It's crazy easy to lock down a school with a phone call. This has been happening since at least I started school.

Seriously some weirdo shutting down your highschool isn't unusual. It takes a phone call or just a gasmask. It happened a bunch when I was in school near there. It sucks and fucks up the day.

I’m saying I want the legislature to give teachers unions alternative tools, and coerce districts in alternative ways, to get to an agreement, without forcing kids out of the class room.

It would the strike in the summer would still be partially effective, it would still escalate the still, still withhold labor as you are calling for, and it’s better than during the school year because feelers kids would have their schooling disrupted.

Sure- rules may need to be changed and updated, like every other single rule and law ever created by humanity. That’s not a good counter argument for why we shouldn’t create them in the first place.

Strikes aren’t just a foreshadowing of the collapse of public education, I’m saying they are the first stage of the collapse of public education. If strikes are legalized, they will become common and public schools will become wholly unreliable for parents and they will look towards other options. It’s already happening with enrollment numbers dropping and interest in private education jumping.

I don’t see how you can take students missing school so flippantly, hand waive it way with them being fine. It’s tens of thousands of hours of school a year, kids not only are behind but they actually regressed because of the pandemic. If you can see that a terrible thing in and of itself, idk what there is for you.

I’m saying the legislature needs to be the entity to place the check on the school districts. I’m not saying teachers should have no leverage, I’m saying the harm caused to kids and public education at large is to great to make it permitted. Has the illegality of strikes prevented them? Nope! We’ve had 3 in the past 2 years. They’ll be a hell of a lot more than that if they become legalized.

There are more options for teachers than your a)b)c), and the legislature can create a hell of a lot more as well as other bats to bear districts with that don’t fuck over students and families like a district/teachers union caused work stoppage does.

Louisiana is the only state with an earlier average high school start time at 7:30am. I'm hoping there is a bigger push sometime soon for high schools to start later.

So, just to be clear, you want worse conditions for both the kids AND the people tasked with keeping them safe or is it only the teachers who should have bad conditions? I just want to make sure I understand your position

Every time I mention a democrat veto proof supermajority doing nothing I get downvoted by MA liberals who are too nervous to realize they can’t blame republicans in MA

At the end of the day, lots of dumb people are perfectly good at their jobs.

Unless you really think the government should discriminate based on politics, telling people like this not to make the office look bad is about all we can do.

I missed another mass shooting? Oh god, we don’t even hear about them they are so common.

I think reprimanding him for posting biased stuff and making him stop is fine. Judges shouldn't be behaving in ways that make them look biased either way.

What gets me is how many people think he should be disbarred for having a different political opinion. That's some fascist, dystopian stuff right there.

Kramer?

I don't know what work you do but being a toll taker is extremely hazardous to a person's health. If they could afford to keep the roads maintained "to a level far beyond other highways in the state" while also paying toll takers real money, I fail to see the problem.

> Teachers work over the summer, obviously not as much as during the normal school year, but there is summer school, PD and other activities.

Those activities are mostly not part of their usual teaching contract. Summer school in particular is a separate gig -- and how is it even better, according to you, for teachers to strike when they're supposed to be teaching summer school anyway?

More to the point, there's so much less going on then that a strike would be wholly ineffective.

> Yes! The government should’ve done way way more, I blame local districts way more than teachers unions. But at the same time it’s typically 10-20 morons in district/gov doing it. I’m saying the legislation needs to weaken their ability to be that moronic and set up more stringent rules for them to follow in negotiations to prevent work stoppages from that end.

That's a good start, but ultimately the teachers themselves still need leverage for negotiations to be equitable. No set of rules can adequately adapt to changing circumstances forever.

> The parents are only part of a voting populace! What about people without kids? Or whose kids are fully grown or two young? Never mind the fact the don’t directly vote for teacher pay but rather school committee members and even then that’s only ever 2 years. Yes- those elected officials may get voted out, but they are insulated until their next election.

That's just how Democracy works and ultimately we have to find a way to respect the will of the majority without crushing the minority. There's no magic wand we can wave to make everything neat and tidy. We'll need to convince those without kids that voting for more teacher pay -- in whatever form that takes -- is in their best interests. If we can't, well, I guess we just don't get to have public schools then and society will slide into a collapse until everyone else gets the picture that schools are important for everyone. Strikes bring those apocalyptical possibilities to our attention long before they become actualities.

