Bricolage Academy Educators United, a chapter of the United Teachers of New Orleans, alleged that the school violated its union contract twice in the past year, and the school’s administration isn’t responding to requests for arbitration.

According to union leadership, the school failed to make agreed-upon retirement contributions and wrongfully fired a teacher. In interviews with Verite News, current and former staffers at the school described a culture of increasing tension, starting with the hiring of a new chief executive officer, Edward Brown, last summer. Brown has been accused of sexism by current and former staffers through anonymous letters sent to the school’s board, and by a lawsuit from the school’s former HR director. Brown has denied those allegations.

But the school’s union, which represents teachers, said it has been locked in contractual stalemates with the school for almost a year.

Under the union contract, the school should have made retirement contributions to teachers at a rate of 6% of their salaries. The contract doesn’t contain language requiring that covered employees contribute to the plan themselves. But according to the union, the school only contributed the 6% if employees matched the contribution.

Last August, the union submitted a grievance, asking that the school change its retirement plan and “pay all gains, interest and any penalties owed due to the failure to contribute 6% of each employee’s compensation to their 403B plan.” The union also asked for documentation of how much money was going into teachers’ accounts, which hadn’t previously been received. In November, the school’s board chair, Norman Barnum, responded in a letter, saying that the union’s interpretation of the contract was inconsistent with “the concept of a 403B participatory retirement plan.”

From there, the union and school leadership moved to arbitration and agreed on an arbitrator, but the school’s attorneys stopped responding to union emails in January, just as the two parties were trying to settle on a date, according to emails shared with Verite News.

“We found an arbitrator and they have refused to … find a time to meet with us,” said Sean Duplantier, the Bricolage union’s chapter chair. “We’re playing by the rules we agreed to. They’re not.”

Duplantier said that 85% of teachers signed a petition that said they would agree to the school’s interpretation of the retirement plan if support staff would also be included in the union. Currently only teachers, associate teachers, counselors and interventionists are included.

The request was denied in Barnum’s November letter, prompting the union to ask for arbitration services in December.

Bricolage is one of three New Orleans charter schools with a union. Teachers negotiated their first contract in 2024, after securing recognition in a 2021 election. But that was only after the board refused to recognize the union voluntarily, forcing a vote through the National Labor Relations Board. In 2024, the board removed Louisiana charter schools from its jurisdiction, threatening the existence of teachers unions in the city. The union’s contract expires in April, right before the end of the school year. Negotiations haven’t yet begun, but Duplantier said the union is willing to start when school leadership is.

Duplantier said the school’s unwillingness to negotiate is a departure from how the union normally engages with management and the board. In 2023, when the union was still negotiating its contract, a petition signed by a majority of teachers at the school convinced the school — then led by former CEO Antigua Joseph-Woods — to shorten 15 days of professional development to 10 days before the school year.

“When management heard from an overwhelming proportion of staff, they heard and then they implemented what staff was asking,” Duplantier said. “This is different.”

And in February, 75% of teachers again issued a petition to ask that a kindergarten teacher, who they believed was fired by Brown in violation of the contract, be reinstated to their position. Seventy-five percent of teachers signed on. During a February board meeting, 12 other teachers spoke to the board in favor of the teacher’s reinstatement.

On December 15, the teacher was placed on leave for allegedly blocking an administrator from leaving a meeting by standing between the administrator and a door. In a written statement to the school and in an interview with Verite News, the teacher, who requested that their name not be published for fear of career retaliation, admitted that they stood in front of the administrator. But in the letter to suspend the teacher, Brown wrote that the behavior could qualify as harassment, a characterization the teacher disputes.

“Bricolage is committed to providing a professional work environment free from all forms of

unlawful discrimination and harassment,” the letter reads. “While it is not easy to define precisely what harassment is, it may include … unwanted blocking of movement, or engaging in conduct that has the purpose or effect of creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment, or unreasonably interfering with an individual’s work performance.”

Brown himself was accused by former staffers of creating a toxic work environment for women, which he has denied. Brown was not present in person at the meeting, but had called in, the teacher said. Brown did not respond to requests for comment.

