BIRDSBORO, Pa. – A Monday night school board meeting degenerated into a shouting match between board and teacher union members, and several students were in the audience to witness it all first-hand.

ReadingEagle.com reports the angry outbursts “occurred during the public comment period in the final hour of the (Daniel Boone School District) board meeting … that ended just before midnight.”

Not surprisingly, the hullabaloo was over how best to address the Pennsylvania district’s budget woes, which are both immediate and long-term.

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The school district is faced with a multimillion-dollar budget shortfall for the coming school year. That figures to be a routine occurrence, as the district’s student enrollment – and corresponding state aid – is expected to keep declining.

At the Monday night’s meeting, board members called for balancing the budget by cutting several teaching positions and dipping into the district’s savings account.

Teacher union members and their supporters pushed a mix of tax increases and union concessions in order to save student programs.

When board President Andrew Basile said the union’s concessions came with too many “strings attached,” union members became angry.

“High school social studies teacher Austin Peterson and … Basile got into a heated argument about the concessions that continued despite Peterson’s microphone being turned off,” the ReadingEagle.com reports. “Other board and union members got into the act, yelling out accusations.”

After the meeting came to an end, several students who watched the spectacle “declared their disgust. One said that if the district doesn’t start acting like a team, nothing will change,” reports the news site.

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The students have a point: School districts only function well when the adults behave responsibly.

But we hope someone explains another, larger truth to the students: The anger at the board meeting is just a small example of how public employee unions stir up animosity in America’s public schools. It’s a perfect illustration of how union officials turn the community on school board members to get what they want.

Students need to understand that school districts are supposed to be run by elected board members – and not the local labor officials – and Monday night’s ugly school board brouhaha could provide an opportunity to put the union-district power struggle into perspective.

The lesson for students: Union officials might help elect board members, or demand a whole host of things at the collective bargaining table, but it’s ultimately the school board’s job to protect the public’s, and students’, best interests.