By Steve Gunn
EAGnews.org
    
LANGHORNE, Pa. – We knew Pennsylvania state law was rather soft on teachers unions, but this is ridiculous.
    
In a story published today, Philly.com reports that striking teachers in the Neshaminy school district will have to return to work by June 15 or risk losing several days worth of pay.
    
Excuse me?
    
That means they’re actually being paid by the school district to abandon their students, just as the school year nears its end and seniors prepare for graduation.
    
That absurdly generous policy actually creates an incentive for teachers to strike. Whoever came up with the idea of paying teachers to walk off the job should have their heads examined.
    
The state-ordered June 15 deadline to end the strike will allow the district’s 7,000 students to complete the required 180 days of instruction by the end of the month, the news report said.
    
The sad fact is that the school year could have wrapped up on schedule, weeks earlier, if Neshaminy teachers had been dedicated to their jobs. This is the second time they’ve walked out on strike this year in response to their lack of a new collective bargaining agreement.
    
Neshaminy teachers are already among the highest paid in Pennsylvania, and receive free health insurance, $27,000 retirement bonuses and many other perks.
    
The union wants pay raises for each of the last four years it has worked without a contract, with 80 percent retroactive pay for teachers. School officials reject that idea, claiming such payments would cost the cash-strapped district about $14 million for this year alone.
    
The second strike of the school year has reportedly left many in the community with bitter feelings toward the union.
    
Several hundred residents packed a school board meeting earlier this week to express support for the school board’s tough stance against unreasonable union demands, according to news reports.
    
Union officials advised members to skip the meeting out of caution. They said one teacher was the target of an Internet-based death theat over the past week, and there have reportedly been “verbal threats, cars swerving at teachers on the picket lines and eggs and other items thrown from cars at teachers.”
    
Local police are investigating those allegations.