MARBLEHEAD, MA — An apparent payroll pitfall to start the new school year is only adding to the acrimony among the Marblehead Education Association toward district officials as its members begin September without a new collective-bargaining agreement after the previous contract expired on Aug. 31.
MEA leadership said in a statement to Patch on Thursday that the paychecks failed to include updated pay rates, agreed-upon steps and track increases, as well as stipends for summer work.
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The MEA said Interim Superintendent John Robidoux acknowledged the error but that did little to ease the teachers’ angst amid contentious contract talks.
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“My email inbox is flooded, and my phone has been ringing off the hook with messages,” MEA co-President Jonathan Heller said in the statement. “We are already some of the lowest-paid educators in the region, and the School Committee keeps telling us that we do not deserve a fair wage. Now, we’re starting the new school year without a contract, and they can’t even get our paychecks right? It only makes us feel more disrespected.”
Teacher contract talks broke off during the last negotiating session on Aug. 20 as the School Committee accused the MEA of walking away from the bargaining table during a break requested by the union. The MEA countered that its members failed to return to the 10th negotiation session after four hours that night because “the School Committee is not committed to working with us to find solutions to the problems in our schools.”
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The MEA said in that response that it was “very disheartened” that the School Committee dismissed its attempts to include a provision in the new contract for a task force on school safety protocols and staffing levels involving both faculty and administrators and instead intended to “maintain business as usual and not include frontline educators in the decision-making process.”
The payroll problem threatens to add to the mounting issues between the MEA and the School Committee Bargaining Subcommittee heading into the next scheduled bargaining session on Tuesday.
“This is completely unacceptable,” said Sally Shevory, a 3rd grade teacher at the Glover School and other co-President of the MEA. “Our members have bills — daycare, rent, mortgages — and the school administration’s mess is just piling on more stress for Mabrlehead’s educators. We show up every school year being asked to do more with less, and people are sick and tired of it. I can’t tell my mortgage company that my payment isn’t on time this month because of a ‘clerical error.'”
The MEA said Human Resources Director Kelley Ferretti apologized in an email and stated that her department has been “flooded with onboarding all of the new hires” in the district after the district replaced several administrators following a steady exodus of school leadership staff last year.
(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.)
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