> This isn’t one kid out for a week. It’s an entire district. We just saw what happened when learned is disrupted, students academic performance and learned regressed massively over the pandemic. We saw how important it was to keep kids in school, and students are still clawing out of it. Any loss of learning is a significant loss and I’m saying state government needs to take action to prevent that from happening while protecting and strengthening teachers. Sure, the most recent strike in Woburn MA, was 1 week, but no one knew how long it would be day 1.

One kid or a thousand, a week out still isn't going to cause serious learning loss. The school year simply isn't calibrated that tightly. A few months? Sure, that might cause problems. Sounds like we better give those essential workers what they need to do their essential work rather than prey on their empathy.

> I’m not saying teachers need to be ground to the dirt.

That's absolutely what you're saying by denying them the right to strike, though. That's the inevitable effect of denying them sufficient leverage to advocate for themselves during contract negotiations. Our economic and political systems only function properly if the network of checks and balances is intact, and the ability to strike is a potent check on the power of the employer. Remove that and the only remaining options teachers have are, a) beg, b) quit, or c) die, and we as a society should not be happy about any of those outcomes. What's next, making it illegal for teachers to quit? How Kafkaesque do we want this situation to get?

We need strikes like the Woburn teacher's strike to remind us that these people are not our slaves and that they are doing us a great service that deserves commensurate compensation. They cannot be treated like 14-year-old babysitters, paid $5 an hour plus snacks and no boyfriends/girlfriends over until the kiddos are asleep!

So what about all the non-Union employees out there lol? I’m not a beggar. I actually prefer being able to dictate my own compensation WITHOUT having to collectively bargain. That doesn’t mean I don’t support people who want to be part of a union.

Because together we bargain alone we beg.

[removed]

Actually no, the kids are at home because their teachers walked out and the district screwed them.

Teachers work over the summer, obviously not as much as during the normal school year, but there is summer school, PD and other activities.

Yes! The government should’ve done way way more, I blame local districts way more than teachers unions. But at the same time it’s typically 10-20 morons in district/gov doing it. I’m saying the legislation needs to weaken their ability to be that moronic and set up more stringent rules for them to follow in negotiations to prevent work stoppages from that end.

The parents are only part of a voting populace! What about people without kids? Or whose kids are fully grown or two young? Never mind the fact the don’t directly vote for teacher pay but rather school committee members and even then that’s only ever 2 years. Yes- those elected officials may get voted out, but they are insulated until their next election.

This isn’t one kid out for a week. It’s an entire district. We just saw what happened when learned is disrupted, students academic performance and learned regressed massively over the pandemic. We saw how important it was to keep kids in school, and students are still clawing out of it. Any loss of learning is a significant loss and I’m saying state government needs to take action to prevent that from happening while protecting and strengthening teachers. Sure, the most recent strike in Woburn MA, was 1 week, but no one knew how long it would be day 1.

I’m not saying teachers need to be ground to the dirt. I’m saying the state legislature should take this nuclear option off the table and instead tie the hands of districts to negotiate in good faith.

This has been going on all over the country since the beginning of the school year. Massachusetts is just the target of the week.

You’ve never had a minimum of 3 PD days before school started? Never heard of summer school? Never been expected to prep for your year over the summer?

A solid portion of teachers work in the summer in mass, be it summer school, PD, prepping for the upcoming year, that’s all labor they can withhold then that’s critical to the district. Idk where you’re from that teachers don’t work during the summer. I meant “non-teaching” as not with the whole student body in front of them.

Once teachers and districts let things get to a point where students don’t have class because of the dispute, the kids already involved. Idk how you can’t see that.

I quite literally proposed an alternative way to bring about contract agreement.

Form a Union if you want idc lol. I just personally wouldn’t want to be in one. Not sure why that’s such a big deal lol.

Fuel taxes only work if they’re high enough to cover the cost. You’re not paying for the roads you use, you’re being subsidized by the people who don’t drive

"I'm not anti union I just repeat anti union memes and don't say anything positive."

Because our country worships cops.