MARBLEHEAD — The Marblehead Education Association has informed the School Committee that after a meeting scheduled for June 11, it will not be meeting with the committee again to discuss contract negotiations until September. The announcement came after the two sides failed to come to terms on an offer during several meetings.
The union’s current contracts are set to expire this summer.
The MEA’s decision was announced in a statement from the School Committee Collective Bargaining Subcommittee following a negotiation session on Monday night.
“The Marblehead School Committee Bargaining Subcommittee was surprised to be told by the Marblehead Education Association today during our fifth bargaining session that the union will not meet to bargain again until September following a June 11 scheduled session,” the statement reads.
At Monday’s meeting, despite putting forth additional proposals to the committee, the MEA received “very little in return” from Subcommittee members Sarah Fox and Jenn Schaeffner, according to a statement from the union.
“The School Committee refused to address many of the common proposals yet again, except to offer an initial counter on parental leave that actually reduces benefits for some members,” the MEA said in the statement.
In its statement, the subcommittee said that discussions came to a close after Massachusetts Teachers Association representative Anthony Parolisi shouted obscenities at the committee, followed by “shouting in self-proclaimed anger by union members stating the proposals provided were insulting.”
According to the MEA, the committee offered 10 paid days off not deducted from contractual leave, along with 20 days to be deducted from sick leave, totaling 30 days for birth and non-birth parents.
In its statement, the MEA said that Unit A birth and non-birth parents can use up to 40 days of sick time. Under the committee’s proposal, according to the MEA’s statement, birth parents would be the only ones eligible for 20 additional days to be deducted from sick leave for “recovery from childbirth only.”
Additionally, the committee’s proposal to paraprofessionals included a 0% wage increase in year one, followed by only a 2% increase for years two and three, according to the MEA’s statement.
“Proposals for tutors and permanent substitutes were no better,” the union’s statement reads.
The MEA also yet again asked the committee to consider entering open bargaining, but the request was rejected.
This is the latest escalation in what has already been a tense negotiating season between the School Committee and MEA.
In early May, the committee filed an unfair labor practice complaint against the union, after dozens of members attended previous executive sessions. The committee told the union that having seven representatives of the MEA attend the meetings would be a fair amount. The MEA later filed a grievance against the district.
The subcommittee added in its statement that it invited Town Administrator Thatcher Kezer to the session on Monday, though he declined to attend due to a “scheduling conflict.”
Kezer has attended executive sessions with the committee to conduct strategy in preparation for collective bargaining, but has not been present during the bargaining sessions themselves. On May 21, a statement from Marbleheaders for Change, signed by Seth Gummere and Kate Haesche Thomson, called for the committee to vote Kezer onto the bargaining subcommittee at its meeting on May 28. The committee did not take a vote at the meeting.
The MEA is expected to hold a rally outside of the Jacobi Community Center on Tuesday, June 11, the town’s election day, before what will now be its final bargaining session before next school year.
