It’s up to Austintown board to make strike a short one

The last thing anyone should want in Austintown is a teachers strike.

But if one comes, the school board must be prepared. And by prepared, we mean ready to keep the schools open, every day, for as long as it takes.

Actually, keeping the schools open is the best way to ensure that if there is a strike, it is as short as possible.

Every day that the teachers are on strike and schools remain open, the teachers will lose substantial amounts of money.

If teachers — from kindergarten through high school — are willing to forfeit a day’s pay for every day they are out, their resolve, at least, will be impressive. Based on a 180-day school year, a teacher at the starting level of $29,000 would lose more than $160 per day, and a teacher at the top of the scale, $66,000, would lose more than $365 a day. Those figures work out to $800 and $1,825 per week.

Likewise, if the bus drivers, custodians and lunchroom workers honor the picket line, they will also lose pay that they will never make up. The board should also be looking at its legal options for terminating fringe benefits, including health care coverage, at the earliest possible date.

Pain is inevitable

All of this will be painful, and no one can pretend that the children will be receiving the same level of education during a strike as they would under normal circumstances. But, as is often said, everyone loses in a strike. The problem, too often, in school strikes has been that because a school board doesn’t prepare to keep the schools open, the employees end up being paid for makeup days at the end of the year. When other workers strike, they know that there is an economic price to their action. School employees must likewise learn that they cannot strike with impunity.

The sticking point between teachers and the board of education is the amount of planning time teachers are given, especially at the high school. In an effort to prove the point that they put in time beyond the hours they are required to be on premises, the teachers have been following a “work-to-rule” schedule. That has turned out to be a public relations disaster.

For one thing, few professional people punch time clocks. They take work home, they remain connected by computer or cell phone to their work, they devote time to professional development. Why would teachers be any different? For another, because the teachers refused any after-hours work, several evening holiday programs — which the children prepared for and which their parents looked forward to — were canceled.

Against that backdrop, the argument that the teachers are operating only in the best interests of the students rings hollow.

A different era

Times are changing. Teachers can no longer claim to be woefully underpaid. Their salaries are perfectly respectable, and their fringe benefits and pensions are top notch. Further, more parents than ever are going to be willing to send their children to school despite a strike because single parents and families in which both parents work have few options.

The board — as a board — said it had given the teachers union its last and best offer, which includes a modest pay raise and the ability of administrators to make reasonable shifts between planning time and in-class time for teachers. There seems to be a hope by some teachers that when Board President Michael Creatore leaves the board at year’s end, the teachers will be in a better bargaining position. It’s clear that Creatore is no fan of the teachers union — and vice versa — but to suggest that other members of the board are but followers to Creatore’s Pied Piper is an insult to them.

What the board is seeking is reasonable. It is in line with state guidelines and, apparently, the teachers believe an arbitrator would agree, since the teachers have refused the board’s offer to submit the issue to binding arbitration.

The teachers should use their long holiday break to think about what they have to lose if there is a strike. And they should begin the new year resolved to accept the board’s last, best — and quite fair — offer.