This story by Liberty Darr was first published in the Other Paper on Nov. 26, 2025.
The South Burlington school board and South Burlington Educators’ Association have ratified new tentative agreements for both a three-year teachers’ contract and a two-year support staff contract.
The contracts, while not yet publicly available by press deadline, will retroactively cover July 1 of this year through June 30, 2028, for teachers and through June 30, 2027, for support staff.
Teachers will receive a 4.25% raise for the first two years of the contract, with the third year increase set at whatever the inflation number is at the time, anywhere between 2-5%. Support staff will receive a 5.25% raise for the first year, and the same inflation-fixed increase for the second year.
“I think the overall story is that the board went into the negotiation very committed to holding costs down and making sustainable budgeting possible — the 4.25% and inflation being the three years of the term were the lowest cost that we could get,” School Board Chair Seamus Abshere said. “And in the last year, we were signaling an interest in returning to essentially cost-of-living adjustment based on inflation.”
Joe McNeil, the board’s attorney, noted that while the contract essentially maintains the same terms and conditions as previously in effect, most of the negotiations centered around money. And compared to past years, an agreement was come to relatively quickly.
“This really, for South Burlington, was fairly expeditious in the sense that several of the last agreements included declarations of impasse and then required mediation and fact finding,” McNeil said. “And in two instances, there were strikes.”
Noah Everitt, co-president of the South Burlington Educators’ Association, agreed that previous negotiations have often been characterized as contentious, but discussions this time didn’t fit that mold. Aside from the wage increase conversations, there weren’t any significant issues being negotiated this year, largely, Everitt said, thanks to the maturity of past contracts which had ironed out a lot of issues.
“I think any negotiation is ideally a place where both parties feel good about the resulting deal,” Everitt said. “And I think that that’s true of this one.”
He said that this time around, there were improvements made to language in the contract regarding the reduction in the force of probationary employees being placed on a “recall list.”
“That had been a challenge for folks in the past, because if you’re on probation in those first two years and different budgeting years can sometimes have some anticipated reductions that don’t end up happening because the budget passes,” Everitt said. “This would allow those folks to keep their jobs without having to reapply or start probation over.
While he didn’t consider this any sort of big win, it is ultimately better for everyone, he said.
Everitt led negotiations on the union side with a small team of teachers, while Abshere and new school board member Dan Boyer represented the board. Prior to Abshere, former board member Tim Warren had represented the board until he resigned in July amid district-wide tumult.
Beginning this spring, as the union demanded more vision and leadership around a passed budget that resulted in the reduction of nearly 15 full time equivalent positions, tensions were at an all-time high between teachers, district leadership and board members. The union ultimately engaged in multiple months of public activism and demanded that former superintendent Violet Nichols be removed from her role.
McNeil noted that anytime there is turmoil, there is concern about trust and the ability to speak candidly during negotiations for fear of creating additional fervor. But in this case, he said, when it came to negotiations, there was interest on both sides to begin the school year on a new page without letting those distractions get in the way.
Although some expressed concern that the public activism was a way for the union to get a leg up in negotiations, Everitt said that what was being discussed at the negotiating table had nothing to do with their asks from the district at that time.
“Those things were not the same,” he said. “We’ve really focused on trying to just maintain a consistent set of values that puts teachers and students first. And we think that by being consistent, a relationship can be developed between what can for teachers seem like a revolving door of board members, because they will be able to predict our behavior.”
