Non-Starters

At Norwalk, Conn. (pop. 40,000) last week, a tradition was reversed: the kids went to school but the teachers played hooky. Boys & girls reporting for the fall term were sent home again by the school superintendent and his janitors. The reason: all but eight of the city's 236 principals and teachers were on strike.

Norwalk's teachers took a 21% depression pay cut; in recent years they have gotten it back, but not much more. Last spring they organized an independent union, the Norwalk Teachers' Association, to raise minimums from $1,700 to $2,000, maximums from $3,200 to $4,500. The city's Board of Education called the demands "impossible" and tried to dicker with individual teachers. Mayor Edward J. Kelley* felt sure the teachers' "civic pride" would triumph over their pocketbooks.

But last week the Mayor's daughter was one of the strikers (they prefer to be known as "non-starters"). The nonstarters, well aware of a nationwide shortage of 125,000 teachers, took a full-page ad in the Norwalk Hour to say that they were tired of working at "bargain-basement prices." A North Carolina school superintendent promptly wired a bid for two eighth-grade teachers.

*Not to be confused with Chicago's confused Mayor Edward J. Kelly, who has school troubles of his own (TIME, July i).

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