Teachers: In a Striking Mood

They had waited for more than an hour inside Manhattan's Madison Square Garden, chatting, comparing rumors and singing songs: "The union makes us strong," "Shanker is our leader / we will not be used." Then just after 7 p.m., their leader finally arrived. Weary and bleary-eyed after a deadlocked, daylong bargaining session, Albert Shanker walked onto the floodlit stage as 20,000 New York City schoolteachers stomped and cheered. "This is the greatest teacher turnout in the history of the world!" Shanker cried. Over the next 20 minutes he denounced conditions in the city schools ("deplorable") and at the negotiating table ("we're running around in circles"), pausing often for applause and once to let a TV camera crew get their equipment ready. Then he called for the strike vote and smiled broadly as the teachers responded with a tumultuous "Aye! Aye! Aye!"

With that, Albert Shanker's United Federation of Teachers union (membership: 81,000) ignored a New York State no-strike law and shut down the nation's largest public school system for the third time in eight years. Classrooms in the city's 976 public schools were virtually empty on the day after they had opened for the new school year as most of the city's 1.1 million schoolchildren resumed their summer vacations. As the courts and city officials pondered ways to get the schools open again, hundreds of striking teachers manned picket lines, carrying signs proclaiming that 45 KIDS PER CLASS IS NO CLASS and TEACHERS ARE PEOPLE TOO.

Shanker's teachers had plenty of company on the nation's sidewalks as walkouts shut down schools in many cities and towns across the U.S. But the New York strike was by far the most serious, given the size of the city's school system and the shakiness of its finances. Although the New York State legislature last week set up an emergency plan by which $2.3 billion could be raised to enable the city to pay its bills through December, New York's financial crisis remained perilous. The city's deepening shortage of cash and credit, coinciding with the approach of another school year and negotiations for a new teachers' contract, put Shanker in a difficult spot.

Behind him Shanker had New York's militant teachers; they were used to getting what they wanted in the past and were convinced that, as one school employee from Long Island City put it at the strike rally in the Garden, "the money will be found, the money will be there." But for the first time since he became the U.F.T.'s chief in 1964, Shanker had to negotiate a contract with a school board that had virtually no money to offer. Indeed, the board had $231 million less to spend this year than last, out of a total budget of $2.8 billion. As a result, the board laid off 17,000 teachers, substitutes, counselors, guards, aides, secretaries and others on the payroll.

To keep class size from soaring, the board demanded that the remaining teachers spend more time in the classroom. New York's teachers are among the best paid in the nation. They also work one of the shortest days--six hours and 20 minutes--of teachers in any large city (see chart page 18). The board wanted them to work an extra half-hour; it also wanted to cut some teachers' sick days from ten to five a year and reduce the number of their preparation periods. Most elementary teachers have two 45-minute prep periods a week; high school teachers have five. Shanker admitted that prep periods, which are nominally intended for schoolwork, are often used by teachers to "smoke, knit and shoot the breeze." But the union refused to compensate for a reduced number of teachers by raising maximum class sizes above the 32 students for elementary school, 33 for junior high and 34 for high school as stipulated in the old contract. (Although common sense suggests that pupils receive more of a teacher's attention in a small class, there are no definitive studies proving students learn more when class size is reduced.)

As negotiations stalled on the first day of school, when the old contract expired, class size loomed as the principal issue. At this point, Shanker was prepared to ask the teachers to keep working under the old contract; but the board, unwilling to be locked into the old rules on class size, was not interested. Neither, as it turned out, were the teachers. At an afternoon meeting of the union's 1,270-member delegate assembly, teachers stood up one after another and told horror stories. One reported that she had 60 pupils in her class--"six-oh"--and elicited a loud moan of sympathy. A first-grade teacher related how she spent the morning escorting her 48 pupils to the bathroom. Others told how strangers were able to wander around school corridors, no longer deterred by the guards, who had been laid off.

When the delegate assembly voted overwhelmingly for a walkout, Shanker went off to the Garden to seek a strike vote from the membership. "The issues have never been clearer," he declared. "The issue is conditions in the schools. Not only is there no education, but there is danger to the babies and the baby sitters."

