Striking Brookline teachers have returned to the negotiating table, as school administrators look to avoid closing schools for a second straight day.As off 11 p.m. Monday, members of the Brookline Educators Union were still in a fifth mediation session with the Brookline School Committee.Superintendent Linus Guillory previously said an official announcement on any additional school closures will happen no later than 6 a.m. Tuesday.Brookline teachers, who have been without a contract for nearly three years, demonstrated outside the closed school buildings on Monday.The strike began Monday after the teachers' union and the School Committee could not reach an agreement following a fourth mediation session late Sunday afternoon, which followed an approximately nine-hour session that lasted from Saturday evening to shortly before 4 a.m. Sunday. "We have been talking for four years, but they're not listening. We have told them over and over what the problems are," BEU member Bob Miller said Monday during a rally outside Town Hall.As Brookline's teachers demonstrated, nearly 8,000 students across nine schools sat at home on Monday and they could be doing the same on Tuesday."Our most vulnerable learners, including students in special education and those with disabilities, are disproportionately impacted by school closures. For some food-insecure students, school is where they receive their only meals," reads a statement from the Brookline School Committee.Kim Kushner, director of the Brookline Thrives program at the Brookline Food Pantry, said she received a phone call at 7 p.m. Sunday night from a school administrator who asked for help in remotely distributing school meals. Brookline Thrives provided 300 meals to students on Monday."Families could go and pick up their school meals in peace without having the stress of having to cross a picket line going into the school building to get those meals," Kushner said.Brookline Thrives and the Brookline Food Pantry are making plans to feed students again if schools are closed on Tuesday.On Thursday, members of the Brookline Educators Union voted overwhelmingly in favor of starting a strike on Monday if they failed to reach an agreement with the Brookline School Committee over the weekend."Brookline educators have been working for nearly three years without a contract that addresses fair and reasonable compensation as well as working conditions that meet the realities of a modern, comprehensive education," reads a statement from the Brookline Educators Union.The Brookline School Committee said the negotiations have covered three main issues: wages, educator diversity and teacher prep and common planning time.According to the School Committee, it offered the Brookline Educators Union a 6% across-the-board increase in all wages, stipends and longevity pay from Sept. 1, 2020, through Aug. 31, 2023. That would be followed by an 8% increase from Sept. 1, 2023, through Aug. 30, 2026, and an additional 1% on Aug. 31, 2026.The School Committee also stated it proposed a forum in which educators designated by the union could meet with the superintendent of Brookline Public Schools to address issues of justice, equity, diversity and inclusion. “We’re looking forward to meeting this afternoon with the school committee, and we hope we can get this done,” said Eric Schiff, guidance counselor and negotiations chair for the Brookline Educators Union. The committee said it also proposed a joint labor-management committee to identify options and costs for providing additional common planning time for educators, as well as for more evenly distributing the existing five prep periods per week. The Brookline School Committee said the Norfolk Superior Court issued a preliminary injunction against the Brookline Educators Union on Friday, which prohibited them from striking or threatening to strike.The court stated that if the union were to strike, "serious and irreparable harm will occur to the town, the students and their caretakers, and the public welfare."Teacher strikes are illegal in Massachusetts since state law prohibits strikes by public employees — which is why teacher strikes are exceptionally rare in the commonwealth. When members of the Dedham Education Association went on strike in October 2019, it was the first teachers' strike in Massachusetts in more than a decade.