The teacher said that they had felt frustrated when the administrator refused to answer a question posed by a colleague in the meeting, and stood in front of the door to demand an answer. They said they wanted “accountability” from the administration. But they said the behavior wasn’t threatening. In a written statement to the school later shared with Verite News, the teacher wrote that they had not touched the administrator, and had stayed by the door for approximately 10 seconds.

“There were two doors and there were no threats made to her if she were to leave,” the teacher said. “It was just so brief, and I did not prevent her from doing her job.”

After the incident, and just one day before being suspended, the teacher said they met with the principal at the time to talk about staying on for the next school year. That conversation, the teacher said, went well. But the next day, Brown informed them that they would be suspended. Five weeks later, on Jan. 22, Brown fired the teacher.

“I didn’t get to say goodbye to my students and I still get very emotional when I think about that,” the teacher said. “I have spent the majority of my teaching career working in early childhood education. I have a permit in early childhood education and I know the importance of kids being notified when there are going to be big changes in their schedules like a caretaker not being there for an extended period of time.”

The teacher said Brown’s actions violated contract provisions guaranteeing due process in disciplinary proceedings. The contract states that staff should be given an opportunity to provide a written statement, to have union representation and be given 24 hours notice before major disciplinary action. The teacher had to immediately leave the school, a situation they described as “gut-wrenching.”

At the time, Brown had been acting as the school’s HR director, as the school’s previous HR director left accusing Brown of gender-based discrimination — accusations which he has denied. In an email sent to the school’s board on March 3, the union raised questions about the lack of an HR professional’s input on the matter.

“We believe that this decision was made unilaterally by Dr. Brown, without the support of a trained HR director, any other staff member, nor the aggrieved party,” the email reads.

The email also described the actions as “punitive,” not “corrective,” as disciplinary decisions should be under the contract. Under the progressive disciplinary policy outlined in the contract, a staffer should receive three written warnings before being suspended, though it appears to provide some leeway for particularly serious or repeat offenses. The teacher didn’t receive any written warnings before being suspended, they told Verite News.

The union appealed the firing, and then filed a formal grievance in mid-February. Brown denied the grievance in a March letter, saying that the teacher’s conduct during the meeting was “a significant breach of professional conduct standards” that could create “an unsafe and hostile work environment.” The letter also stated that the teacher had a “pattern of behavior that is inconsistent with the expectations and responsibilities of a Bricolage Academy employee.” The school denied public records requests from Verite News to view the school’s investigation report into the firing.

In the letter, Brown wrote that the pattern stemmed from two incidents: the first when the teacher stood in front of the administrator, and the second when the teacher removed a special education student from their classroom. The teacher had not been previously written up for the second incident, which is what had triggered the meeting with administrators in the first place. The student’s one-on-one paraprofessional had been on leave and a substitute hadn’t been provided by the school, the teacher said. When the student started to behave violently in class, they said they had to move him for the safety of himself and other students, so that he could “regulate” in a safe place.

“The adult supervision that the school said they were going to provide … they did not follow through with that, so it just collapsed like a house of cards,” the teacher said. “It felt like allegations were being made when the question should have been flipped around the other way to be like, ‘Why didn’t the school have somebody here for that kid?’”

Frustrations about the teacher’s termination appeared in some of the anonymous letters later sent to the school’s board.

“[The teacher’s] suspension and subsequent termination was inappropriate, unfair, and went against our collective bargaining agreement,” one of the letters reads. “Dr. Brown either did not take the time to know or simply does not care about the impact this has had on our staff, students, and families.”

The fired kindergarten teacher said that they were taken aback by the outpouring of support from their coworkers. They had joined and stayed at Bricolage because of its diversity and high number of native New Orleanians on staff. They said that in their ten years at Bricolage, they worked to maintain relationships with their students even as they left kindergarten, recreating the support they received as a student in New Orleans public schools decades ago.

“I would find ways to go out of my way to connect with that student,” the teacher said. “Reiterating to them that even though I might not be currently your teacher I still care about you, I’m still invested in you.”

The teacher now works at another public school, but said they still want to return to Bricolage one day. But the union hasn’t taken the matter to arbitration, because it’s still waiting for the school to respond to the retirement issue, Duplantier said.