The pickets had hardly hit the streets the next day when the school board obtained a temporary restraining order under a state law preventing strikes by public employees. Although this raised the possibility that Shanker could be jailed if the walkout continued, at week's end the court postponed enforcing the order in the hope that the strike could be settled quickly.

Times are likely to become worse for New York's schools as budget cuts begin to eat into teacher rosters and programs. At P.S. 340, a neat, well-tended elementary school in the predominantly black and Puerto Rican South Bronx, Principal Larcelia Kebe worries about managing a full complement of 825 students with fewer teachers this year; 15 of her 35 teachers have been laid off or transferred, as have 13 of her 17 para-professionals (trainees who work with regular instructors at half pay; many study for their own teacher's certificates). Security protection has been reduced from three to two hours a day, and with less supervision, young pupils are more apt to wander away from school during lunch and not come back.

Last week many parents joined teachers on the picket line outside P.S. 140. Complained one mother, Mary Akins: "My ten-year-old is a slow learner. With 40 kids in a class, I don't think she can improve any."

At P.S. 6 on Manhattan's elegant Upper East Side, meanwhile, some sixyear-olds joined their mothers and teachers marching in front of the red-doored school. Even at P.S. 6, which is regarded as one of the three or four best schools in the New York City system, classes were overcrowded; last year they grew to 36 students and this year to 40. Said Sally Mendel, a mother on the picket line: "I'm fearful that conditions in the city will continue to force out the middle-class people who can't afford private schools."

As of last week there were some 50 teacher strikes across the U.S., affecting more than 2 million students. Prospects were for much more teacher trouble to come as contracts expire through the fall. The National Education Association says there could be as many as 200 strikes this year, compared with 106 in 1974.

This year's rash of teacher strikes differs from those of previous years in quality as well as quantity. Through the late 1960s and early 1970s, when municipal unions of all kinds began to discover and use their considerable bargaining muscle, the teachers' unions had three goals: more pay, more benefits, more control over the operation of the schools. This year, with municipal budgets gutted by inflation and falling tax revenues, some teachers are still reaching for more but many are struggling just to hang on to what they have.

In Chicago, 27,000 teachers shut down all 666 schools two weeks ago in a dispute over the city's plan to hold its school budget at $1.16 billion by eliminating 1,525 teacher jobs. Other strikes --notably in Pennsylvania, California and Rhode Island--centered on similar worries about job security in a time of budget austerity. While busing is the big issue in Boston schools this year, the city is also rolling toward a Sept. 22 strike deadline set by the teachers, who want a 10% salary increase and job-security guarantees.

The increasing teacher militance all over the U.S. is only one sign of the deep-rooted changes affecting the nation's 2,160,000 public school teachers. Only a decade or so ago, teaching was regarded as a job offering a modicum of prestige if not much money, a secure future and lots of vacation. Indeed, mothers used to urge their college-age daughters to get a teacher's certificate as insurance against bad times.

Now all that is different. The teacher shortage of the '60s has turned into a disastrous teacher surplus. With the new school year already under way, fully half of last spring's 300,000 college graduates with teaching degrees are still looking for jobs. In ghetto schools teachers have to worry not only about their job security but also about their physical safety. Last year there were 70,000 attacks on teachers across the nation; 725 occurred just in New York City.

Despite the problems, most teachers manage somehow, and many display an obvious dedication to their jobs. Last week Vivian Murray, 29, a black English teacher at Seattle's Garfield High School, got up at 4 a.m. to correct papers. She teaches five classes daily, acts as adviser to the school yea

Pay and Productivity: How Teachers Score New San York Boston Atlanta Chicago Detriot Houston Francisco Salary $9,700 9,772 8,407 10,400 10,308 9,000 8,760 Range 20,350 21,265 17,077 20,996 21,055 16,500 18,760 Median Salary $17,350 18,000 11,286 15,969 16,312 * 11,500 15,660 *

Years to Reach 7YEN2-8 8 16 15 12 15 18 Maximum

Hours 6hr. 6hr. 7hr. 6 hr. 7 hr. 7 hr. 6 hr. Per Day 20min. 40min. 15min. 45 min. 15 min. 30 min. 25 min. School Year 186 days 180 190 185 188 190 179 Class Size 34 30 28 33 35 27 32 (Maximum)

(Average salary (medium probably lower)

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