DANVILLE, Pa. – Unbelievable. When a local teachers union is having trouble getting its way in contract talks with a school board, the first thing it does is appeal to the public.

Not with facts, but through emotions. Picketers will carry signs with slogans about how hard teachers work, how disrespected they are by the school board, and how they can’t even afford clothes for their own children.

It’s a tried-and-true tactic that motivates citizens to support local unions and turn on school boards.

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But the unions don’t like it when school boards play the same game.

The Danville teachers union recently filed an unfair labor practice complaint against the Danville school board, because board members had the nerve to publicize the contract terms they were offering the union during ongoing negotiations, according to the Daily Item.

They wanted the public to know what sort of offer the union was rejecting, so the union wouldn’t get away with depicting the board as being greedy or unreasonable.

Union leaders, who have announced an April 17 strike date, claimed the move qualified as “bargaining in bad faith.”

The Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board rejected the complaint, because the information the board released was factual. That was a gutsy call for a labor board operating in a ridiculously pro-labor state. It was also the correct call.

First of all, the entire concept of school labor negotiations taking place in private is an insult to democracy. Teacher union contracts determine how school districts spent millions of tax dollars every year, and taxpayers deserve to be in the room when those decisions are made.

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The fact is that most of the time the unions are pushing for bigger raises and more benefits than districts can afford. That’s why union leaders prefer closed negotiations, and get mad when school boards share a few key facts with the public.

Public schools are the public’s business. Citizens have a right to know a whole lot more than the few bare bone figures that the Danville school board shared with them. They have a right to know what each side is pushing for, and the overall financial condition of the school district, so they can make an accurate assessment of the situation.

For too long teachers unions have acted as though public schools are their private domain, to operate and abuse as they like, and the public be damned. But those days are over. The people fund the schools, and the people demand to know how they are run and now much it costs.

No more closed doors and secrets. If the use of tax money is the topic, taxpayers deserve a straight answer.