Rosemary Boland stood in front of the Scranton School District Administration Building, raising her voice and fist.
It was a frigid December night in 2007, and teachers faced a 34% increase in health insurance costs starting the next year. Scranton Police shut down North Washington Avenue as the 400 teachers and paraprofessionals overflowed from the sidewalks.
Boland became president of the Scranton Federation of Teachers two years earlier, partially due to a contract that forced employees to bear the full burden of health care cost increases.
“We’re not indentured servants,” Boland told school directors that night. The next year, teachers and the district averted a strike just nine hours before the first day of school.
Boland, who began her teaching career in 1969, retired as union president last week.
In her 20 years in that role, Boland led picket lines during strikes, called for resignations of administrators and school directors, and amplified the voices of her membership — sometimes with a bullhorn.
With 56 years in the district, she watched education evolve and the city change. As the district raised taxes and teetered on state receivership, Boland provoked ire from taxpayers. Her own anger — and passion — sometimes drew skepticism and criticism. But she never backed down.
“One of our first superintendents said, ‘You'll get your reward in the schoolhouse in the sky,’” Boland said last week. “So that wasn't going anywhere with people my age. I thought, ‘No, I'm not waiting until I die.’”
Pursuing a career in education
Boland, 78, grew up in South Scranton and graduated from Central High School. She considered pursuing a career as a pediatrician or studying Russian at Georgetown University.
She was 16 when her parents divorced and her mother left. Boland helped care for her two younger brothers, and she helped her father around the house. She cooked for her family and struggled to make gravy. She decided to attend Marywood University — then known as Marywood College – and become a teacher.
“Little things like that made decisions for me, and I have not regretted that decision from the time I started,” she said. “I just loved it.”
Boland started working at John G. Whittier Elementary School, five blocks away from the home where she grew up, and where she still lives today.
“They told me with my first class, get in there. Be strict with them. They're bold. They're going to take over on you. And I couldn't figure out where it was — the bold part, like they weren't,” she said. “They were great kids. I had a ball with those kids.”
She earned $6,400 per year. She saved for a down payment for a car for seven months. Her father worked for the railroad, and she later helped send her brothers to college.
Class sizes at Whittier were as large as 40 students. Teachers, paid monthly, had no prep period and had to teach all subjects, including art and music.
“We sang to records, modern music, and that they loved,” Boland said. “They would have done anything for me, those kids.”
While she taught her students, she also learned her own lessons in labor.
Learning about union labor
Boland entered a district with two labor groups — the Scranton Education Association, a part of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, and the Scranton Federation of Teachers, part of the American Federation of Teachers. Both groups sought to represent the more than 700 professional employees in the district.
The federation, initially founded in 1916 as one of the first locals of the AFT, eventually won bargaining rights. Boland, a new teacher at the time, looked up to the union’s president.
Robert K. Cavanaugh, a survivor of polio, grew up a block away in South Scranton. He represented the teachers for about four decades.
“My father would say, ‘If Bobby Cavanaugh fell down, he got right back up. He didn't cry, he didn't ask anybody to help him. He got back up on his feet,’” Boland said. “And he said, ‘You have to respect a man like that.’”
Boland began her own labor organizing, though quietly at first.
“We went to teachers’ houses to try and convince them to join our union, and the rest is history,” she said.
Boland’s father bought her a pair of warm boots to walk her first picket line. Strikes in the late 1960s and into the 1970s led to disruption in the city — and more rights for teachers.
“They had to fight for every single, solitary thing,” she said.
Scranton School District challenges
A contract vote in 2003 — for an agreement that led teachers to protest on that cold December night in 2007 — pushed Boland to power. Boland raised her voice about the contract and found many people to back her.
Boland said union leadership at the time agreed to the contract that would cause years of financial pain for teachers due to changes in health care language. Union leaders pushed members to approve the agreement without enough time to review the details, she said.
More than 200 teachers voted to recall President Jacque Petherick and replace him with Boland. A court battle ensued, and Boland became president on July 1, 2005.
Scranton schools, long underfunded by the state, faced growing financial challenges through ¾ of Boland’s presidency.
In 2015, Boland led the picket lines during an 11-day strike. In 2021, teachers and paraprofessionals, working five years under the expired agreement reached in 2015, went on strike again. The unprecedented labor dispute, during a time of financial duress for the district, caused morale to plummet and many teachers to leave for other districts.
The state placed Scranton in financial recovery in 2019. The decisions made by the board before and after that — and a financial recovery plan that called for school closures and the elimination of preschool — led to pickets and packed auditoriums.
