Strike wounds still healing: Classes resume in Quincy on Wednesday after a bitter teacher contract battle

By DIANA SCHOBERG
The Patriot Ledger

QUINCY – Angry teachers outside the mayor’s office chanted ``Phelan is a failure'' and ``Tell the truth.''

Parents scrambled to make child care arrangements and make up for canceled end-of-year activities.

There were press conferences and solidarity picnics and lawn signs, and media outlets converged on the city from across the state.

On Wednesday, nearly three months after the first teachers’ strike in the state in more than a decade, teachers, students and families will be back in the classrooms. But that doesn’t mean life will be back to normal in the schools.

``The wounds aren’t going to be healed,'' said Quincy Education Association President Paul Phillips. ``It’s going to take a while.''

On a day-to-day level, Phillips said, teachers are ready to go back. The union doesn’t have any beef with the school administration, who he credited with handling things ``appropriately throughout the whole thing.''

Parents are ready to put the strike behind them, said Lincoln-Hancock school parent Mike Buzzell. He said parents he knew were upset not so much by the teachers’ action, but by the disruption of the end-of-year activities.

``We mend our fences pretty quickly,'' Buzzell said. ``I don’t see anything carrying over, especially with a couple of months of summer recess behind us.''

Still, this being an election year, all signs indicate that the battles surrounding the teachers’ strike will likely stay in the public consciousness at least until November.

Back in June, a common chant among teachers was ``We’ll remember in November,'' with some wearing ``Koch for Mayor'' T-shirts in support of Phelan’s opponent in the mayoral race, Tom Koch. And at the first school committee debate last month, one of the first questions from the crowd for the candidates was whether they thought the contract was fair for teachers and taxpayers.

Nick Puleo, a candidate for school committee, has said a ``lack of leadership'' caused the teachers’ strike. He said that ``there was a lot of rhetoric last year but not a lot of listening.''

Phillips, of the teachers union, ``''conceded there is a rift between teachers and the school committee, as well as teachers and the mayor.

``The teachers’ feeling about the school committee is that they didn’t stand up to the mayor,'' said Phillips, who has repeatedly accused Phelan of recusing himself from negotiations because his brother is a Quincy teacher, only to then bargain in public. ``The school committee, our frank assessment, (members) were not profiles in courage here. They sort of let it go on. That’s going to be a source of soreness. I hear it all the time from teachers.''

School committee member Elaine Dwyer, who is up for re-election, dismissed the existence of a rift between the school committee and teachers, based on what she’s heard from teachers. If teachers were unhappy with the contract, she added, they wouldn’t have voted overwhelmingly to accept it. The vote was 640-43.

``I would hope that the strike was all behind us,'' she said. ``The relationship between the school committee and teachers has always been amicable and supportive, and I hope that we could continue that relationship.''

Months after the contract was approved, the two sides remain at odds over how the bargaining process unfolded. Phillips said he thinks the public has been misinformed about the strike’s cause, saying it wasn’t about health insurance but the city’s unwillingness to bargain over what teachers would get in return.

School committee member David McCarthy said health insurance had been on the table from Day One, but the union did not come back with any counterproposals until just before the strike. He said the negotiating team was trying to walk the line to get teachers a raise but also get a concession from them on the health care issue – adding he regrets the strike got to the point that it did.

``It was a tough time,'' McCarthy said. ``It happened. We’re all going to have to get over it and move on. It’s just too bad.''

Phelan – who in the wake of the strike positioned himself as a champion of taxpayers trying to rein in skyrocketing health care costs – said the teachers he speaks with are eager to get back to school and teach.

``I think that there’s an unfortunate minority of folks that may want to keep stirring the pot for political reasons,'' said Phelan. ``I believe, however, that the majority of teachers are above that – that their primary concern is the students of Quincy public schools, and they’re not going to let anything get in the way of the students’ well-being.''

Diana Schoberg may be reached at dschoberg@ledger.com.