This portal has been created to keep the Belmont community updated about the Belmont School Committee's (BSC) ongoing collective bargaining negotiations with the Belmont Education Association (BEA) for a 2025-2028 successor contract. We will continue to provide updates on this site regularly, as well as via posts on our social media accounts (Facebook: BelmontPublicSchools, and X: @belmontschools). We encourage you to visit these resources often for the latest updates.

October 24, 2025

Dear Belmont Public Schools Community,

As part of our ongoing negotiations, the School Committee recently requested mediation through the Department of Labor Relations (DLR) for Unit A (Educators). After meeting with both parties, the DLR encouraged both sides to continue face-to-face bargaining to “narrow the number and scope of the issues open for mediation.” The DLR retained jurisdiction and asked for a progress report by November 21, 2025.

Since I began providing community updates nearly a year ago, the two sides have reached tentative agreements on about 67 proposals. This is a tremendous amount of progress and meaningful change for any district to implement in one contract cycle but we still have over 90 open proposals to narrow down. At our most recent session on October 22, we added 2 tentative agreements and reaffirmed the School Committee’s long-standing priority: adding minutes of instructional time to the school day. Both parties recognize that expanding instructional time will benefit students and educators, and we are encouraged by the alignment on this shared goal.

As a reminder, we have already proposed a 6% salary increase in the first year for Unit C (Administrative Assistants, Clerical Aides), which we believe is a generous and respectful offer. We also offered increases to longevity payments for this unit. These increases are well-deserved, though necessarily limited, as every dollar added now is above what was budgeted for FY26 and must be offset elsewhere in the school budget. 

For Unit D (Paraprofessionals, Classroom Aides, Campus Monitors, Building Substitutes), we have proposed additional paid time that can be used for professional development and collaboration with educators. Because Unit D members are paid hourly, this additional time directly contributes to their overall earnings. We remain committed to strengthening pay and professional opportunities for this unit.

In addition, we continue to work toward providing paid parental leave across all units. The current contract includes no paid time; our latest proposal offers 10 paid days from the general fund and allows members to use accrued sick days to receive pay for up to 30 additional days. Each added benefit - whether additional leave or longevity pay - is a real cost to the district, so we continue to balance these improvements to the contract for our educators and staff with the need to maintain classroom coverage for our students and manage costs. 

As we continue these conversations, our shared goal remains the same: supporting Belmont’s educators, protecting our programs, and ensuring the best possible experience for our students. We hope that we can reach agreement before the DLR’s November deadline. Thank you for your continued engagement and support of our schools.

Meg Moriarty, Ed.D., BSC Chair