School was out Monday for nearly 14,000 students in Malden and Haverhill, where teachers are on strike.
And in Haverhill, city officials are fighting back in court. State law prohibits all public employees, including educators, from going on strike, and the city's school committee secured a temporary restraining order against the labor action in Essex County Superior Court Monday afternoon.
A judge will contemplate an injunction that would end the strike — or subject participants to fines — at a hearing Tuesday morning.
The twin strikes went forward Monday after eleventh-hour negotiations failed between union leaders and the cities' school committees. The unions argue that teachers' wages in both districts are comparatively low and that classes are overcrowded, while city officials say fully meeting the unions' demands would place too much strain on annual budgets.
In Malden, salaries were the sticking point that kept the two sides from an agreement Sunday, said Douglas Dias, lead negotiator for the district's unionized administrators.
"In a district as diverse as ours, to see too many of our teachers going off into the suburbs and getting more pay is saddening," said Dias, who oversees the district's STEM learning. "Our kids deserve those quality educators." (According to the state, nearly 60% of Malden students spoke a first language other than English last year.)
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