Parents file lawsuit against teachers over strike

Lawsuit says students and parents should be compensated and teachers contract should be rescinded

This is a breaking news story that will be updated.

Two parents of Beverly public school students have filed a class-action lawsuit against the Beverly Teachers Association seeking compensation for all students and parents who were impacted by last year’s teachers strike.

In the lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Salem Superior Court, parents Janelle Donahue and Erica Kostro said the illegal strike “damaged thousands of students in Beverly public schools by interrupting their educational progress,” and also cost parents and caretakers who had to miss work, use vacation days or hire babysitters while school was closed.

“The students and parents both endured emotional distress and anxiety living the roller-coast of negotiations, court orders, and nightly updates always wondering, ‘Will school be back on tomorrow?’” the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit also names the Massachusetts Teachers Association and teachers unions in Brookline, Malden and Newton for deciding to “encourage and support” the strike, including in some cases by donating money to the BTA.

Beverly Teachers Association Co-President Andrea Sherman said Thursday that she had not seen the lawsuit so could not comment immediately.

Beverly teachers went on strike for 19 days in November, the longest teachers strike in modern state history. Strikes by public employees are illegal in Massachusetts, and Beverly teachers ignored a court order to return to work.

The lawsuit calls for the new contracts for teachers and paraprofessionals, which included raises, to be rescinded because they were “illegally coerced through economic and social duress from an illegal and immoral strike.”

“(T)he only way to ensure that the parents and students of Beverly and every other district in Massachusetts do not suffer another illegal strike is to prevent the union from keeping the gains it won through its illegal acts,” the lawsuit said.

The Beverly Teachers Association was assessed $810,000 in fines by a judge for going on strike, but the lawsuit said that is not enough to prevent future strikes.

“Illegal acts should not yield huge, permanent, unchallenged economic rewards,” the suit said.

The lawsuit calls for a jury trial and asks that students and parents be awarded economic damages. It does not say how much.

Donahue, one of the parents who filed the lawsuit, is the mother of three children in the Beverly public schools, one in kindergarten, one in first grade and one in fifth grade. Donahue lives in Quincy. The other parent, Kostro, is the mother of a sophomore at Beverly High School.

The lawsuit said the strike caused Donahue’s youngest child to miss critical speech therapy sessions. The child, who was 6, has ADHD and “struggled immensely” with the lack of structure and continuity.

“Boredom and lack of structure while cooped up at home created severe emotional challenges for the child,” the lawsuit said.

Returning to school after the strike was “traumatic” for the children, who cried at drop-off, the suit said.

“Too much time had elapsed and they were not in their routine anymore. They had gotten too used to staying home.”

Kostro’s daughter, the lawsuit said, worried about the impact of the lost school days on her schoolwork. She was upset when she saw picketing teachers on a nearby corner “as if they were on holiday: dressed in costumes, smiling, singing, dancing, waving, and holding signs in support of the strike.”

“Some of the teachers she saw picketing had been her elementary school teachers, whom she adored,” the lawsuit said. “She did not understand why her teachers seemed happy not to be teaching and not being in the classroom with her.”

The charges in the lawsuit include coercive civil conspiracy, contempt of court order, reckless misconduct, public nuisance, illegal strike, abiding and abetting, violation of civil rights, and violation of consumer protection laws.