Contrarian Boston/01.30.2024

Healey’s big but not bold housing plan | Fighting to save dwindling media jobs | Parent takes Newton teachers union to court | Not so rave reviews for the MTA |

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Striking out: As the state teachers union pushes for more strikes, frustration is mounting among local school leaders

The Massachusetts Teachers Association has been allegedly fomenting illegal strikes in local school districts for two years, with the showdown in Newton just the latest and most dramatic example.

And let’s just say the increasingly radical left leadership of the MTA, and the local teachers unions it supports, have left some really unhappy campers in their wake in the cities and towns they’ve squeezed every last dime out of.

Tracey Spruce, chair of the Andover School Committee, told Contrarian Boston she has regrets in the wake of a deal last November that settled an illegal strike by teachers in the affluent suburb.

Spruce warned everyone who would listen during the talks to settle the five-day walkout that agreeing to the union’s demands, which were far higher than what the Andover School Committee had proposed, would bust the district’s budget.

(Tracey Spruce, chair of the Andover School Committee)

Now, with the strike settled roughly on the union’s terms, Spruce is faced with helping craft a budget that could eliminate up to 30 full-time jobs.

Once rare in Massachusetts, teachers strikes have become a regular occurrence since Max Page took over as MTA president in 2022. A UMass Amherst prof, Page, as we’ve noted here before, runs the state’s teachers union as if it were the campus chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America.

“I do have regrets about the cuts we have to make now,” said Spruce, a volunteer school committee member who is a lawyer in her day job. (Spruce noted she is speaking from her personal experience and not on behalf of the school district.)

“Maybe if we had held out longer we could have hammered out a deal that would save more jobs,” she told Contrarian Boston.

Spruce recently reached out to the head of Newton’s school committee, Chris Brezski, to offer her support.

Brezski has warned that meeting the demands of the Newton Teachers Association would trigger as many as 120 job cuts over the next several years in the city’s schools.

Amid heated negotiations, the two sides remain tens of millions of dollars apart as the Newton strike heads deeper into its second week.

“Stay focused on the data and what you can actually afford and live with,” Spruce said of her advice to her counterparts in Newton.

Just north of Andover, Paul Magliocchetti, vice chair of the Haverhill School Committee, said the demands of the teachers union during a four-day strike back in 2022 in the old industrial city were so out of whack with fiscal reality as to be a nonstarter.

(Paul Magliocchetti, vice chair of Haverhill’s School Committee)

However, the Haverhill School Committee was able to settle the strike while making more modest concessions that it could afford.

“Their initial demands would have been devastating,” Magliocchetti said. “There is no way we could have done it.”

Magliocchetti believes his counterparts in Newton need to find a way to lower the tensions, cool down the rhetoric, and create a space for some one-on-one negotiations overseen by a neutral third party.

Oh, yeah, and he also has another bit of advice to share.

“The MTA needs to step back and leave it up to the local elected officials” and teachers, Magliocchetti said. “Let them figure out what’s best for their community.”

Mixed reviews: Despite its big price tag, Healey’s plan to tackle the housing crisis falls short

Gov. Maura Healey pledged to “go big” on housing.

But while Healey’s $4 billion-plus proposal is certainly big, it is definitely not bold - that is unless you think spending lots of taxpayer dollars is somehow politically risky in blue state Massachusetts.

Rather, the governor’s plan shies away from politically contentious proposals that would likely anger the NIMBY naysayers in towns and cities across the state, but that would also have the potential to actually put a dent into sky-high prices and rents.

For starters, an early Healey administration proposal to potentially transform old prisons, hospitals, military bases and other state-owned or -controlled land into desperately needed homes, condos and apartments appears to be going nowhere fast.