BEVERLY, MASS. (WHDH) - A court-imposed deadline to settle teacher strikes in Beverly and Marblehead passed Sunday night without a deal.
School was canceled again in those districts Monday, marking the start of a third week without classes.
Last week, an Essex County Superior Court judge imposed a deadline of 6 p.m. Sunday to reach a deal to get kids back to the classroom.
If a deal had been reached, fines levied against the unions for the end of last week would have been waived. But the deadline came and went, leaving frustrations among parents high.
On day 18 of their strike, the Beverly Teachers Association said they would not back down, but the school committee is refusing to negotiate with the union any longer.
“They walked away from us, they walked away from the city, they walked away from the kids,” said Andrea Sherman, co-president of the BTA.
The union said both sides are close, but they just do not see eye-to-eye on paraprofessionals’ salaries.
“We continue to demand a living wage for our paras, and the school committee continues to keep our schools closed because they are unwilling to meet this demand,” Sherman said.
However, a spokesperson for the school committee said the union and the committee are millions of dollars apart.
“The BTA continues to inappropriately withhold our students’ education as a bargaining chip to gain financial terms for its members that will necessitate reductions in force, and will also impede the District’s ability to provide a curriculum/program that Beverly residents and students are accustomed to and deserve,” the Beverly school committee said.
Because the committee doesn’t see any end in sight, they plan to dock the striking educators’ pay beginning Monday.
“Cutting off pay right before Thanksgiving and the upcoming holidays is clearly a tactic designed to bully educators and force the BTA back to work without a living wage for paraprofessionals,” said Julia Brotherton, co-president of the BTA.
The school committee said it wants to wait for a “fact finding” arbitrator to step in and help navigate, but that would not happen until next week, so the committee is urging teachers to return to the classroom as the process plays out.
Protests in Marblehead got heated Sunday night, after failed negotiations there had demonstrators screaming and surrounding school committee members leaving the meeting. Police had to escort school committee members to their cars.
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