Massachusetts
Massachusetts Teachers Are Continuing a Wildcat Strike Wave
A wildly successful, illegal three-day strike by the Andover Education Association (AEA) in November has reverberated statewide for educators in Massachusetts.
The lowest-paid instructional assistants got a 60 percent wage jump immediately. Classroom aides on the higher end of the scale got a 37 percent increase. Members won paid family medical leave, an extra personal day, fewer staff meetings, and the extension of lunch and recess times for elementary students.
Andover is twenty miles north of Boston, and the strike involved ten schools.
For ten months and twenty-seven bargaining sessions, the Andover School Committee had insisted that none of these demands were possible. But by the end of the first day of the strike, they had ceded many items. By day three, they agreed to almost all of the union’s demands.
Public-school workers can’t legally strike in Massachusetts — but Andover’s is just one of a series of school unions that have struck over the last four years, defying the ban, and in some cases paying heavy fines as a result.
The Massachusetts Teachers Association is pushing for legislation that would legalize public sector strikes after six months of bargaining.
The wins at Andover come after years of building rank-and-file power and democracy within the AEA.
When President Matt Bach and his slate won leadership in 2019, they startled the district by refusing to meet privately with the superintendent, insisting that all meetings would include at least one member.
The new leaders opened up union meetings and budgets. They shared union budget details, including that coffers had been significantly depleted by leadership travel to conferences. They encouraged discussion of critical issues, and the union started organizing building by building.
The first big fight was at South Elementary School, where a bullying principal was targeting teachers. The new union leaders sent out a survey about the school climate, but the recently deposed union leaders alleged that those asking for the survey were themselves the bullies. Siding with the former union leaders, the district began an investigation and interviewed dozens of teachers. Instead of being intimidated, members got angry and organized a rally to call out the bullying. Under this pressure, the principal and the head of human resources were removed by the superintendent.
In the return to work midpandemic, AEA members refused to enter the school buildings for a professional development day until their safety could be assured. Instead, they set up lawn chairs and their computers outside.
This action was deemed a strike by the state. The members were unprepared for an actual strike, so they returned to the buildings the next day. However, the action secured them a new air filtration system and helped lead to the resignation of the superintendent.
When the district received American Rescue Plan Act funds in the midst of the pandemic, AEA insisted that some of those funds be used to pay bonuses to the lowest-paid workers in the district, including cafeteria and other workers not in the union. The district balked, so the union worked with the community to bring the question to the Andover town meeting, which in some towns in Massachusetts is the town’s governing body. The goal: let the residents decide if they wanted to use the funds as bonuses.
School lawyers insisted that the motion was illegal, and the issue was between the union and the district. At the town meeting, though, the community voted to support the motion as an advisory decision. (The district reopened negotiations, and the issue remains unsettled.) Each of these actions added a layer of educators ready to take on the district during contract negotiations. But not everyone was convinced.
Kate Carlton, a special education teacher at Doherty Middle School, told me she kept the union at arm’s length because of negative past experiences with unions.
She said she didn’t believe the dire reports sent by Bach during the pandemic negotiations: “The language in his emails, I was like, no way. This is charged language, opinionated words. It cannot be that bad.”
Carlton started to attend negotiations to see for herself. “I heard and saw the way our town talked about teachers and what we do,” she said. “I was watching them and thinking, your child uses special ed! Your child uses special ed and you don’t respect what educators do? Feeling the ugliness. Then they speak out of the other side of their mouths and write these emails about how much they value us.”
Dan Donovan, a fifteen-year science teacher, was reluctant at first to join the strike vote — but changed his mind after he, too, witnessed negotiations. “It was informative to see how our side wanted to discuss and reason and go through things and we were just talking to a stone wall,” said Donovan. “When the School Committee sends out a press release or an email, they say one thing, but when you go to the bargaining session it is clear what is really going on.” The School Committee resisted having union members in the room during bargaining — and the room could not hold the one hundred to two hundred members who wanted to attend each time.
While the union could have filed an unfair labor practice charge alleging that the district was not allowing the union to choose its own bargaining team and not meeting in a mutually agreed-upon space, it took an organizing approach instead.
Fifty members sat in the room as negotiations took place. Then the union would call a caucus and meet with those members and more who were in the auditorium next door. After discussion, a new group of fifty members would return, and negotiations would continue. Every time the union called a caucus, new members swapped in.
