BEVERLY — Two parents have filed a class-action lawsuit against the Beverly Teachers Association over the November 2024 strike that kept Beverly students out of school for 12 days.
In the lawsuit filed in Salem Superior Court on Wednesday, the parents, Janelle Donahue of Beverly and Erica Kostro of Quincy, said the strike led their children to “lose learning and the enjoyment of their civil rights,” and caused them emotional distress and economic damage.
The suit also lists the Massachusetts Teachers Association and other teacher unions in Newton, Malden and Brookline, which the mothers said encouraged the strike in ways including donating money to the Beverly union.
The plaintiffs requested for the case to go before a jury. They’re asking for the BTA to award them damages, but did not indicate how much.
They based their lawsuit on teachers’ strikes in public school districts being illegal in Massachusetts, noting the BTA’s strike was declared illegal by a judge just days after the union announced on Nov. 7 it would not return to work until contract negotiations were resolved.
BTA President Andrea Sherman did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday afternoon.
Beverly’s strike and simultaneous ones in Gloucester and Marblehead erupted after months of stalled negotiations over demands for better pay, specifically for paraprofessionals, paid parental leave and improvements to classroom safety.
The strike ended on Nov. 26 when Beverly teachers secured a four-year contract that stipulated 16% raises over three years for teachers, a 75% increase in paraprofessionals’ starting salary, six weeks of paid parental leave, and improvements to health and safety in the schools.
The BTA was fined $810,000 for going on strike, which the plaintiffs said is not an adequate punishment for the union’s illegal act.
In order to make up for lost school days, Beverly held school on five Saturdays this spring and winter, extended the school year by two more days in June, canceled February vacation and delayed the start of the December holiday break by one day.
The mothers said the strike “damaged thousands of students in Beverly Public Schools by interrupting their educational process,” and also cost parents and caretakers to lose wages or use accrued time off to care for their children while schools were closed.
“The students and parents both endured emotional distress and anxiety living the roller-coaster of negotiations, court orders and nightly updates always wondering, ‘Will school be back on tomorrow?’” their lawsuit indicates.
Donahue said she is a single mother who had to take time off from her job working with vulnerable populations at a treatment facility who needed her care, because of the strike.
She experienced panic attacks and sobbed during sleepless nights over the unpredictable school schedule caused by the strike, the lawsuit said.
Her elementary school-age children missed out on critical services during that time, as her youngest child has ADHD and “struggled immensely” with a lack of structure and also missed speech therapy sessions, despite them being a part of her federally mandated IEP, according to the lawsuit.
“Adjusting to returning to school after any unusual break — even after long weekends — is very difficult for Janelle’s kids,” the lawsuit indicates. “After the prolonged closure, the process was traumatic. Her children cried at drop-off as they struggled to get out of the car and want to go to school.”
Kostro’s high school-age daughter grew stressed by acrimonious social media posts by BTA members about the strike, and was “disturbed” to see many of her current and former teachers seeming to be “happy not to be teaching” while they were outside picketing, according to the lawsuit.
The strike also caused her daughter anxiety over lost learning time ahead of Advance Placement test dates that would not be moved for the district’s students, and for the uncertainty the strike created around her varsity basketball team’s winter season, the lawsuit indicates.
Her daughter also had to miss college visits, sports practices and camps she planned to attend on weekend and vacation days that were used to reschedule lost classroom time from the strike.
She noted that such rescheduled school days have been poorly attended by other students and have “proven to be very poor substitutes for the instructional school days missed.”
“C.K. and her family wholeheartedly respect teachers and their importance to the community, but the BTA strike was and continues to be very demoralizing and damaging for them and for many others in the community,” the lawsuit says.
“The BTA continues to post about the strike and its ‘victories’ on social media platforms, seemingly insensitive to the harms the strike inflicted on affected Beverly students and their parents/guardians.”
The mothers’ four minor children are listed as co-plaintiffs in the lawsuit. The children are named only by their initials, a precedent that’s already been allowed in other cases involving minors and should also be upheld in light of “aggressive” behavior by BTA members during the strike, the mothers said in their complaint.
“During the strike, due to physical threats by BTA members and supporters, grown adult members of the School Committee reasonably feared walking to their cars in the dark, therefore requiring police protection, just for failing to agree to BTA’s contractual terms,” the lawsuit indicates.
“In the instant complaint, they certainly have reasonable fears of similar physical threats and emotional harm from BTA members and supporters who are not their own teachers, and would not otherwise recognize them from their parents’ last names.”
Contact Caroline Enos at CEnos@northofboston.com.