September 4, 2020 

Good morning, friends. Thank you for letting me speak here today. My name is Sue Aaronson, and I am the senior member of the employees at Brooklyn Friends School. This will be my 39th year at the school, my second home. My husband taught photography at the school for 30 years and our daughter was the longest Lifetime Friend, having attended the school since before she was born, graduating 18 years later, and she taught preschool there for 2 years.

During all that time I have seen so many changes in administration. The current Head of School is the 6th person I’ve worked for and the current Upper School Head is the 16th. They are both competent people who care deeply for the people in the BFS community. However, each time new administration has come into the school they have had to reinvent the wheel of process and protocol. I voted for the Union a year ago because I believe that there needs to be transparency and clarity in a workplace when it comes to the big picture of working conditions: hiring—requiring a search committee; firing—requiring a process of evaluation, mentoring, and probation; salary—requiring clear salary bands based on experience and education, and in the current pandemic--- health and safety—providing proper and appropriate guidance and material to ensure that we will return to a safe environment. Sometimes these conditions have been present at the school and sometimes not. Each administration has done what it thought and felt necessary. But this was never consistent and things that the colleagues felt they could rely on in the workplace often vanished at the whim of the administration. It seems to me that the existence of the union and its agreed upon and contracted expectations would liberate the administration because they would be aware of how things are done at the school and would not have to figure it all out from the start.

Protocol and process should not depend on personality but should exist as objective facts that can be changed as needed, but not as wanted by one or two people. That objectivity and consistency would ensure one of the most important Quaker principles—equity. I was once told that I could have whatever I wanted at BFS because the Head of School liked me. I’m glad that they liked me, but I know one thing -- That was completely unfair and should never happen again. The union helps to ensure that all colleagues are treated equally. There is no third party at BFS, there is the union and the union is us.