In the fall of 1994, the Belmont teachers union and the School Committee had yet to reach an agreement on a new contract for educators, resulting in a strike by teachers in January 1995.
In response to the strike, members of the town government and parent volunteers organized 226 volunteers to keep the schools open, according to Ralph Jones, a member of the Warrant Committee at the time who also taught in one of the classrooms.
One of the challenges facing those volunteers was identifying the current curricula being taught, said Jones.
“I had to basically work with the kids in each course to try to figure out where they were, what subject they were studying, how far along they were with it, so that we could then pick up and basically get in place to be able to continue their courses,” he added.
A Contentious Start
The teachers’ union and the School Committee had been at the negotiating table since March 1994, engaging in 20 bargaining sessions, according to a letter from the Massachusetts Labor Relations Commission.
Today, the School Committee and the union—the Belmont Education Association (BEA)—are at a similar juncture; after a year of collective bargaining, the School Committee has filed for mediation from the state, and the BEA has filed a complaint with the state’s labor relations board claiming the School Committee has been engaging in unfair bargaining practices. BEA President John Sullivan, however, maintains the union has no imminent intention to strike.
In 1995, to advocate for increased pay and improved working conditions, members of the union implemented job actions, including picketing and work-to-rule, wherein educational staff only worked during contracted hours.
After an overnight bargaining session, the two parties reached an impasse, and in the early morning of Jan. 6, 1995, union members voted to strike with a 2-1 margin.
According to the Citizen-Herald, “the School Department offered a three-year contract with a zero percent raise in the first year, while each of the final two years offered a [3.5%] raise in each year. The BEA countered with a split schedule of a [1%] raise during the first year, and a 4% raise in the second year, and a 5% raise in the final year.”
“I remember people just feeling the lack of respect from the School Committee, because they had held strong for a year and a half saying they had no money, and then all of a sudden they come up with this insulting amount that they were offering—which upset people,” said Sullivan, who was in his first year of teaching in Belmont in 1995.
“Nobody wants to go on strike because everyone loves their students and hates to be apart from them, but there was a sense of disrespect from the School Committee,” he added.
The then-president of the teachers’ union, Robert Antonellis, had urged parents to make alternative plans for their children’s care in the case of a strike.
The weekend prior to the strike, municipal officials and parent volunteers organized in the lower level of the schools’ administration building to make calls to resident professors and teachers with a request: to prepare to step into Belmont classrooms as stand-in teachers in the event of a strike.
“What we were doing at that point was trying to re-establish the schools under volunteer leadership and basically keep the educational process going and keep the kids in school,” he said.
A Coordinated Effort
When the Belmont Schools’ parent-teacher associations (PTAs) learned of the possibility of a strike 30 years ago, parents raised questions about how they could keep the schools open.
According to state law, students are required to have 180 days of classroom instruction during the school year.
“Various parents talked among themselves and spoke to the School Committee people, and said they really thought they could find people who were teachers to teach,” said Pat Brusch, who was on a PTA at the time and who helped coordinate volunteers.
The search began. Jones recalled organizing approximately 53 volunteers—some of whom were fellow members of the Warrant Committee, personal friends, or connections through his church. Of those, 23 had doctorate degrees, according to Jones.
As the word of the effort to keep the schools open spread, Jones started getting calls.
“Suddenly, volunteers came out [from] everywhere,” he said.
“The officials in town started seeing people in town who had skills that they never knew they had, and they could tap them for things,” said Brusch.
According to the Citizen-Herald, the number of students attending school during the strike rose from 37% on Friday, Jan. 6 (the first day of the strike) to 56% the following Tuesday, due to the volunteers stepping in.
The Department of Education also conducted unannounced visits to observe the volunteer teachers, said Jones.
According to a letter from the Department of Education, the volunteer teachers had “made extraordinary efforts to provide learning opportunities for all students at all levels.”
As a result of this assessment, for the duration of the strike with the exception of the first day, the instructional days facilitated by the volunteers were counted as official school days.
Growing Tension
Relationships between those joining the strike and community members crossing the picket line became strained, according to then School Committee member Anne Marie Mahoney.
“It instantly caused [a] rift,” she said.
Antonellis described the decision to go on strike as an emotional one, in an interview with the Citizen-Herald in 1995. “That’s not a natural thing to do—teachers are very caring people.”
Mahoney recalled negotiations during the strike as one of the hardest experiences of her life.
“It was days and nights without sleep,” she added.
During the strike, an arbitrator from the state went between the two parties to negotiate a new contract.
“That was the 13 days of this poor guy running up and down the stairs in the school department building,” Mahoney said. “We were upstairs. Teachers were downstairs, and so we rarely met face to face.”
According to a testimony to the Public Service Committee by Karen Pressey, then School Committee member, the schools “felt it was necessary to establish a pool of replacement teachers in the event of a prolonged strike action,” and put out two classified ads during the strike that resulted in over 600 applications for teaching positions.
When an agreement was finally reached between the BEA and the School Committee, “the final settlement [for salary increases] was 11% over four years, an average of 2.75% a year,” according to Pressey’s testimony.
Expanding Involvement
After the strike, many more Belmont residents also became involved in town politics, according to Brusch.
“Even 10 years later, I would hear somebody say, ‘Well, I actually ran for Town Meeting’, or ‘I actually volunteered to work on [a] committee because I got interested during the strike,’” she said.
Motivated by the strike, Jones found himself running for School Committee, a seat he would hold for nine years. Later, he served on the Select Board for six years.
“It just increased my willingness to stand for office and serve the community,” he added. “If we could get 226 people to suddenly drop everything and come in and work in the schools that said something about this town.”
