Union members voted overwhelmingly to approve the contract, which includes improvements in wages, parental leave and safety measures, union leaders said at a news conference outside Marblehead High School.

“Tonight we ratified a treaty that begins to address systemic problems that have been in the works for decades,” said Jonathan Heller, co-president of the Marblehead Education Association. “While we did not fully achieve all of the goals we sought, we made significant progress on the issues that matter most to our educators and our community.”

Marblehead is the second teachers union on the North Shore to secure a favorable contract after voting to leave the job this month. Last Friday, teachers and support staff in nearby Gloucester won higher pay and parental leave after a 15-day strike.

Striking teachers and school board members are still negotiating in Beverly, where schools have been closed for 12 days, eclipsing the Newton teachers’ strike earlier this year as the longest in recent history.

“Both the School Committee and the Association recognize the stress and distress the school closures have caused our students and families, and we are committed to ensuring that the reopening of our schools will be a positive experience for our students and the school community will,” the union and school committee said in a joint statement Tuesday evening.

In the past two years, teachers in Massachusetts have gone on strike in nine cities and towns, demanding higher wages and better benefits, particularly for support staff whose salaries are typically less than half of the average teacher salary.

Heller said the union has achieved “significant wage increases that bring us closer to regional standards, safety in our classrooms and progress toward modern parental leave.” The school board also agreed to give the union the right to form a committee, Heller said, that would hold the district accountable for ensuring the safety of students and staff.

Educators in all three North Shore communities had been working on expired contracts for several months. Educators in Gloucester and Beverly announced their walkout on November 7th. Marblehead teachers approved their strike on November 8th.

According to court documents, all three unions collectively faced more than $1.5 million in fines for illegal strikes, which is staggering their bank accounts. But neither the fines nor calls from Governor Maura Healey to return to work deterred them.

To end the strikes on the North Shore, state and local politicians responded more aggressively. The Beverly School Committee announced Sunday it would begin withholding strike pay Educators and a Marblehead spokesman said Monday the district plans not to issue checks this week to striking workers, most of whom are paid every two weeks.

In Gloucester, where the district also cut wages for its striking workers from day one, educators will receive their full paychecks this Friday and retroactive wages for the one day that was removed from their checks two days ago, Gloucester said -Teachers Union. Teachers who are paid biweekly have negotiated the reinstatement of their salary as part of their return to work agreement.

Under their return-to-work agreement, Marblehead teachers will not receive pay for the days they did not work during the strike, but will receive their usual compensation on the days the school year is extended to make up for students’ missed days of instructional time.

An Essex Superior Court ordered Beverly and Marblehead teachers and school boards to conduct a fact-finding investigation that began Monday and will be led by a neutral third party to help resolve the disputes, such as by providing information about whether teachers are underpaid and, if so, to what extent the districts can afford to pay more.

But the Beverly and Marblehead unions did not agree to the fact finding because any decision from the court-ordered expert inquiry would be non-binding.

This is breaking news. Check back for updates.

Previous Globe material was used in this report.

Deanna Pan can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @DDpan.