To the editor:
Whose contract is this, whose fight is this? Over the last year, as co-president of the MEA (Marblehead Education Association), I have been fighting around the clock for a fair contract. Many of you are asking who is really behind this contract? Tonight I’m going to tell you who, and what drove this contract, and the strike.
I started teaching when I was 20 years old. I joined Teach for America. I trained in South Central L.A., then taught in Weslaco, Texas, and New York City. I had no teachers union to protect my rights as a teacher. I worked for pennies.
I moved back home at 23 and became a tutor, finished my master’s. I had no tuition reimbursement. I paid out of my own pocket. I then cared for my mother as she passed a way from cancer at the age of 54. Family leave and bereavement leave weren’t something I had as a tutor.
At 26, I landed my job in Marblehead, I also was pregnant with my first son. When he was born in May, I took all my sick days… about 10 days, then I was unpaid. I had three more sons over the next few years, each time with fewer and fewer paid sick days, because there’s no real way to “save sick days” when you have four children under 6. My family struggled financially. So I fight for parental leave.
At 38. I found out I had BRCA1 gene. I needed to have two major surgeries, a bilateral mastectomy and an oophorectomy. It was an easy decision, I wanted to watch my sons grow up. My husband, an educator, had no family leave, he took as many days as he could to help. I had no sick leave bank, so most of my leave was unpaid. Today I fight for family leave, and sick banks.
For the past year as co-president and Glover teacher, I fought to protect the rights of some of the very best educators I have ever known who Marblehead schools turned their back on. I fought diligently for the rights of students and staff to have safe schools. Because our safe working environment is students’ safe learning environment. I fight for safe schools.
I am now within five years of retirement. As I look at districts surrounding Marblehead I, too, want fair wages. I have worked far too hard in my career not to receive the compensation I deserve. Marblehead is one of the lowest paying districts on the North Shore. I fight for fair wages.
Over the years, I have had a wonderful career. There have certainly been highlights, my students and my colleagues have meant the world to me. There have been many struggles as a teacher. As a profession of mostly women, we have been an exploited workforce. We are stripped of so many rights that other fields are granted. Make no mistake, this is a sexist world. I vowed this contract would be different.
I wanted to make sure I left this profession better than I found it. Educational reimbursement, parental leave, family leave, sick bank, bereavement, safe schools, fair wages… all the things I did not always have in my career, that would have made my life easier.
This fight is the MEA …and every member like myself who did not stand idly by and allow a law firm and a bargaining subcommittee to dictate the rights we deserve as educators, and to prevent our students from obtaining the public education they deserve. The platforms I stand on are the platforms I was denied. This contract fight was Sally Shevory — and every other Marblehead educator — showing our students and community to stand tall for our convictions and to always fight for what is right. Good trouble, Marblehead.
Sally Shevory is co-president of the Marblehead Education Association and a Glover School teacher. She delivered this speech at an interfaith vigil on Nov. 20 and then submitted it as a letter to the editor.
