Teachers at my son’s school might go on strike as soon as Wednesday, if they can’t reach an agreement in the next few days.
I wouldn’t blame them a bit. They’ve been treated terribly by the school board the last few years. The latest is they want to lay off a bunch of elementary teachers and increase class size for K-3 to 30:1.
Does that mean that you or your spouse will have to stay home to take care of your son? Can you get child care?
We’ll have to make arrangements, but we’ve been aware of this possibility for months, so we are prepared.
The school board proposes to use substitutes who are no more than glorified babysitters. And even then there’s no way they’ll have enough.
I don’t know from labor unions, but wouldn’t crossing the picket line mean that those substitutes would be forever forbidden from joining the teacher’s union?
You’re absolutely right. Makes you wonder what kind of subs they could get for this job.
No parent I know plans to bring their child to school in the event of a strike.
It reminds me of that day 30 or so years ago when my wife, a striking teacher, walked a picket line at the school board meeting at which the board recognized her as the district’s Teacher of the Month.
They all agreed pretty much to never speak of it again, although my wife kept the plaque.
Linus: “She’s fallen to her knees!”
Best of luck to the teachers, parents, and especially the students. How the hell a school board can think a class size of 30 is OK for primary grade kids is beyond me. Kudos to you for supporting the strike. I’d be keeping kids home, too. Seems to me the only subs willing would be the worst of the worst, likethis guy.
Maybe they lost their “instantly solve demographic and funding problems” magic wand. When they find that, poof, plenty of new totally free fully-staffed buildings will appear to house the growing student population.
I can’t remember my class size in my younger years but I distinctly remember my grade 6-8 classes had 42-44 students. It wasn’t good, but somewhere out there there are probably school boards that don’t care about class size.
Update: Teachers have set a definite strike date: May 20. We are all hoping an agreement can be reached before then, but are not optimistic.
My elementary school had 40 per class in the 70s. very few problems. The difference is, the teachers were allowed to discipline the kids and had the backing of the parents. Whoa be to the kid whose parent got a call from the teacher. The kid was automatically wrong until proven otherwise.
Public school, or private?
What do you mean by “discipline”?
“Woe”
StG
Obviously public. 
Never hit once in school, but made to stay after school, write dictionary pages for homework, hollered at, ""Ï will not…“a hundred times (you really get an education in mass production that way, Ï, I, I, I, …wll, will, wiill, will, …”) Both my kids are teachers and even these things are taken from their tool box. Administrators don’t usually want the hassles of fights with parents, so they roll. Kids literally turning in nothing in a semester in spite of repeated calls home, and parents calling administrators when those kids fail. Kids aren’t natively stupid. When they see they can get away with stuff like that, discipline breaks down and then, yes, 40 kids is a lot.
And to be clear, the punishment wasn’t the biggest deterrent. It was my parents finding out I was being punished for acting up in school and the ever dreaded fear of a phone call from my teacher. Me and my schoolmates knew we’d lose THAT argument.
Meh, I got paddled at school, once in 5th grade and once in 7th grade. It was a public school. It was nor has been a traumatizing experience for me. Now, I still claim that the accusations were unfounded and I was falsely punished in both cases, but all in all, I turned out okay.
Why didn’t the kids from the 70s raise their kids like that, and why didn’t those kids raise this generation? Anyone have an idea?
For that matter, my parents raised me to believe a handshake was a deal, everyone could resolve disputes informally, and suing someone was reserved for the worst people in society (either the sue-er or the sue-ee.) I’m pretty sure I raised my kids the same way. What happened.