Bethel Park strike decried
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Agreement between the Bethel Park School District and the teachers union over the new teachers contract has not been realized, but at a school board meeting Thursday night, there was a clear consensus among the residents: End the strike.
Most of the speakers were parents of students who said they were concerned about their children being out of school for days, and potentially weeks.
And one speaker was a student.
"I just want to go back to school," said Maria Karas, a junior at Bethel Park High School. "I hope you guys can work this out."
The Bethel Park teachers union, a local of the American Federation of Teachers, has been negotiating a new contract with the school district since January. On Monday, citing unreasonable demands from the district, they went on strike.
The 391 teachers and other professionals represented by the union had been working under a five-year contract that expired June 30.
On the fourth day of the strike, the regularly scheduled school board meeting was moved from its usual location in the administration building to the Independence Middle School auditorium, a much larger venue to accommodate the few hundred residents who came to speak about the teachers contract and the strike.
The board moved through its agenda items quickly, then school board president Donna Cook read a statement saying that the district planned to continue negotiations Friday.
She called the strike an emotional issue, and said she had hoped it would not happen.
"This is not the district's strike," she said. "It's the teachers' strike."
The strike that began Monday marks the sixth time Bethel Park teachers have gone on strike since 1979. Five years ago negotiations persisted for nearly a year before an agreement was reached, without a strike.
Under that agreement, which is still being observed, teachers received annual raises of 4.1 percent. The starting salary for teachers increased from $35,700 to $45,700 over the life of the contract, and teachers at the top end of the pay scale, meaning those with a master's degree and 16 years of teaching, saw their salaries increase from $81,048 to $92,548.
First Published October 29, 2010 12:00 am
