta working additional hours, such as over lunch.

“It really is draining and wearing and tearing on teachers that they’re doing so [many] extra jobs because we don’t have the sta ng to do it,” Missureli said. “And with it there’s the pay — teachers aren’t even paid their contract rates to do all these extra jobs. If you give up your lunch, it’s $4 you get paid.”

LeMonds previously told the Capital Times the district has been working to hire teachers to address the sta ng shortage.

“Within the last 12 months alone, the district has hired more teachers than it has in its recent history,” LeMonds said. “That said, the nationwide teacher shortage remains a very real concern and continues to impact schools in Wisconsin and across the country.”

Though the pandemic exacerbated the shortage, sta ng had been tight for years, Missureli said. She noted some of the shortage is because of changes to educators’ wages, compensation and benefits under Act 10, a law passed under former Gov. Scott Walker that limited collective bargaining rights for public sector employees.

“Ever since Act 10, it really has decreased our amount of people coming out to become teachers,” Missureli said. “We used to have 300 applications for one position here in Madison, and now we can’t get people to apply.”

Act 10, passed in 2011 to address Wisconsin’s projected $3.6 billion budget deficit, limited public teachers exclusively to negotiations over wage increases not exceeding the Consumer Price Index. Under the law, public sector employees are not obligated to pay union dues, and unions cannot automatically collect dues from employees’ paychecks.

Erica Turner, associate professor in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said another potential consequence is the change in public perception of teachers.

“[Teachers] are suddenly given this message that people think that teachers don’t work hard and are not deserving of their pay, which is not necessarily particularly high in comparison to people with similar educational levels,” Turner said. “It also has this more intangible both intrinsically [and extrinsically] rewarding — working on something that you feel makes an impact. If you’re able to demonstrate value [and] communicate e ectively, that’s reflected in your compensation.” e ect on the profession and how teaching is seen and how people understand how it’s regarded.”

In general, Epic’s culture lends itself well towards growth, former employees said.

According to data from the Center for American Progress Action Fund, the percentage of teachers who retired or left the profession rose from 6.4% to 10.5% after the 2010-11 school year, when Walker signed Act 10 into law. Many of those were early retirements from teachers concerned about a decrease in benefits, according to Turner.

Turner said though the State Legislature faced difficulties balancing the state budget, the decision to weaken collective bargaining was not necessary to reduce the deficit.

“State budgets were really pressed at that time, but cuts didn’t have to come from education,” Turner said. “Another alternative would have been to raise taxes, especially on the highest earners.”

Turner said much of the power to address sta ng shortages lies with the State Legislature, which decides how much money funds education. She said the legislature has the ability to address the problem by increasing state funding for education.

“It is a political choice,” she said. “We could put more money into education, and we could pay reopening. According to a May 2021 workplace study, a majority — 66% — of U.S. employees remained concerned about returning to the workplace at the time — seven months after Epic’s reopening. people more.” employee asked.

Additionally, Missureli said providing more resources for Madison teachers ultimately benefits students.

“We want to make sure that we’re sta ed because we want the best schools here in Madison for our students,” Missureli said. “They deserve that.”humans to increased healing and resiliency for animals, according to The Human-Animal Bond Research Institute.

Unfortunately, COVID-19 has a ected many personal relationships and constant exposure has significantly decreased.

“Before COVID, we spent a lot of time with clients and their pets all in the room together, discussing if they have any other social service needs that we can help provide for them,” Alvarez said in a press release.

With COVID-19 restrictions, clients cannot enter the WisCARES building, and the majority of the trust-building conversations take place through masked social distancing in the parking lot. Despite these setbacks, WisCARES is still dedicated to providing care for pets regardless of the financial situation the owner is facing.

More information can be found on their website at wiscares.wisc.edu.

However, Epic reported their work conditions were positive.

The daily workload

The youthfulness of the company, for better or worse, tends to lend itself to higher workloads, former employees said.

“I definitely had mental health struggles as a result of being overworked, not having time to see friends or family, or pursue hobbies,” the former employee explained. “The work really never ends.”

The company currently holds a work-life balance rating of 2.4 out of five on Indeed.

“I don’t really ever recall a situation where an employee’s needs were even talked about or mentioned — the client comes first. And if you’re a customer or hospital, that’s great.

If you’re an employee, not so much,” said the former employee. “You need to know what you need, and go ask for it. And then hope that someone is willing to help you with it.”

While the vast majority — 79% — of employees at Epic receive a salary between $60,000 and $100,000 per year, online reviews of the company mention a “workwork balance” and how the “worklife balance can be challenging if you don’t set good boundaries.”

“Epic is definitely a company where they expect about 45ish hours of logged work from you a week, [but the workload is] also generally not treated as an unrealistic expectation,” said Satpathy. “It still felt

“Most of the professional skills that I have at this point in my career, I learned at Epic. It’s a company full of really highly motivated, driven people who get work done,” said the former employee. “It is really cool to get in a room with people and get work done. You can do a lot there if you are driven and motivated.”

With such high turnover, Epic’s professional growth is important to employees, said Satpathy.

“A lot of the core project management skills, a lot of the technical skills … still transfer to other jobs,” explained Satpathy of his new career. “My experience at Epic and my ability to work with customers transferred very easily and helped me pick those things up as needed.”

In a company-wide email sent in early July 2020, CEO Faulkner described the August 2020 process of the Epic campus’ nearly complete

“Epic was one of the companies that really pushed for people to come back into the o ce very early,” said Satpathy. “Even afterwards, they had a pretty strict hybrid work policy where you only got a limited number of days [to work remotely] per year.”

The demands placed on employees at Epic Systems were notably high, often requiring long hours and a high level of dedication to meet the company’s expectations, said the former employee.

“If you ever worked 40 hours a week, that was amazing. It was more in the 60 to 80 hours [a] week range,” said the former employee who asked to remain anonymous. “They would sort people by the most [hours] logged and even if you were above 40, but you were still at the low end, you were going to be the first person getting assigned stu .”

“Why isn’t the solution to decrease the amount of work or hire more people?” the former

“At Epic, salaried employees work 45-hour weeks on average. The most recent data available from Gallup for the average work week of fulltime employees in the U.S. was that a 47-hour work week is average,” Epic’s media team told The Daily Cardinal. “Of the sta that have chosen to leave Epic, 91% do not list workload concerns as the primary reason they were leaving.”

Epic technology is currently used in one-third of US hospitals — requiring a large workforce that has traditionally siphoned o of UW-Madison, Lazenby says.

“I was looking for a change [and] I wanted to do something that would directly help people, that would make a di erence in terms of their day to day work,” explained Satpathy.

In a technology-driven field, Epic has grown into one of the biggest healthcare companies in the world, with deep ties to UW-Madison. And in a growing field, Epic will continue to play a large role in the job market.

“I’m super grateful that they took a chance on me,” said Satpathy.