COURIER L 6 IFE, SEPT. 11-17, 2020
Hundreds urge Friends
School to stop union bust
BY ROSE ADAMS
More than 1,000 members
of the Brooklyn
Friends School community
have signed onto a
letter urging the administration
to halt its efforts
to dissolve the private
Quaker school’s faculty
and staff union.
“Having a comprehensive
union that represented
as many members
of BFS was a priority, refl
ecting the Quaker values
of community and
equality,” read the letter
signed by nearly a dozen
teachers, and co-signed
by parents, students, and
graduates.
The Downtown Brooklyn
school, known for its
progressive curriculum
and emphasis on social
justice, has made headlines
after its administration
fi led a petition with
the National Labor Relations
Board in August to
dissolve the faculty and
staff’s union on religious
grounds.
The petition seeks to
piggyback off of a June
ruling that determined
the board had no jurisdiction
over staff at religious
colleges, thereby impeding
the right of workers
at religious institutions
from organizing. The ruling,
passed by the new,
Trump-appointed board,
overturns an Obama-era
ruling giving staff at religious
schools the right to
unionize.
Leaders at the elite
school, which charges
$49,000 per year for
grades three through 12,
claim the union violates
the school’s Quaker values
by coming in between
administrators and staff.
Quaker teachings, and
the school’s own mission
statement, emphasize
that everyone has “a divine
inner light” — an
individual voice that the
staff union drowns out,
school leaders claim.
“The law that applies
to an NLRB-regulated
collective bargaining relationship
places limits
on employers’ ability to
deal directly with employees
on certain important
topics,” said Dan Altano,
the school’s communications
director. “We believe
these limitations are
inconsistent with Quaker
decision-making principles.”
Brooklyn Friends
School was founded by
the New York Quarterly
Meeting Religious Society
of Friends in 1867, and
cut ties with the Quaker
group in 2010. The school
still maintains its Quaker
rituals — including holding
a silent meeting once
a week, and teaching a religion
class — and half of
the board’s trustees must
be Quaker, according to
the school’s charter.
The school has also
remained staunchly progressive,
and boasts a
curriculum that emphasizes
social justice — leading
parents shocked by
the administration’s antiunion
efforts.
“They were having
conversations about Mildred
and Richard Loving
with children at age
4 that I didn’t have until
law school,” said a Brooklyn
Friends parent who
spoke on the condition of
anonymity. “They were
leading studies on Bayard
Rustin and Cesar Chavez
in second grade. I can’t
square that with what the
school administration is
saying now.”
The uproar led dozens
of parents, students,
and faculty to protest outside
the school on Sept.
4, where ralliers called
on the administration to
honor the staff’s collective
bargaining wishes.
“We need a union in
order to hold those in
power accountable for listening
to our voices,” said
BFS Union negotiation
committee member and
teacher Sarah Gordon.
The petition comes at a
particularly diffi cult time
for the school, employees
say. Not only did coronavirus
related budgetary
shortfalls prompt leaders
to lay off more than 30 faculty
and staff members
— comprising a large portion
of the small school’s
workforce — but Head of
School Crissy Cáceres announced
the petition’s fi ling
only weeks before the
start of the school year,
which was rife with its
own stresses, according
to faculty.
“It’s really stunning
this is happening in a
pandemic when we most
need to advocate for ourselves
around health and
safety,” said dance teacher
Jesse Phillips-Fein, who
has taught at the school
for 14 years.
Faculty and staff went
ahead and formed the
union with 80 percent
of members voting in favor
and with the Board
of Trustees’ approval,
sources said. The purpose
of the union was to
create a forum for discussion
with the increasingly
opaque administration,
which has only grown
less transparent during
the COVID-19 pandemic,
according to union members.
“Teachers have been
told that parents wanted
to come back in person,
and parents were told that
teachers want to come
back in person. So there
was no dialogue about
this at all,” said the president
of UAW 2110, Maida
Rosenthal, who added
that the administration
declined to work with the
union to form coronavirus
related health and
safety protocols.
There are no hard
and fast edicts regarding
unionization in Quaker
teachings, members of
the meeting said. The
Friends Council on Education,
a national association
of Quaker schools,
did not take a stance on
the issue, according to
The New York Times.
Despite the pushback,
Cáceres and the Board
of Trustees will continue
with the petition’s fi ling,
they said.
“Brooklyn Friends
School is not anti-union
or anti-worker. The petition
does not refl ect any
broader opinion about
unions generally,” said
the school in a statement.
“However, we do think
that restoring individual
colleague voices in place
of that of the United Auto
Workers is in the best interest
of the School.”
Editor’s note: Reporter
Rose Adams is a former
student of Brooklyn
Friends School.
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