KOMO 4 news is currently my favorite station for airing Ken Schram's Commentary on the Marysville Strike, which covers the most serious problem in the district right now: the way the district is trying to get public opinion against the teachers.
Says Schram: "It's a good tactic -- using public opinion as a bargaining tool. As I see it, that's what the Marysville school district is up to. Only problem is, tactics aren't what school districts should be about." Precisely! School districts are about teaching children the basic tools they need to get along in life. But bargaining tactics shouldn't be on the curriculum for grade schoolers.
Say Schram: "No contact. No talk. No public meetings. The district keeps an invisible profile and hopes the teachers end up taking the hit." To some degree it's working, but there are people fighting to keep the teacher's side of the story in the news, too. Now, if we could just get the reporters to cover the story evenly, and not just get sound bites from the district's expensive PR gal.
Says Schram: "I imagine the Marysville school superintendent would get some smug satisfaction if the same teachers who voted "no confidence" in her last year, were to end up vilified by the public this year." That same superintendent, and the head of the school board, have already indicated that they don't believe the vote of "no confidence" meant anything, so yeah, I'm sure it would satisfy them both if the teachers get all the blame for this stupidity.
Schram finishes with "Strikes don't end until issues are resolved. Issues aren't resolved without negotiations. Negotiations require compromise. Or you can just fall back on tactics: trading public welfare for public opinion." I just hope the news director at Schram's own station is listening. The whole story is not getting out there. The district is still lying about teachers getting pay cuts. And people still believe the district because the teachers' union doesn't have a highly paid mouthpiece to spout precise lies to the TV crews. And so we wait and get more frustrated day by day.
At least there are supposed to be negotiations tomorrow. And school still hasn't been cancelled for the last two days of the week. Maybe there's hope?
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