Marysville Teachers Strike Update

Yeah, I wrote a lot about it yesterday, but this is the biggest thing happening in my life right now, so I have to vent, or I'll explode. For anyone looking for real information about the strike (and I keep getting hit by searches for it), there are a number of good places: the Marysville parents message board is a nice place to start, then visit The Marysville Education Association Website. While the Herald's message boards are frightening, the Everett Herald's Marysville section usually has one article or letter each day about it. If you want more of the teacher view, go to The MSD Commons. And if you want lying propaganda from the overpaid School District Administration, go to The Marysville School District Website. Of course, this is all my opinion, as I'm just the wife of a first-year teacher.

Latest news as I've heard it: the negotiation teams met for six hours yesterday, which is longer than ever before in this strike. I hope that means that they actually had something to talk about and not that the mediator was tired of shuttling information between rooms. The teams will meet again tomorrow, Thursday, at 10 am. Spin those prayer weasels.

The primary vote didn't kick out the incumbent on the Marysville school board, but I hope that the 57% to 27% margin sent some sort of message to the school board. I somehow doubt it, as the incumbent was heard to say that the strike affected the vote, but kids will be back in school by the time of the general election, so he'll win that. Grrr.

Speaking of weasels, Eric and his grandmother had a lunch date during the first week of the strike. Eric's grandmother taught in Marysville back when they had a decent school board. She remembered one of the members of the current school board from her teaching days, and remarked to Eric that the student in question had been "a brat" in class. While that really has nothing to do with the current problems, it did allow me to giggle a bit through the anger.