Strikes: When the Masks Come Off

Back many years ago, I was the president of a striking local. It almost ended my career.

In most districts, there's a nice layer of politeness over everything, and people subscribe to the usual Nice Thoughts. Teachers are super important. We want our district to be the best. We respect our educators.

But in strike season, the masks come off.

Some people think that teachers are overpaid, self-important jerks who should be grateful they even have a job. And you will know that some people think this because they will call you, at home, to tell you so. They will make an extra effort to tell you that some people only get minimum wage and what makes you think you deserve any more than those people.

You may have a decent working relationship with your administrators. When the strike hits, they may show you exactly what they think of you. Our superintendent was a "We're all a team and you guys are our most important team members and I want to help you accomplish great things," and after the contract negotiations and strike, nobody ever believed him again.

It's not always bad news. While one board member was publicly vocal about her feelings, explaining that the district had the money, they just didn't want to give it to us, the board president and I met once a week for breakfast, not to negotiate behind our teams' backs, but just to keep lines of communication open. It was a reminder that people who are divided by seriously different positions can still value each other.

But mostly the strike was like looking into the abyss. You know when you teach that lots of people don't value what you do, but you learn to push that knowledge into the background, like a faint buzz. But in strike season, it is in your face, loud and strong and unavoidable. You know that the board's main goal is to do the least they can get away with without actually breaking the law, and they want to do it for the least possible money-- but you just kind of ignore it, except that in strike season you can't. Every morale-busting profession-belittling obstacle and attitude that is usually only implicit now becomes explicit.  (Up to an including the person who is right now getting ready to type in the comments, "Well, then, if teachers don't like it, don't strike. Just take what you're offered and shut up.")

I thought of all that today when I saw this news item from Washington state, where teacher pay is erupting into a variety of possible strikes. That's because of a court decision in 2012 that found the state systematically underfunding schools. The results of that suit included a massive pile of money raised explicitly to raise teacher salaries.

You would think that would be it. Boards would say, "Okay, we have this money that we're supposed to give to the teachers. Let's give it to the teachers." And in some districts things have gone smoothly. In others, not so much. Teacher contracts have to be negotiated locally; you would think the fat stack of cash marked "for teachers" would smooth this process, but... well, you remember my board member who said "We have the money but we don't want to give it to them." So several districts are already on strike, and some are getting ready to.

Which brings us to yesterday's story-- the board of the Wapato school district has authorized their superintendent to sue the teachers, to use the power of the courts to force the teachers to work.

This is dumb.

The first rule of striking is (or should be) this-- when the strike is eventually settled, as it must be, everyone in your district will still have to work together. Watch what you say and do, because you won't be able to take it back (that goes double for what over-stressed striking teachers say to each other).

Wapato could settle their contract tomorrow. They could settle with a contract that gives the teachers everything they want. But they will still have to live with the fact that their board and their superintendent saw them as enemies that needed to be slapped down by The Law. And that's not something you come back from easily; no cheery professional development morning, "Hey, you teachers are the most important part of our team here at Wapato" changes that.

If I said it once, I said it a hundred times-- "This contract is not a battle to be one by one side or the other, but a problem for us to solve together." I know there are union folks who would disagree with me, just as I know that sometimes the other side is just so hopelessly awful that there's no option but full-out battle mode (the strike in my very first year of teaching was in just such a district). And yes, there are districts where the internal relationships are so badly broken that you can't break them any worse.

But for everyone else, a strike runs the risking of breaking relationships that a district needs to operate well. Maybe it's inevitable if what is behind the mask is nasty and dark. Maybe you're better seeing it than not. But I struggled. For several years after the strike, I thought about, even half-explored other lines of work I could pursue. I was never closer to leaving the classroom than I was then, and there were people on my board and in my administration that I never turned my metaphorical back on ever again.

When strikes happen, people worry about the obvious short term stuff. What about the seniors? What about the sports season? What about day care for the small children? What about our vacations? Those things certainly matter, but my experience is that students are far more flexible and resilient than you think. We lost all our vacation days except for the actual day-of-holidays; it ended up not being that big a deal (It was, as one student put it, "the same as what my old man has to do at his job").

No, the real damage from strikes comes in long term relationships, the trust. The masks come off and you see what people really value-- in particular you see what they value more than education. And that can be startling. And the longer things drag on, the more heated people become and the easier it is to lose sight of the actual goal-- a fair contract that pays teachers well, provides good working and learning conditions, and keeps the district healthy (why do so many board want to pursue a motto of. "If you can't get a real job anywhere else, settle for us") while respecting the economic realties of the taxpayers.

Wapato's board screwed up big time. Admittedly, I don't know the district, so maybe the board and administration have already made such a hash of things that it can't get any worse. But at a bare minimum this didn't help. They may have gained a point of negotiating leverage, but they've lost credibility with the people who work for them. I guarantee you, once the contract is settled, there will be teachers looking at the exits.