After one session when the School Committee objected to this swapping, members got more fired up than ever. Bach said enthusiasm was so great, “it was like ‘The Price is Right.’ People were rushing to be the ones to get in the room.”
What moved members to strike? Everyone I spoke to said members witnessing bargaining was central, but what made the most difference was listening. Carlton identified members in her building who she knew had had issues with the union in the past. “I just say, ‘Hey, can I talk to you?’ I’m not going to tell them what to do. I am going to listen.”
Beth Arnold, a high-school math teacher who was on the bargaining team, said the creation of communication teams of ten members to one leader in the high school allowed people to engage in more conversations with each other, to hear from voices other than “the loudest,” and not rely just on emails or the word of the leadership.
When she talked with members about the illegality of the strike and their fears, Arnold emphasized that the choice to strike was a shared decision — not one to make alone.
The strike wave among Massachusetts educators started in April 2019 with the Dedham Teachers Association. It was the first teachers strike in Massachusetts since 2007.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has ruled that even using the word “strike” constitutes “inducing, encouraging or condoning a work stoppage by public employees.” Union leaders who do so risk fines — personally and as elected leaders — and even jail time. The Dedham educators voted to strike on a Thursday, were out one day, and had a tentative agreement in time to return to work Monday. They faced minimal fines.
The Brookline Educators Union struck in May 2022. They were out one day and were willing to pay a $50,000 fine imposed by the school district on the union.
The wave built with Haverhill, Malden, Woburn, and now Andover. Melrose Teacher Association members authorized a strike, but won all they demanded before they could walk out.
Some unions faced fines of up to $50,000 a day; others did not. In Woburn the community held a bake sale to help pay the fine. Some people paid $100 a cookie.
Educators in Massachusetts are not only seeing each other strike and win, but also teaching each others how to do it. Barry Davis, president of the Haverhill Teachers Association, which struck in October 2022, says the lessons were first forged in the Merrimack Valley bargaining council, an informal network of six teacher locals that meet regularly to share contract issues and organizing strategies. After the Haverhill and Malden strikes, organizers from those locals reached out to or were contacted by members of other locals.
“We’d go out and talk to members in these locals, and they realized that we were just like them, that there was nothing different about us that made us able to strike,” Davis said. “When you are a third grade teacher with three kids, and a third grade teacher with three kids shows up to tell you how to do this, you realize much more is possible.”
AEA members have been transformed. “I don’t recognize these people,” said Bach shortly after the strike.
Originally Donovan said that he would do anything to support the union, except break the law. Now he says, “I’ve come around. Not all laws are just, and that is an unjust law. Teachers deserve the right to strike for just wages.”
Police shot and killed a man who officials say rushed officers with a knife during a call in Lexington, Massachusetts, on Saturday.
Middlesex County District Attorney Marian Ryan said the situation started around 1:40 p.m. when Lexington police received a 911 call from a resident of Mason Street reporting that his son had injured himself with a knife.
Officers from the Lexington Police Department and officers from the Northeastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council (NEMLEC), who were already in town for Patriots’ Day events, responded to the call.
Police were able to escort two other residents out of the home, initially leaving a 26-year-old man inside. According to Ryan, while officers were setting up outside, the man ran out of the home and approached officers with a large kitchen knife.
She added that police tried twice to use non-lethal force, but it was not effective in stopping him. The man was shot by a Wilmington police officer who is a member of NEMLEC. The man was pronounced dead on scene and the officer who fired that shot was taken to a local hospital as a precaution.
The man’s name has not been released.
Ryan said typically in a call like this where someone was described as harming themselves, officers would first try to separate anyone else to keep them out of danger, which was done, and then standard practice would be to try to wait outside.
“It would be their practice to just wait for the person to come out. In the terrible circumstances of today, he suddenly rushed the officers, still clutching the knife,” Ryan said.
The investigation is still in the preliminary stages and more information is expected in time. Ryan said her office will request a formal inquest from the court to review whether any criminal conduct has occurred, which is the standard process.
This happened around the same time as the annual Patriots’ Day Parade, and just hours after a reenactment of the Battle of Lexington, which drew large crowds to town.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
Massachusetts
‘An impossible choice’: With little federal help to combat rising costs, Head Start looks to Massachusetts for more help – The Boston Globe
In Massachusetts, roughly 1,300 slots for children across Head Start’s 28 agencies have been eliminated in the last three years because federal funding has plateaued over that time, while the cost of running the program continues to rise, according to the Massachusetts Head Start Association. Nationally, Head Start enrollment dropped from 1.1 million kids in 2013 to around 785,000 in 2022, according to research by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
“If they didn’t get into a Head Start program, they would be sitting at home,” said Brittany Acosta, a Head Start parent in Dorchester.
