Students are returning to school today in Minneapolis after one of the longest educators’ strikes in decades. After nearly three weeks on the picket line, the teachers and educational support professionals chapters of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) Local 59 have overwhelmingly voted — with yes votes of 76 and 79 percent of the two chapters — to approve the proposed tentative agreements.

The strike won significant gains on many fronts. Educational support professionals, or ESPs, an especially underpaid and disproportionately non-white workforce, will see major increases in their salaries and hours, bringing most close to the $35,000 salary initially demanded by the union. In line with the strategy of a growing number of unions to bargain for the common good, using their power as organized workers to fight not only for themselves but for the multiracial working class, strikers won caps on class sizes and contract language exempting educators of color from excesses and layoffs, as well as the hiring of two district mentors for non-white educators.

Mental health support for students — another major strike demand — will receive a major boost through a nurse, school counselor, psychologist, or social worker at every secondary site; a doubling of the number of elementary schools with counselors; a social worker in every school building; a minimum of one school nurse for every two schools; and a decrease in school psychologist to student ratios from 1 to 1,000 to 1 to 850. Far less progress was made on teacher pay, though the gains of 5 percent pay raises plus a one-time $4,000 bonus is still the highest pay bump for licensed educators in Minneapolis in twenty years.