Outside the Village School on Thursday morning, teachers stood outside waving to passing cars while the song “We Are Family” played from loudspeakers. Around town, hundreds of educators staged “walk-ins,” entering their schools as part of North Shore-wide action by 5,000 teachers demanding “fair and just parental leave.”
Village School fifth-grade teacher Taryn Stockwell has two toddlers and had to “bank,” or save, sick days for years to use toward her maternity leaves. Teachers receive 15 paid sick days every year.
“If we want to have another child, I have to wait to accrue more sick days,” Stockwell said.
The current teachers’ contract, which expires this summer, gives educators up to eight weeks of paid parental leave. However, Jonathan Heller, who is co-president of the teachers union, says it requires educators to “use a sick day for every day of paid parental leave.”
The union, Marblehead Education Association, is asking for 12 weeks of paid parental leave in its new contract.
‘Broken system’
The state passed the Paid Family Medical Leave Act in 2018 but allowed municipalities to opt out. Marblehead did.
“The broken system forces expecting families to navigate a convoluted system of planning childbirth, cobbling together accrued sick leave and resorting to using unpaid time to build their families,” according to an MEA press release.
Laura Geelan is a special education teacher at Village. “As a Marblehead educator of eight years, I used the majority of my sick days to keep my pay to care for my newborn,” she is quoted in the press release.
Geelan continued, “I had to ‘prepare’ and ‘save my sick days’ in order to start a family. What happens when I am out of sick days and my daughter or family has appointments? It is imperative that we change our policies around maternity leave in order to create a more humane and fair contract for educators.”
MaryAnn Levine, a special education teacher at the Brown School who is pregnant, added, “Like me, many of my colleagues have had to choose between family and profession. If MPS wants to recruit and retain professional teachers like me, paid parental leave is not a luxury; it’s a necessity.”
When asked how much paid leave might cost the district, Heller said he did not know but emphasized that not many teachers need family leave each year, and he doubted it would have a big impact on the budget.
The MEA is expected to meet with the School Committee for contract talks again May 1. Heller confirmed that the current fiscal year 2025 budget includes a placeholder for a 2% pay raise for teachers. Heller did not disclose what type of increase the teachers are asking for.
Heller said the MEA and Massachusetts Teachers Association would be at Town Meeting on May 6 to advocate for a “fully funded” schools budget, including paid parental leave.
“We are going to make a full economic proposal in the next few weeks that will detail out what that means,” he wrote in an email.
Editor Leigh Blander is an experienced TV, radio and print journalist.
