You get a gold star and an apple on this one. Teacher's unions set such a great example, don't they?! Nevermind honoring legally binding agreements, kids...

I say if teacher strike no problem, pay the parent the teachers wages to home school their children.

I work in education and your assessment is spot-on.

Perhaps you forgot to mention all the money the district lost AND mispent? How about all the lawsuits due to management activities that have drained resources? How about the squandering of Gates Grant monies on a system they have no plan for? Unless you teach in this district you have NO clue how the school board let Mike Reily run his program without question and a few weeks after he leaves the district realizes they have lost 2 million dollars. Cut resources to special ed students and destoyed the ESL program. And by the way how do you hold students hostage? Regardless of the strike the students will still attend 180 days of school. That is 180 days in a state where we are number 42/50 in state funding for education.

The contract expires on August 31st, so there's no contract to "honor" after that unless one is agreed to in bargaining and ratified by the teachers. The fact is, districts hold all the cards and often refuse to have meaningful dialogue with the professionals in the classroom. No one wants a strike, and it can be avoided by meaningful contract negotiations.

Oh, and in response to the comment about paying parents to home school...two things:
1) Most of them wouldn't take such paltry salary (which works out to less than babysitting wages per kid) and...
2) Teachers are actual trained professionals with skill sets to deliver their material to students, they can't really just be replaced by a warm body

Lost and misspent money will be in another post. Let's take this one step at a time. What part of "illegal" do you not understand?

Kids (and their parents) are held hostage because their lives are altered during a strike and, in the case of the Marysville strike, some were denied entry into colleges where they had already been accepted because requisite coursework was not completed on time due to the 41-day delay in the school year at the hands of striking teachers.

Oh, and you are right, I (nor do agency-shop fee paying teachers) have any idea what goes on behind closed doors in those negotiations, but the entire taxpaying public should since we foot the bill for the resulting contracts.

Sonya, you have no idea what you are talking about. A strike is not illegal, especially when there is no contract that it is being violated. It's basically "no contract, no work"...what part of that do you not understand?

Your characterization of what happened to students in Marysville is grossly exaggerated and, as usual with rhetoric, not supported with any actual facts.

The members of the union are kept up to date with reports on bargaining which detail specific conversations and contract language proposals. A 94% strike vote from a group of people who are basically people-pleasers and non-boat-rockers is a VERY large statement that things are not going well in the Bellevue School District.

huh? said:

2) Teachers are actual trained professionals with skill sets to deliver their material to students, they can't really just be replaced by a warm body

Yep and some of them are very good, but look at what this study says about homeschoolers:http://www.nheri.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=174&Itemid=51

Academic Achievement

· Dr. Brian Ray, in the most in-depth nationwide study on home education across the United States, collected data on 5,402 students from 1,657 families. Homeschool students’ academic achievement, on average, was significantly above that of public-school students. In addition, the home educated did well even if their parents were not certified teachers and if the state did not highly regulate homeschooling.3
· Home educators are able to be flexible and tailor or customize the curriculum to the needs of each child.
· In study after study, the home educated score better, on average, than those in conventional state-run schools (see table).2

.... Reading Language Math
Public Schools 50 50 50
Home Education 65-80 65-80 65-80

· For learning disabled students, there are higher rates of academic engaged time in homeschooling and greater academic gains made by the home educated. “... [P]arents, even without special education training, provided powerful instructional environments at home...” (p. 11).4

Social Activity and Emotional Development

· Studying actual observed behavior, Dr. Shyers (1992) found the home educated have significantly lower problem behavior scores than do their conventional school agemates.5
· Multiple studies show that the home educated have positive self-concepts.2
· Homeschool students are regularly engaged in field trips, scouting, 4-H, and community volunteer work, and their parents (i.e., their main role models) are significantly more civically involved than are public school parents.2

So before you go and make claims about parents being "warm bodies" check the facts.

Yes, Wow, teacher strikes are illegal, the threat of a strike is not:

Since 1972, of the 29 cases in which court injunctions were sought to end teacher strikes in Washington, 24 were granted. The teacher unions have never appealed any of injunctions, likely out of fear that appellate courts would uphold the decisions of the trial courts setting more expansive precedent.

While the legislature explicitly has made strikes illegal for all other public employees, they have been silent on teacher strikes thus far. However, the state courts have been quite clear.

In 2002, Superior Court Judge Joan Dubuque issued an injunction against the Issaquah Education Association. The court cited two prior Supreme Court decisions that did not involve injunctions which punted the issue to the legislature, but the legislature has remained silent.

Judge Dubuque then relied on other Washington courts’ decisions related to injunctions to end teacher strikes and held that teachers do not have the right to strike, “and what is going on is an illegal strike at this time.” This finding was justified because, in the absence of statutory authority granting or denying the right for teachers to strike, teachers will be treated as public employees.

In 2003, Superior Court Judge Linda Krese granted an injunction to end the Marysville teacher strike. The court held that the Marysville Education Association strike violated the prohibition on public employee strikes and was an illegal strike.

After years of investigating "why is my child not getting a decent education", I have ultimately worked back to the root cause of the WEA and the political/cultural norms they instill in the education community. This has lead me to research this entity (and thus brought me to this blog).

I have years of empirical evidence to support my position - but here is the short story.
The Mission/Purpose of Public Education is to educate children on curriculum.
Society views education as important and funds the endeavor. We pay for facilities and employee to serve the purpose.
However - VSD teachers (and my daughter's CRHS principal) do not feel that teacher's are primarily accountable for educating children. Rather they shift accountability to the children.

This is the CORE of the issue. Who is accountable for education (not teaching - education - I'll post on this later)

Despite many research studies proving teacher's who take responsibility for educating their students yield higher learning outcomes - the school still holds the "it's not our fault" position. "Full authority with no accountability" - who wouldn't want that? Shame on us for allowing it to happen A. with public funds, and B. at the detriment of our children and our society.

If the education community is helpless to educate our children - why are we funding these people?

The Public needs to take back Public Education and allow it to become the amazing institution it can be. Aligning Public Education with the interests of the Public not only is a noble cause - but also is a foundational critical success factor for the future of our children and society as a whole.

There is no way that parents in Bellevue would even be able to live on teacher's salary. I work in the district and nearly all employees commute from other areas because the can't afford to live in Bellevue. If Bellevue parents don't want a strike then they need to understand that there are MANY other ways the district can save money...namely by going back to a 6 period school day instead of the long and tedious 7 period day students have in the middle and high schools. The state only funds for 5 periods a day. Nearly all other districts have a 6 period day - but if Bellevue does that their AP enrollment might drop and they won't be in Newsweek! In Riley's regime the AP program was more important than teachers and individual students - no surprise the College Board is now paying him $$$ while the district has squandered money on AP and now expects the teachers to accept a lower pay for longer work hours when compared to other districts in the area.