For nearly a year, teachers in Holyoke, Massachusetts, have been without a contract.
Throughout that time, negotiations between their union and district leadership have been start and stop, with the plot seemingly thickening last week amid rumors of a strike.
WAMC reports that while the temperature has cooled somewhat, the impasse remains.
As Holyoke Teachers Association President Nick Cream tells it, educators at Holyoke Public Schools are getting fed up.
“Just to clarify: we've been now bargaining for over 400 days, and they could have settled at any point during that time,” the ethnic studies/history teacher told reporters on April 27.
For nearly 300 days, teachers have been without a contract, with negotiations stalling before their last contract even ended, he said. Plus, as the school district left state control last year, city leadership agreed to various “exit assurances,” effectively limiting some of what can be bargained over in the district.
It’s led to rallies and protests of all sorts, including a forum last week, held ahead of their next mediation session on Wednesday.
The situation's also been enough to get their sister union, the Holyoke Paraprofessionals Association, to rally with them, especially with their own contract ending soon.
“Many of our members work second jobs to make ends meet, even though we have full-time responsibilities in the school district,” HPA Vice President Veronica Santana said during the same press conference, referencing the over 200 paraprofessionals in HPS. “It took administrators three months to set up a schedule for negotiations. Once we let them know we were ready to bargain, we began negotiations with Holyoke Public Schools in March. After three sessions, despite providing nearly all of our proposals to the district, we have yet to receive a response to our proposals on compensation.”
Packing Dean Technical High School’s cafeteria, last week’s forum featured plenty of concerns being aired: largely ongoing matters like a lack of prep time for teachers and paraprofessionals alike, what the unions consider inadequate leave policies and a real sticking point for the HTA: teacher pay being tied to licensure.
What didn’t happen during the forum? A declaration of a strike.
While prefacing that any strike talk was a rumor, Holyoke Mayor Joshua Garcia still raised alarms during the run-up to the event. Taking to Facebook, Garcia spoke at-length about the potential consequences of a strike, which are technically illegal in Massachusetts.
Students and families would suffer, he said, especially low-income children who need school meals and wrap-around services. Garcia ultimately called any kind of strike a setback in the district of over 4,600 kids.
And yet, nothing came to pass.
“I think you’ll have to ask Mayor Garcia, because he's the one that's spreading it,” Cream responded when asked about talk of a strike. “I don't know, I can't speak to that.”
Garcia himself attended the forum with his family. Speaking days later, he told WAMC he was there as a parent, as his twin children attend Sullivan Middle School. He said he was ultimately relieved to hear from Cream and company that a strike was not on the table and that there was agreement over the kind of effects it might have.
He and Interim Superintendent Anthony Soto also maintain that strike talks weren’t non-existent.
“We had been hearing that teachers were being surveyed … about what they thought about a strike and whether or not they would support it. So… here we are,” Soto said in a phone interview Thursday. “You know, the school committee does have a very competitive proposal on the table. I mean, for compensation alone, we're talking about an average 20 percent increase over the next three years. And this is at a time where you know, communities are doing overrides… making cuts to their workforce..."
In an email to WAMC on Monday, Cream “categorically” denied Soto and the mayor’s survey claim. He did say the union sent a bargaining priorities survey about a month ago, but that it was intended to “gauge what remaining contract issues were most important to members” and that it did not mention any work stoppage.
A week prior, during the press conference, Cream acknowledged that some negotiation gaps were being bridged, though. Matters like compensation for the some 500 HTA members were reportedly “pretty close in terms of the numbers,” he said.
But, in a district with one of the lowest annual teacher retainment rates in western Massachusetts – about 79.1 percent as of March 2026 – the matter of licensure has become a sharp sticking point.
“They're basically using Holyoke… as an experiment ground, right? A place to say ‘Let's try this out and see how it works,’” he explained. “… we have a lot of unlicensed teachers: we agree that that's a problem, and we want that to be fixed. Paying people differently based on doing the same exact work in a classroom … is not going to fix that problem. It's actually maybe going to make it worse. The reason why we have so many unlicensed teachers is because we can't fill positions.”
For context, state data shows over 76 percent of Holyoke teachers are licensed, about 20 percent lower than the state average.
While not diving into licensure, Interim Superintendent Soto told WAMC there have been other concessions. That includes reductions in school times, with 15 minutes shaved off the average elementary school day, he says, with 100 less contractual hours for elementary school teachers. High school teachers would supposedly see a 70-hour reduction, with a 55-hour reduction for middle school teachers.
Daily “protected prep periods” are also on the table, according to an HPS news release. Also: frontloading ten sick days in September, plus three personal days.
“I know we're talking about my frustration with the union and rumors about potential strike, and also I've shared… some clarifications on some claims that have been made, but … I’ve also got to give credit to the teachers association,” Mayor Garcia said. “… even though it might not seem like people have been working together… the bottom line is the proposal in front of them is a result of them working together. Unions are an effective function of our system, and their advocacy has challenged the school board to come forward and establish some level of alignment that has resulted in the fair contract that's in front of them right now. It's an unprecedented contract...”
Still, Cream and company have been vocal that there’s more ground to cover.
According to the HTA president, a fair contract would include two weeks of sick days, three weeks of family leave (the district is reportedly offering “five paid days for childbonding for parents”) and ditching the effect licensure has on the current pay scales.
In a Friday message posted to the teachers union Facebook page, the HTA Bargaining Team said they "have heard that members are eager to vote on a fair contract" and that they are hopeful that HPS will present a counterproposal during their next round of discussions on Wednesday, May 6.
That meeting is scheduled for 4:15 p.m. at Holyoke High School North.
