New deal between Minneapolis teachers and school district raises pay, lowers class sizes

After seven months of tense negotiations between Minneapolis teachers and the school district, the two sides came together Monday to celebrate reaching a late-night agreement Saturday, just three days before a potential strike.

Leaders of the state’s third-largest district announced Monday that the new deal will shrink class sizes, create manageable special education caseloads and raise pay, including giving a 2% increase to teachers this year.

The deal averted what could have been the second Minneapolis teachers strike in just three years. In 2022, the teachers picketed for nearly three weeks.

The two-year package is expected to cost the district a total of about $35 million during the 2025-26 and 2026-27 school years, which falls within the budget parameters set by the school board, district spokeswoman Donnie Belcher said Monday.

Minneapolis faced a $75 million shortfall this school year — the first year under the new agreement — and is eyeing a deficit of at least $20.5 million in 2026-27.

Now, the teachers and support staff in the Minneapolis Federation of Educators (MFE) will vote whether to accept the tentative agreement on Thursday and Friday, and then it goes to the school board for approval.

Negotiations began in April on three separate union contracts that expired June 30 and cover more than 4,300 employees. But after the union voted last month to authorize a strike, the pace began to quicken last Wednesday, with the union issuing daily updates, reporting that progress was being made. Still, teachers and supporters continued to mobilize and on Thursday, they marched with picket signs at sites across the district.

Last week’s bargaining came without the input of an outside mediator — just negotiators for the two sides, plus school district staff. Catina Taylor, president of MFE’s education support professionals, said Monday that a new collegial spirit took over to help seal a deal.

Now, she added, “we will start breaking the past practices of being adversarial toward one another and building better relationships so that we could get these contracts done for our students and staff a little bit more faster, easier and smoother.”

School Board Chairman Collin Beachy said: “Our educators deserve respect, our students deserve stability and our community deserves confidence that we are responsible stewards of the public trust. This agreement delivers on all three.”

The tentative agreement includes:

The district and union had been at odds for months over the issues, with the district saying it couldn’t afford the union’s proposals — while adding that space in some schools was too tight to make the union’s class-size proposal work. (Minneapolis and St. Paul are the only school districts in the state with negotiated class-size caps in union contracts.)

Marcia Howard, president of MFE’s teachers’ chapter, said the two sides began talking earlier than usual with hopes of finalizing an agreement “before the snow flies.” At the same time, she said, they were hearing from outside voices who opined about the “travails” of the school district.

“That noise has sort of deafened us to what was great about Minneapolis Public Schools, about our educators, about our families, about all the people who choose to move to this city,” Howard said. “And we had to sit across from each other at a table and remember who we are. And that took a little more time than we thought it would.”