Beverly Schools Call For State Mediation In Teacher Contract Talks

UPDATED 4 p.m.

BEVERLY, MA — The Beverly School Committee on Wednesday said it was seeking state involvement in the ongoing teacher contract negotiations through an official impasse declaration nine months after talks on a new collective-bargaining agreement began.

The School Committee released a statement to Patch saying that it had made "good faith and strong proposals and counter proposals" to the Beverly Teachers Association, but that "continued uncompromising demands from the BTA" had left little hope of a direction forward in the talks without outside help.

Under the impasse declaration, the state Department of Labor Relations would assign a state-selected third party to assist in mediating the dispute.

"While we know the BTA members share our desire to reach an agreement, it is difficult to make progress without meaningful responses to the School Committee's proposals and with continued uncompromising demands from the BTA," School Committee Chair Rachael Abell said in the statement. "Members of the School Committee believe this lack of progress on issues our educators identified as critical elements, especially well-deserved wage increases, will benefit from the experience of the DLR resources.

"While we know a compensation agreement will not solve everything being discussed at the table, it directly affects many of the other items brought forth by the BTA including parental leave, workload, and reimbursement for learning credits."

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The BTA responded to the move on Wednesday, saying that the city is "exploiting staff members" and that it would not compromise on its core wage demands.

"The School Committee has not budged from the wage proposal that it presented to us last spring and appeared unmoved by our members' impassioned pleas to acknowledge that the city of Beverly is exploiting staff members who work with our community's most vulnerable children," the union said. "The BTA is holding firm on our wage benchmarks for both units."

The BTA two weeks ago voted to commence a "work to rule" provision in which teachers and other union members would only perform contractually required duties during school hours — eliminating activities such as after-school tutoring, chaperoning field trips, writing newsletters and serving on committee — to raise awareness about what it called the city's unwillingness to "fix the real problems and injustices in our school buildings."

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"We know exactly what our students and teachers need to be successful in their schools — smaller class sizes, paid parental leave, longer elementary lunch and recess, solutions to support dysregulated and special education students, and fair wages for all of our staff," the BTA said in announcing 99 percent member support for the "work to rule" move. "We must continue to raise awareness of the crisis in our schools as the School Committee has yet to meet its educators' and students' needs."

The School Committee invited the BTA to support the inclusion of state mediators and pledged to continue negotiations amid the bid for third-party assistance.

"We recognize the frustration in the present meeting format is not moving us closer to resolution," Abell's statement said. "We hope to soon engage the assistance of a mediator specialist to reach an agreement that works within the budget parameters set by the city as well as addresses other contractual items discussed at the bargaining table.

"Given our shared goal of providing the best education possible to all students in our district, we have confidence that we can reach a fair agreement without disrupting student learning."

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. X/Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)