Beverly Letter To The Editor: Mayor Urges Against Teacher Strike Vote

The following is a letter submitted to Patch from Beverly Mayor Michael Cahill on Tuesday:

BEVERLY, MA — With the Beverly Public Schools leadership and our teachers' and paraprofessionals' unions having agreed that we are currently at an impasse in our efforts to negotiate new contracts, it is critically important that we all understand and acknowledge these financial realities:

1) Massachusetts cut state aid to Beverly by over $7 Million through the two recessions in the early 2000s; therefore, state aid that used to represent 22% of our annual city operating budget now only covers 14% of our budget, putting an ever-increasing burden on Beverly’s taxpaying homeowners.

2) Notwithstanding this, Beverly's taxpayers built or expanded all eight of our schools in 25 years, providing our children with world-class facilities

3) During my 11 years as your mayor, we have increased funding for our schools from $48.06 Million in Fiscal Year (FY) 2014 to $78.27 Million in FY 2025, with $22 Million in additional city funds and $8 Million additional state aid.

At the beginning of our current contract negotiations, our educators voiced the need for better compensation to attract and retain outstanding educators. We researched the issue, and we agreed with our educators. This is why we have offered our paraprofessionals and teachers $24.45 Million in new money over three years. This includes our proposed wage increases, an additional step for teachers, paid parental leave, expanded sick leave usage, expanded 403(b) employer match, tuition reimbursement, and an additional personal day.

In FY 2024, our community spent $43.635 million on teacher and paraprofessional compensation. With our proposal, in FY 2027, our community will spend $54.555 million, a 25% increase. If our educators accept this offer, they will be among the highest-paid educators on the North Shore, and our per-pupil expenditures will increase greatly over the next three school years.

To make this offer, we have appropriated more new school spending this year (over $5.6 Million) than any year in at least the last quarter century, and perhaps any year in our city's history.

Beyond this year, we are committing to significant further investments in years two and three of these contracts. Our Beverly Public Schools leadership and our city leadership always have and will continue to listen to our educators; we always have and will continue to respect and value our educators. This incredible contract offer is proof.

To fund these contracts and still deliver high-quality services throughout our community, we are returning to taxing Beverly property owners at the state levy limit, something Beverly had done for 40 years. It is only in the last two years, in response to historically high property value increases, that we've stayed slightly below the levy limit to provide some amount of tax relief to our overburdened property owners.

To balance our budget moving forward, we will likely need to eliminate our Roads and Sidewalks operating budget line and lines for necessary vehicle purchases; therefore, we will need to use cash reserves for very much-needed road and sidewalk work, as well as public safety, inspectional, and other needed city vehicle purchases each year. Our ability to use cash reserves for costs like these and not deplete our reserves will require strong financial discipline.

Our two reserves (cash reserves and stabilization fund) are what we will tap into during the next recession to allow our city to continue to deliver critical services, including our schools. As such we have an obligation to the residents of this city to maintain a healthy reserves balance. Our Beverly Fiscal Policies and financial best practices call for reserves to equate to 13-23% of our annual operating budget. At present, we are at 18%. Since we now will need to rely more on our reserves to fund roads, sidewalks, vehicles and other one-time needs, while we must maintain the necessary reserves to support our community during a recession, these same reserves cannot be also used to fund recurring operating costs.

To our educators, many of you my friends and neighbors, I have always valued and respected you. Public education is a part of me — I am a product of the Beverly Public Schools, and most of you know I taught school for nearly a decade. We want the same things — to compensate our educators fairly, to provide our children with a great education, and to keep Beverly a strong, thriving community. Throughout these negotiations, we have listened to you intently. We have worked hard to respond to you.

Now, I understand you have scheduled a vote to go on strike later this week, something I believe the state teachers union has been pressuring you to do all along. Please do not do this. Do not join with the MTA in this illegal strike; it would be a big mistake, causing our children and community immeasurable damage.

You made your case, we have listened, and we have responded. We have bargained with you in good faith from the start. We are offering you $24.45 million in new money over three years — a 25% average increase. The average increase in base wages over three years, inclusive of steps, is even higher: 27.2% for teachers and 42.8% for paraprofessionals.

This is the offer that you said at the beginning of the negotiations we needed to make. It makes the market corrections we together seek. Importantly, this will place you among the best-compensated educators in our region.

Also importantly, this offer already places our city government at the threshold of its financial resources. It is time for this contract to be settled. I urge you to come back to the bargaining table in good faith and let's settle these contracts.