Beverly Teachers Strike: Dueling Offer Claims Fail To Produce Deal

BEVERLY, MA — While each side in the two-week-old Beverly teachers' strike claimed to make offers that included significant movement on Thursday, the sides appeared no closer to a deal as the work stoppage cost a 10th day of classes on Friday.

Beverly Mayor Michael Cahill said in an update on Friday that the city met the Beverly Teachers Association's demand for a four-year contract and that "now is the chance" to end the two-week strike.

Cahill said the city and School Committee "listened, we dug in" and provided the length of a deal the BTA said was necessary to raise salaries to what it considers minimum benchmark levels.

Cahill said the offer will provide an average increase for paraprofessionals of $12,319 and teachers $23,214 over four years.

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"This new compensation offer puts our salaries in line, or in front of, those of our neighboring districts of Salem and Danvers," Cahill said in his update.

The mayor said the deal also makes increases in accrued personal sick time that could provide up to 12 weeks of paid family leave.

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"We recognize and value the dedication, professionalism, and commitment of our teachers and paraprofessionals and we believe this offer is reflective of that," Cahill said in the update. "This should result in our educators returning to work and our children returning to class."

But BTA leaders said the union also made "serious and substantive" proposals on both the teacher and paraprofessional contracts that reduced wage demands by almost $750,000 and reconstructed the teacher contract proposal to allow for what it said is necessary increases in paraprofessional pay.

"The mayor and School Committee flat out rejected our counteroffer," BTA co-President Julia Brotherton said Thursday night. "We made huge movement in our wage proposals and they made us wait for five hours for us to hear that they are refusing to even respond."

Brotherton charged that the negotiation stalemate is "intended to make educators feel pain and either they are not through punishing us" or "they do not ideologically believe our hard-working paraprofessionals should earn anything more than poverty pay."

An Essex County Superior Court judge gave the union and School Committee until Sunday night — sans further union fines for being in contempt of a state law prohibiting teacher strikes — to reach a deal without further monetary penalties.

"The simple fact is that we cannot go back to work or end this strike until we have fair contracts that pay our paraprofessionals a living wage, ensure our students have (extended) lunch and recess, ensure our paraprofessionals have fair parental leave and includes a return-to-work agreement that allows us to get back to the normal business of educating our students," Brotherton said.

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Multiple City Councilors on Thursday released statements urging a contract agreement, return to school, and made a pledge to revisit funding to avoid this type of contract impasse in the future.

The offer comes one day after a state labor board ruled in favor of the city in a petition that said it was no longer required to collectively bargain with the union because of its "illegal strike."

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Brotherton called the prohibition of teacher strikes an "unjust and immoral law" on Wednesday and blamed the School Committee for classrooms that she said could be closed through Thanksgiving break if it does not make the concessions necessary to reach a deal.

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"They are weaponizing the court system to keep schools closed," BTA co-President Andrea Sherman said in response to the ruling Wednesday night, adding that it is an effort to "squash the union."

(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.)