To submit school announcements, click on image.
(Update: The story has been updated to add more about the city’s last offer. Some ESPs would see their salaries increase at Step 4 at 16.4% and 20.2% at Step 5 over the course of the contract.)
The union representing Haverhill Education Support Professionals and School Committee negotiators remain far apart in reaching a new agreement for those who have worked without a contract for a year and half.
Union representatives said negotiators have used legal mechanisms to avoid bargaining, while their city counterparts suggest there is more behind the scenes. Haverhill Education Association President Barry Davis said Haverhill school negotiators have been “very difficult to work with over this process.”
“The ESP workforce is a workforce that makes under a living wage. We’ve made it very clear that our priority is bringing these people through the length of the contract closer to a living wage,” he said. “Where the School Committee bargaining team has really been, when they have negotiated, have been ‘here’s another 15 cents an hour, here’s another five cents an hour. It’s been not really understanding the issue of why our schools are understaffed and why we can’t hire paraprofessionals when they can go to surrounding districts and make significantly more.”
Under the current contract that expired June 30, 2023, an ESP who works hourly within the district could earn a starting wage of $21.32 an hour. By contrast, Davis points to a living wage calculator compiled by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, noting a living wage for one adult with no children in Essex County is $26.94 an hour for a full-time job.
Education support professionals work six and a half hours in the middle schools and seven and a half hours at the high school level for 182 days, according to the unit’s contract.
Davis alleges that the bargaining team has “pretty much” refused to meet with union negotiators “face to face” and allege that members of the negotiating team “hold a grudge” against union members for a strike in 2022. He explained School Committee negotiators used such steps as applying for a mediator and then seeking a fact-finding review to avoid dealing directly with the union for months.
“They’ve used the legal process to that, I think it’s because they don’t want to look us in the eye while they refuse to give one of the lowest paid workforces in the city a raise,” he said.
Negotiator and School Committee member Richard J. Rosa countered the negotiating committee and union have met several times since April of last year. He confirmed negotiations are currently in fact finding, where negotiations failed to resolve an impasse after mediation.
“Since then, we’ve met both face to face and in mediation probably more than 20 times,” he said. “In the late summer of 2023, we made an offer and the union chose not to make a counter offer. They felt it was too low,” he said.
Rosa also added there’s “no evidence of that whatsoever” of any “grudge” against the union for the 2022 teachers strike.
Davis said the union’s most recent proposal to the Committee was for a two-year contract with a $1.50 adjustment for all steps on the pay scale, along with a 4% raise in the second year and additional longevity bumps after 15 years of service. The response, he said, was a four-year contract with a $1.10 market correction in the first year, along with 3% raises in the second and third years and a 2% raise in the fourth year, along with increased longevity bumps after 20 years of service.
“They were stuck at 4% in their year one and 3% and 3%, which is, you could say that is what the teachers got, but the teachers make two or three times more than an ESP, so that 4% is significantly bigger than what it is for an ESP,” he said. “And their solution to us saying that’s not enough was to add a fourth year at another 2%. With the way we see inflation as we move through time, not only are other districts going to continue to be more and more ahead of us, but the employees who stick around in Haverhill are going to end up more and more in poverty.”
School Committee Vice Chairman Paul A. Magliocchetti, who is not on the current negotiating team, called the allegations “preposterous.”
“What we have offered them is more than we have offered to every group. We have gone through the budget and in our discussions, we have tried to find every penny that we can to give them,” he said.
Magliocchetti added the district is trying to “give as much as we can.”
In the city’s offer to the union, ESP wages would immediately increase by at least 8.3% of their current hourly rate, along with retroactive lump sum payments of approximately $1,300. Over the course of the four-year proposal, if approved, ESPs would see their pay increase at least 12.6% over the term of the agreement, depending on their current wage. The Committee’s proposal would also add two additional steps. Some ESPs would see their salaries increase at Step 4 at 16.4% and 20.2% at Step 5 over the course of the contract.
Rosa defended the Committee’s call for a longer-term contract. “So to me, it doesn’t make any sense for either side to want to do a two-year contract and have to go back to the negotiating table in literally a few months,” he said. “I just don’t understand why we wouldn’t do a longer contract unless there’s something else at play.”
Davis told WHAV, “A four-year deal is not off the table if it has a pathway to a living wage built in. The current four-year deal from the School Committee is outright insulting, only widening the gap between ESP salaries and a living wage.”
Magliocchetti referred to a September report penned by Committee member Thomas Grannemann presented to the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, which as WHAV reported, aims to alter the state’s school funding calculation to better account for inflation. He said he believes this fix could provide the district additional funds for higher salaries.
He added, “We don’t fund, we only allocate. If we allocate to one group disproportionately, someone is going to be impacted.”
Magliochetti noted that nearly a majority of new Committee members were endorsed by the union—and all of which were elected in 2023 after the strike.