Quincy teachers end strike

QUINCY -- Public school students will return to school today as the city's teachers end their four-day strike in anticipation of approving a tentative contract agreement.

The end to the first strike in more than a decade in Massachusetts came yesterday afternoon after the union leadership and the School Committee reached a tentative agreement. Teachers are expected to vote on the agreement next week.

The district's 19 schools have been closed since Friday, after the 890-member teachers union walked off the job, and pressure was mounting on the teachers to end the strike. Teachers' strikes are illegal in Massachusetts, and on Tuesday, a Norfolk Superior Court judge threatened to fine the union $150,000 by yesterday if the strike continued. Parents, upset about having to scramble for day care and to shuffle vacation plans, have also been complaining about the school closings.

The school year was supposed to end tomorrow, but will be extended by four days to comply with a state law requiring a 180-day school year. High school seniors finished classes last month and graduated earlier this month from the 8,785-student school system.

"Some parents, they are going on vacation," said Fiona Canavan, copresident of the Quincy Parents' Council. "Some parents are angry and are choosing not to send their children back this school year."

Sandy Arabian, a recent copresident of the council, cheered the strike's end.

"I think that everybody's happy that the kids are going back to school," Arabian said.

The School Committee and the union had been negotiating for the past 15 months. Officials gave limited details on the tentative agreement, announced during a press conference outside City Hall. Union officials said the agreement would give teachers a 3 percent annual raise on average over five years and require them to pay 20 percent of their health insurance premiums, a sticking point that led to the strike.

After they learned about the agreement yesterday, hundreds of teachers flooded out of a meeting at the Boston Teachers Union in Dorchester with blank faces and tight lips.

"We agreed to go back into the classroom," said Joann Kenney, a high school English teacher. Like many, she declined to discuss the agreement.

Before the teachers' meeting, Mayor William J. Phelan, joined by School Committee members and a representative from the union, spoke to the press at City Hall. Phelan declined to comment on whether the fine will be imposed against teachers for striking and how the threat of a fine affected negotiations. "I'm certain that both parties, and the overwhelming majority of the teachers wanted to get back in the classroom, fines or not," Phelan said.

Paul Phillips, president of the Quincy Education Association, said the union's lawyers would be asking for "some mitigating factors" for relief from the fines, pointing out that teachers had attended the funeral of a colleague yesterday.

On the table is a package of two consecutive contracts, one for two years, the other for three years, Phillips said. The tentative deal would provide a 3 percent annual raise on average during the next five years. The amount of the raise increases over the time of the contract. The average pay for a Quincy teacher is roughly $50,000 a year and ranges between $36,000 and $69,000 a year, he said.

Phillips said the agreement would also require teachers to pay 20 percent of their health insurance premiums, which does not resolve earlier concerns. Teachers will ease into the agreement in three steps, by paying 12 percent, 15 percent, and then 20 percent of their premium in two years. The mayor originally wanted to phase in the health insurance increase in two steps, but agreed to do it in three phases, he said.

"We all agreed that this is the best we can do right now," Phillips said. "For those of us who take the most expensive health plan, they're probably not going to be thrilled about this."

Phillips acknowledged that the strike has inconvenienced working parents, who have had to make day-care arrangements and take time off from work to care for their children.

Canavan said she was thrilled that the union and city had come to a tentative agreement.

"I certainly hope it was fair to the teachers," said Canavan, pointing out that she was speaking for herself and not the parents' council because the group did not take a position on negotiations. "I feel the teachers needed to do this in order to get a better living and working arrangements for themselves."

April Simpson can be reached at asimpson@globe.com.