Erin Keating began working in Scranton in 2015, serving as chief of leadership development and school operations and supervisor of elementary education. After spending five years as superintendent of Old Forge, she returned to lead Scranton last year.
Keating said Boland has spent her career advocating for public education.
“There will always be times where administration and the union can't come to an agreement,” Keating said. “However, when it came to doing things in the best interest of kids, Rosemary was always a champion advocate, and I respect that unbelievably.”
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, visited Scranton numerous times over Boland’s tenure — from joining members on the picket line, to highlighting an ongoing, joint literacy effort with the union and administration. During her visits to Scranton when the union faced duress, the national labor leader chastised school directors and superintendents.
Weingarten called Boland an “old-time labor leader who understood the importance of a bullhorn and understood the importance of pre-k and reading.” She rose to moments with a combination of union values, education values, grit and caring, Weingarten said.
“Because of… her smarts, her understanding of education, her empathy and her very future-forward outlook, she has been almost singular in being able to meet different moments and change the union to meet the future,” Weingarten said.
The district is now out of financial recovery, and teachers have a contract until 2028.
“They’ve saved the Scranton community, and Scranton schools,” Weingarten said.
Criticism, tenacity in the spotlight
Boland often appeared on the front page of the newspaper, or as a boisterous sound bite on the evening news.
She waited for the elevator in the Medical Arts Building several years ago. A member of the cleaning staff there approached her and asked Boland if she was the “lady with the teachers.”
“I said, ‘I am that lady.’ She said, ‘Well, don't give up,’” Boland recalled. “So I looked and I smiled, and I said, ‘Oh, I'm not. I won't give up. I promise I won't give up.”
Boland thought about her late grandmother, who had cleaned Plains High School.
Two years into her presidency, Boland stepped away from the classroom to work for the union full time, with the union paying her salary.
Out of the public view of school board meeting podiums, rallies or picket lines, Boland represented her 900 members through grievances and arbitrations.
“I knew the reputation I would have to have, and I knew what it meant. And so that was on me. That was my thing,” she said. “Little by little, of course, we were winning. We were winning grievances, and we were winning the arbitrations… they wanted to break us, and we just didn't allow that.”
Throughout negotiations, Boland said she always thought about her members.
“I have an Irish conscience, so I worry about those 900 families. A lot. Still do,” she said. “Every time we negotiate, that's what I think about.”
Boland has also received considerable criticism over the years, from insisting schools remain virtual for a year during the COVID-19 pandemic, to allegations of controlling the school board or making insensitive comments at board meetings.
With salary and benefits a majority of the school district’s $225 million budget, frustrated city residents often blamed Boland and the union for increased taxes.
“People should be wanting more, and this is across the United States. They should want the children in the United States to get the very, very best education possible, and that takes money. Books are expensive. Paper is expensive. Everything is expensive,” she said. “I pay my taxes to the city of Scranton, and have been for a long time. And you know what? If that means a kid who lives in this city is going to go to a good school with good quality teachers, and we are getting good quality teachers here, then it's worth it. It's absolutely worth it.”
Plans for Boland, future of union
Though Boland has stepped down as union president, she doesn’t plan to retire from advocacy. Boland has met U.S. presidents, sat down with senators and served as a delegate at Democratic national conventions. She introduced Joe Biden in Scranton as he campaigned for president in 2020.
With cuts to the U.S. Department of Education, a push for school vouchers and other issues, she worries about the future of public education nationwide. The union organized a rally in downtown Scranton in March.
“I'm going to keep fighting. We have to fix it, and I think the best place to fix it is in a classroom where democracy rules,” she said. “Stand up every morning and say your pledge to the flag, sing patriotic songs and study, study, study your country's history, whatever you do, and then be a good reader and do your math.”
Papers and other momentos still fill Boland’s office in the IBEW Building in Scranton. Each stack prompts memories of colleagues, controversies and work that must be continued. Recycling bins sit outside her door.
Jennifer Telesco, a 20-year teaching veteran from John Adams Elementary, became union president Tuesday. As a rookie teacher and new union member in 2005, her first union vote was for Boland as president.
Telesco now considers herself “unofficially adopted family” of Boland, and said she learned many lessons from the longtime union leader.
Those lessons include never giving up and “knowing the value of the people who surround you,” Telesco said.
“There's only one Rosie Boland. There'll never be another,” Telesco said. “Those shoes are too big for anyone to fill. I just hope I honor the work that she and all of the predecessors of the officers and the entire union have done throughout the years to keep moving forward. So that's my goal.”
