Schools in three North Shore communities will remain closed Monday as educators in Beverly, Gloucester, and Marblehead continue their strikes and families face another day of missed learning.
Negotiations dragged on over the weekend. By Sunday night, district officials and union representatives in all three communities remained divided on key issues, including paid parental leave and wages for teachers and teaching assistants.
Students have been out of school in Beverly and Gloucester since Nov. 8, when red-clad educators took to the picket lines. The Marblehead Education Association voted the same day to authorize a strike, and schools were shuttered in that district after Veterans Day, a school holiday, on Nov. 12.
In a statement Sunday evening, Rachael Abell, president of the Beverly School Committee, said the district had offered “comprehensive counter proposals” on several benefits, including family medical leave, parental leave, and growth opportunities for educators.
The Beverly Teachers Association, meanwhile, emphasized its demands for higher baseline wages for teachers’ aides and the ability to use sick time to care for ill family members.
“Percentages are a really dangerous way to try to understand this contract fight, because when you start really low, that percentage doesn’t get a paraprofessional to a living wage,” said Andrea Sherman, co-president of the union, during a livestreamed news conference. “It’s more about a baseline level that’s on par with either our neighboring communities or with the living wage calculator.”
The unions in Beverly and Gloucester have been hit with court-imposed fines for their separate strikes. The fines started at $50,000 on Wednesday and have increased by another $10,000 with each day of work stoppages. Still, Sherman said, educators remain steadfast in their resolve to negotiate a fair contract.
“We are exploring any avenue we can to get back to school,” Sherman said.
Teacher strikes are illegal in Massachusetts, but that hasn’t stopped unions in recent years. In 2022, educators in Andover, Brookline, Haverhill, Malden, and Woburn took to the picket lines. And earlier this year, a strike in Newton lasted 15 days, the longest teachers’ strike in Massachusetts in three decades.
In Gloucester, Superintendent Ben Lummis told families the district is working from morning to night to reach a deal.
“Like you, I am frustrated that we are 10 days in with no resolution to this contract,” Lummis said in a statement Sunday evening. “Our students deserve to be in school.”
The Union of Gloucester Educators said the School Committee has dragged its feet in negotiations.
“There was not a lot of time face-to-face today,” a union representative said at a news conference Sunday night. “There was an awful lot of wasted time, stalling and waiting. Clearly no urgency to open those schools on the School Committee’s part.”
Kathleen Clancy, chair of Gloucester School Committee, said Sunday night that the committee remains focused on reaching an agreement and will resume negotiations with the union at 10 a.m. Monday. But a “vast gap” remains on the issue of teacher salaries, despite the district’s proposals including “the largest salary increases ever in a Gloucester Public schools’ contract,” Clancy said in a statement.
“The union’s salary proposal would cost nearly $3 million more than our proposal over the three contract years. Those salary levels can not be sustained by the district and are not supported by city finances,” Clancy said.
In the School Committee’s most recent proposal, more than 40 percent of teachers would earn upward of $100,000 per year and aides would receive at least a 45 percent wage hike, Clancy said.
Educators in all three districts say their school committees haven’t negotiated in good faith. In Marblehead, teachers say the district has yet to respond to the union’s latest proposal, and that the bargaining mediator spent “minimal time” with the teachers’ association on Sunday.
“We will continue to stand strong together,” a Marblehead Education Association representative said during a livestreamed news conference Sunday night. “We know there are consequences right now for our students. But the long-term consequences of us not standing up for our schools, for our town, and most importantly our students — those consequences are much greater.”
Marblehead’s interim superintendent, John J. Robidoux, said in a two-sentence email to families Sunday evening only that there would be no school Monday and that the union “has initiated an illegal strike.”
Material from previous Globe reports was used in this article.
Madeline Khaw can be reached at maddie.khaw@globe.com. Follow her @maddiekhaw.