WAUKEGAN, Ill. – There’s apparently a stalemate in teachers union contact talks in the Waukegan Public Schools district, and the union is talking strike.

There’s nothing unusual about that, particularly in Illinois, where teacher strikes are practically a way of life.

We stand by what we’ve repeated many times about teacher strikes – they should not be tolerated under any circumstance. Children across the nation have an absolute right to a publicly funded education, uninterrupted by adult disagreements over money and power.

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But the situation in Waukegan is particularly troubling because of the union’s “bottom-line offer to avoid a strike.”

The union is apparently willing to scale back its salary demands, if the district is willing to shorten the school year by three days, according to a report from SunTimes.com.

That plan is completely unacceptable.

School budgets are what they are from year to year, depending on the state of the economy and flow of tax revenue. Districts pay teachers what they can afford to pay, considering the enormous cost of negotiated union pay scales and benefits.

At some point it’s up to the teachers and their unions to decide if they are willing to work for what the district has to offer. In a perfect world, that would be a decision for individual teachers to make. In the unfortunate world of collective bargaining, it’s a problem that must be addressed through compromise between the school board and union.

But academics and student class time should never, ever be considered bargaining chips. The schools exist for the benefit of students, not the people who staff them. Taxpayers fork over big bucks every year to ensure that the children of their communities receive all the instruction they can possibly get.

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The school year is the school year, and should never be shortened over financial considerations. If anything it should be lengthened, to help American students keep pace with their peers in other nations.

The teachers hired to instruct students must agree to work the entire school year for whatever amount is determined. Class time should never be a tradeoff for money.

Dedicated teachers will be there for their students from the first to the last day of school, regardless of what their salary is. At the end of the year they determine for themselves if they and their families can exist on whatever the salary might be.

Less dedicated teachers, and their union leaders, are the ones who are willing to let the kids sit at home, learning nothing for three extra days, just to make up for a few dollars that the district doesn’t have to spent on salaries.

Those types of teachers should be shown the door, along with their unions.

The problem with collective bargaining in public schools is that children are frequently caught in the crossfire. Unions frequently use the students’ best interest as bargaining chips to get what they want from cash-strapped school boards, and too many parents allow them to get away with it.

The Waukegan school board, and others across the nation, should draw a hard line in the sand when it comes to the length of the school year and number of instruction days for students

Those topics should be off the table and non-negotiable, period.