Teacher Strikes: Only the Start

"Teachers will be striking in September, October, November, December, January, February ..." That was the prediction last week of Terry Herndon, executive director of the National Education Association (see box page 51). Indeed by week's end hundreds of thousands of the nation's public school teachers were on the picket lines. The militant American Federation of Teachers estimated that as many as one-fourth of its 440,000 members could be on strike this month. The larger (1.7 million members) N.E.A. predicted that there could be from 150 to 200 strikes this fall -compared with 106 last year.

The largest walkout came in Chicago, the nation's third largest school system, where 27,000 teachers shut down all of the city's 666 public schools preventing 530,000 pupils from attending classes. In Pennsylvania, strikes closed 25 of the state's 505 school districts, and teachers walked picket lines in one-third of Rhode Island's school districts. Schools were shut down in Berkeley, Calif., Wilmington, Del., and dozens of other cities. In hundreds of districts, teachers began the school year at work without contracts, awaiting the outcome of bargaining sessions that seemed hopelessly deadlocked. Strikes also loomed in New York City and Boston, where classes were scheduled to begin this week.

In Chicago, the strike was the fourth in six years. It involved more than the union's demands which, by Chicago standards, seemed almost modest: a cost-of-living raise, reduced class size and improved fringe benefits. The issues were complicated by disputes over the size of the school budget and the possible elimination of many teaching jobs.

Larger Classes. Last spring the Chicago school board prepared a balanced $1.16 billion budget for this year; it was almost immediately unbalanced, however, when Governor Dan Walker chopped off $47 million from allocations to Chicago schools. School Superintendent Joseph Hannon then proposed increasing the size of each class -now up to 34 -by three pupils. With larger classes, he figured that 1,525 teachers' jobs could be eliminated at a saving of $24 million per year. That solution did not sit well with Union President Robert Healey, who had made his own proposal -that class size be reduced to 25, which would require hiring an additional 2,500 teachers.

Governor Walker then added confusion to the numbers game; he claimed that the state actually gave Chicago schools $48 million more this year than in 1974. Said he: "I can only conclude that in the face of the state aid increase and declining enrollment, the superintendent is crying wolf." The Governor complicated matters further by appointing William Singer, a former alderman who tried to unseat Mayor Richard Daley in last winter's Democratic primary, to head a task force investigating the school board's budget. That infuriated Daley, who has stepped in as the middleman and successfully mediated previous teachers' strikes; he has decided to remain on the sidelines at least temporarily. Finally, Chicago's teachers voted to strike by an overwhelming 21,439-to-2,537 margin.

In New York City, contract negotiations between the 80,000-member United Federation of Teachers and the school board bogged down last week. Albert Shanker, president of both the U.F.T. and the national American Federation of Teachers, described the situation as "increasingly gloomy" and publicly held out little hope that a settlement could be reached before the union contract expires this week -the day after the city's 1.1 million pupils return to school. As the strike deadline neared, however, the bargaining atmosphere seemed to be improving.

Contract negotiations were complicated by New York City's near bankruptcy, which had already forced the school board to fire 5,000 regular teachers and 7,500 substitutes. That action meant that many teachers who still held jobs would have larger classes and more work to do. In Brooklyn's P.S. 79, for example, teachers last week were preparing for classes of at least 40 students each. To avert further layoffs, the board demanded that teachers give up some of their preparation periods, or free time, during the school day. Considering the financial crisis, that did not seem an unreasonable sacrifice for New York City's teachers, who have among the best fringe benefits in the nation. Their teaching day, for example, is only six hours and 20 minutes; yet most elementary teachers also have two "prep periods" a week, while secondary teachers have five. The school board did offer a small salary increase for the teachers, who now make between $9,700 and $20,350 per year -but Shanker rejected it as "miserly." Last week the teachers demonstrated their support of his bargaining position when they marched, 15,000 strong, over the Brooklyn Bridge on the way from Board of Education headquarters to City Hall.

Chaotic Classrooms. All this left Shanker in an unenviable position. He knew that a school strike against a city already on its knees would bring civic wrath down on the U.F.T. and might undermine its support. On the other hand, he felt that he could not ask his teachers to give up working conditions won in earlier contracts or to fall further behind the soaring cost of living.

What Shanker did was to resort to demagoguery. He predicted that the school board's budget cuts of $300 million would make New York City's schools "far and away the worst in the entire United States." Classrooms would be packed with as many as 45 pupils, causing "many youngsters to explode, throwing their classes into chaos, vandalizing their schools or assaulting their classmates." Finally, he stated that "any parent who possibly can will now leave the city" -a warning that could only do more harm to the image of a city already in deep trouble.

In Boston, the teachers' union voted last week to report to school when classes -and Phase 2 of the massive busing program -start this week. But negotiations over the teachers' demands for a 10% raise are stalled, and Boston could have a school strike when the teachers' contract expires on Sept. 22. The situation in Boston is further complicated by the fact that Federal Judge W. Arthur Garrity, who ordered the busing, is determined to keep the schools open. He might intervene if he thought a teachers' strike would disrupt his highly organized desegregation program.

Across the nation, pressures for increasing class size and productivity while holding down pay -coupled with the feeling that school administrators and the community are not supporting them -have resulted in a growing resentment among teachers. "What is our mood?" asked one New York City teacher. "You could say it's angry, frustrated, depressed and anxious."

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