By Victor Skinner
EAGnews.org
    
STRONGSVILLE, Ohio – Striking teachers in the Strongsville school district have a new message for school board members who refuse to cave to the teachers union’s tactics: give us all your money and the hostage situation will end.
    
The Strongsville Education Association convinced its members to walk out on students March 4 to protest for automatic raises and other benefits, but school board members haven’t budged from their last, best offer in contract negotiations, according to media reports.
    
The SEA attempted to pressure school officials into an unaffordable new contract using thug tactics like blocking school driveways, heckling replacement teachers, and harassing board members at their homes.
    
After a month with no success, union officials tried to take the contract dispute to binding arbitration by announcing to the community that teachers would return to work if school officials agreed to it. School board members rightly held firm, refusing to relinquish control over local decisions to “an out-of-town third party.”
    
Now, SEA leaders have their eyes on about $3.2 million in unanticipated tax revenues the district plans to use to cut student fees. They want the district to give teachers all of the money, and said they’ll send them back to work if the school board agrees, according to the Strongsville Patch.
    
The $3.2 million, combined with $1.6 million the union estimates the district has saved so far during the seven-week strike, could cover automatic raises and other expensive changes in the teachers contract the union wants, the news site reports.
    
“Last night the board could have ended the strike and returned the teachers to their classrooms immediately,” the union said in a press release, according to the Patch. “Unfortunately, $4.8 million isn’t enough to convince the board to put students ahead of their personal agendas.”
    
The union’s comments are wildly misleading.
    
What SEA officials don’t seem to understand is Strongsville school leaders want a district with a financially stable future, and agreeing to automatic annual raises or one-time fixes won’t accomplish that goal.
    
“Superintendent John Krupinski has repeatedly said that the teachers’ contract has to be ‘sustainable,’ and that raises for the 383 SEA members would accelerate the district’s projected return to red ink,” the Patch reports.
    
The Strongsville school board has asked the SEA to take a membership vote on the district’s last best offer in negotiations, but the union has refused.
    
Perhaps that’s because SEA officials are concerned that their members will reflect the same mentality as the rest of the community, the vast majority of which has sided with the school board in a recent poll.