Where’s the incentive to settle?

When this strike started I was fairly supportive of the teachers’ position. Now I am totally appalled.

In a typical strike, both sides lose money on a daily basis and this loss provides a major incentive to come to a timely agreement. In this case, neither side is losing money and any expectation that ethics and a sense of professionalism would provide that incentive seems to have been misplaced. I just can’t help thinking that if both sides lost a day’s pay for each day of the strike our children would have been back to school weeks ago.

Why the long breaks between negotiations? Why aren’t the teachers themselves speaking out against the snail’s pace of the negotiating progress?

Apparently in a week or two teachers will have to start paying their own health insurance premiums. Will this motivate some progress? I almost hope not; this would suggest pretty cheap principles.

This is a rough time for families with children in school in Marysville and the failure of both sides to come to an agreement by now is an outrage. Marysville educators, you are a disgrace!

Marysville