MARBLEHEAD — When members of the Marblehead Education Association entered the room where town officials were about to give a press conference Tuesday morning, the first thing School Committee member Sarah Fox said was “You can’t be here.”
“This is a public space,” MEA co-president Sally Shevory replied.
Such tension lingered over the room at the town’s administrative office building on Widger Road as Fox, School Committee member Jennifer Schaeffner and Town Administrator Thatcher Kezer spoke about the stalled contract negotiations with the MEA, which came to a head when the MEA voted Friday to go on strike if a contract couldn’t be reached over the long weekend.
Teachers will strike Wednesday, the MEA announced shortly after Interim Superintendent John Robidoux canceled school for that day at 6 p.m. Tuesday.
Though the school committee and union did reach tentative agreements on the school calendar and tuition reimbursement Tuesday afternoon, they remained at odds over wages and paid parental leave.
“To cancel school signals management’s plan to drag out bargaining,” MEA Co-President Johnathan Heller said at an MEA press conference Tuesday night. “On snow days, when we have inclement weather, they never cancel school this early.”
At one point at the School Committee’s Tuesday press conference, the 20 or so teachers at the back of the room who had otherwise been silent called out “lie” at Schaeffner, when she said there was no instruction by a state-appointed mediator for the school district’s bargaining team to sit down for negotiations on Sunday. The MEA claims officials failed to show up for a scheduled bargaining session that day.
A mediator was brought in for contract negotiations this weekend for the first time since bargaining sessions began in March, at the request of the school committee.
The union and school officials met with the mediator on Saturday, Monday and Tuesday, but still came up without a contract.
“In spite of our best efforts to arrive at an affordable and sustainable contract agreement with the Marblehead Education Association, our children’s teachers decided to turn their backs on their classrooms this morning,” Schaeffner said at the morning press conference.
“It is an unfortunate and unnecessary action, and given how the MEA union is conspiring with other Massachusetts Teachers Association unions in neighboring communities, this illegal strike seems more about increasing the collective power of the statewide teacher.”
Heller disputed the characterization at a press conference held by the MEA immediately following the school committee’s.
“Mediation only works if both sides are willing to work together. Our school committee has held their position,” Heller said. “They have now refused to talk about any language in our proposals until we agree to their terms.”
On Friday, the school district canceled school and all after-school extracurriculars for Tuesday shortly after the MEA announced the outcome of its vote to strike.
The district scheduled Tuesday as a teacher development day so it won’t have to be made up at the end of the school year. Other days off during the strike will have to be made up, Schaeffner said.
With no immediate end in sight for the strike, two parents planned to file an emergency injunction in Salem Superior Court Tuesday to allow students to resume their sports, including a Division 4 quarter-finals varsity football matchup against Grafton Friday, and other after-school activities even as the strike goes on, the Marblehead Current reported Monday.
The MEA confirmed Tuesday that some parents planned to file an injunction. It was not immediately clear if that filing was made as of Tuesday afternoon.
The School Committee offered twice this weekend to allow the MEA’s bargaining team to leave their classrooms to negotiate during the school day rather than for all teachers to go on strike, Schaeffner said.
They would still receive pay while a substitute teacher covers their classroom duties, but the MEA turned down the offer both times, she said.
“We want our school doors open, but so far, the MEA is refusing to consider realistic options that are in the best interest of our students,” Schaeffner said.
“We did not create the situation,” said Kezer, a voting member of the School Committee for purposes of collective bargaining. “The union created it by taking an illegal strike, so the blame is not on us… It would have been much better if we had just gone to a mediator and not the strike, then we wouldn’t even have to have this conversation.”
It was Robidoux’s decision to call off school Tuesday and suspend extracurriculars during the strike, a decision the School Committee supported, Schaeffner said.
But blaming the MEA for the fallout of this action is “bullying,” MEA bargaining co-chair Michael Giardi said.
“We are working to get this done, and it doesn’t appear that they want to,” he said. “They keep spinning things in a certain direction that just really misleads the public.”
The MEA said it supports any Marblehead educator who is a coach or club adviser to resume their extracurricular activity with students during the strike.
“We don’t want to be on strike,” Giardi said. “We want our children in school. We want sports to continue. We want the art programs to continue. We want the robotics competitions to continue. We want our children here.”
The MEA also called for the town to pass an override to cover the overall 34% wage increase teachers are requesting.
Educators argue that an override to put Marblehead’s tax rate back to what it was in 2022 would achieve this. Kezer said otherwise, noting the town has voted down overrides for years and would likely do the same when asked to cover the $7.5 million budget deficit created through the MEA’s proposals.
If the proposals were adopted as is and the town shot down an override after the fact, the school district would have to lay off educators, Kezer said.
The school committee said its paid parental leave proposal (12 days of paid family leave in addition to 20 paid sick days that can be put toward this leave) would give educators more time off than what they have currently and is equitable to what other local districts offer.
The MEA’s said that isn’t the case, as Salem, North Andover, Andover, Masconomet and Malden offer at least 12 paid weeks off for parental leave with at least 30 of those days paid for the district.
Contact Caroline Enos at CEnos@northofboston.com