It’s teachers are drastically underpaid, and there’s a serious need for a rainy day-type fund should the federal government shut down again, the association says. As they’ve done in years past, state lawmakers have offered to provide financial relief, but the Massachusetts Head Start Association’s request for 3 percent above the amount it received last year, an additional $4.6 million to help its staff keep up with the state’s rising cost of living, so far has not been allocated.
Last year, President Trump’s leaked budget proposal revealed he considered eliminating Head Start entirely. Then, in the summer, he cut off Head Start enrollment for immigrants without legal status. And during the fall’s government shutdown, four Head Start centers in Massachusetts closed because they couldn’t access their funding.
Trump’s latest budget proposal shows a fourth year without increasing funding for the program, which was established in the mid-1960s.
Michelle Haimowitz, executive director of the Massachusetts Head Start Association, said the program doesn’t want to eliminate more child slots than it already has, but paying teachers a competitive salary is equally important in order to keep them from leaving for higher paying jobs. Head Start teachers make under $50,000 annually compared to over $85,000 for the average Massachusetts kindergarten teacher.
“It’s an impossible choice,” Haimowitz said. “When we reduce the size of our programs, we’re not reducing the size of the need.”
Massachusetts is one of few states that supplements federal funding for Head Start, and last year it increased the program’s state grant from $5 million to $20 million, adding to the $189 million in federal aid it receives in this state.
“We can’t run a program without giving staff a raise for three years,” Haimowitz said. “Our next fight now is not just for survival, but it’s for thriving and growth.”
The Massachusetts House Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday released its budget, which doesn’t grant Head Start’s request of a 3 percent boost. But state Representative Christopher Worrell filed an amendment for additional funding. Worrell, whose district covers parts of Dorchester and Roxbury, said he loves Head Start’s embrace of culture, recalling one visit to a center where he could smell staff cooking stew chicken, a traditional Caribbean dish.
“I’ve been to dozens of schools throughout the district, and you don’t get that home-cooked meal,” Worrell said. “[The state is] stepping up and doing the best we can with what we have.”
At the Action for Boston Community Development’s Head Start and Early Head Start center in Dorchester, the children of Classroom 7 arrived one Monday morning and dove into bins of magnetic tiles before their teachers, Paola Polanco and Leolina Rasundar Chinnappa, served breakfast. Acosta dropped off her 4-year-old daughter, Violeta, before reporting to her teaching position at the center, where several other Head Start parents also work.
“It’s important for all Head Start parents to have the opportunity to give their child an experience in a learning environment before they actually start kindergarten,” Acosta said.
Beyond providing early education and care to children of low-income families, from birth to age 5, the program helps them access other resources, including mental health services, SNAP benefits, homelessness assistance, and employment opportunities.
It also serves as daycare for parents who might not be able to afford it, while they’re at work.
Research has shown the importance of preschool in a child’s development with one 2023 study, focused on Boston public preschools, finding that it improves student behavior and increases the likelihood of high school graduation and college enrollment.
For Rickencia Clerveaux and Christopher Mclean, the Dorchester Head Start center is the only place they feel comfortable sending their 3-year-old son, Shontz, who is on the autism spectrum. Shontz’s stimming — repetitive movements that stimulate the senses — has reduced, and his speech has improved since he joined the center in 2024, Clerveaux said.
His parents say he’s also come out of his shell. Mclean now drops his son off and gets a simple “bye” as Shontz joins his classmates, he said.
He and Clerveaux said they appreciate the specialized attention Shontz can receive from teachers, such as when staff identified that Shontz might have hearing issues. His parents were able to follow up with their doctor and get Shontz to have surgery to improve his hearing.
“It’s a safe net for parents,” Clerveaux said. “There’s so many ways that him being here helps him grow better.”
Without Head Start, Clerveaux said a lot of pressure would be put on parents to find care for their children, “knowing that they’re already struggling or not getting the ends to meet.”
“That’s a burden for everybody in the community,” she said. “If there’s no funding, there’s no daycare and parents cannot work.”
Lauren Albano can be reached at lauren.albano@globe.com. Follow her on X @LaurenAlbano_.
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