The Cambridge School District will request a third-party mediator amid ongoing contract negotiations with the teachers union, Superintendent David Murphy said Tuesday.
After 22 bargaining sessions with the Cambridge Education Association — the district’s largest labor union, representing 1,500 teachers, paraprofessionals and other staff — have resulted in no finalized contract, Murphy said he hopes a state mediator will help address the impasse.
“Given the fact that there’s such a significant financial divide between the parties, and the fact that this has been going on for as long as it has, I think it’s appropriate for us to try to change whatever variables we can in the hope of resolving this,” Murphy said in an interview.
A mediator is a neutral third party, often provided by the state and agreed to by both parties, whose role is to facilitate more productive negotiation.
It is not uncommon for a school district to request mediation from the state’s Department of Labor Relations when contract negotiations stall. In fact, the district worked with a mediator when it last negotiated with the CEA in 2023.
Both negotiating parties have a “long history of benefiting significantly from the contribution of mediators,” said Glen Koocher, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees. Koocher served on the Cambridge School Committee from 1974 to 1986, and said negotiations frequently reached mediation during that time. Having a mediator present can “take some of the heat off of the process,” Koocher added.
If mediation fails to aid in finalizing contracts, the district can request an independent fact-finder to research and present on the arguments of both sides. In both the Marblehead and Beverly school districts in 2024, fact-finding helped end impasses in contract negotiations that had led to teacher strikes.
The union’s president, Chris Montero, said he does not see value in mediation at this stage, primarily citing delays in scheduling and communicating with the mediator.
Strike possibility?
Murphy said his request for mediation comes partly from concerns about “potential job actions,” he said, referencing “documents that the CEA is circulating.”
Montero denied the potential for a strike. He said it is “not frankly a fair or accurate characterization of what (educators) are talking about.”
Montero did refer to potential “actions towards upper management,” but did not specify what those would be. Action could also target tasks that are “not compensated” or “required,” Montero said.
Negotiating delays are “not unusual at all,” Koocher said. For instance, the 2023 negotiation timeline did not yield tentative agreements until November 2023, with the contracts finalized in early December.
Paraprofessional impasse
Salaries for district paraprofessionals have been cited as a main cause of the stalemate between the two parties, and Montero called paraprofessional wages one of the union’s “top issues.”
The CEA is proposing a $45,000 starting salary for paraprofessionals in the 2027-28 school year, and a jump to $55,000 for 2028-2029. While a district statement said the School Committee has already agreed to raise the lowest tier of paraprofessional salaries by about 60%, the union says it has not received adequate responses in this area.
In an October interview, Montero noted progress in certain negotiation areas. The parties have tentative agreements on stipends for educators on extended overnight trips, educator input into administrator evaluations, and bereavement leave, for example.
While five of the union’s six bargaining units are negotiating together, each unit is free to settle individually if the opportunity arises, Montero said. (Unit F, district safety specialists, are negotiating independently.)
When a mediator will be present at the negotiation table remains unclear, but Murphy said negotiations will proceed as normal.
The next bargaining session is scheduled for Wednesday, Nov. 11, with future sessions also scheduled.
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