Are Picket Lines and Protests losing their Flare?

Rockford, IL-Starting yesterday 3/29/2012, the Rockford School District Teacher voted to picket to bring attention to the need for a new contract with the Rockford School District.  There are many on both sides who can clearly explain why this walk-off may be necessary but none seem that convincing.  It did cause me to look deeper to try and understand just who may benefit. 

I kept coming back to the kids.  Nothing, it appeared, was of benefit to those who should matter more than anything else.  While those teachers, who walked out, stroll the picket line, the kids are left to their own devices or the hasty implementations of working parents plan for them being home instead of in school.  It also occurred to me that the School District really do not appear to have a valid interest in doing all that they can to keep the teachers in the classroom because they are not risking anything at all.

Think about the funds that school districts receive for each child which are probably been already allocated and the savings these entities get by not having to expense teacher’s salaries for those on the picket line.  It may be interesting to see just how often these choices of walking out happen and if they fall within a certain pattern.  Could this be how school districts save money and why many contracts appear to happen annually?  School Districts with nothing on the line, if teachers walk out of the classroom, really do not have an incentive to prevent the walk-out.  If they had to repay the federal and state funds they had been allocated for as long as the students are out of school, then they might feel more compelled to lock themselves in a room until the deal is done.

It appears that teachers already have skin in the game but I believe not as much as they should.  They have skin in the game because now they have to trade in their 12 dollars an hour job for a few dollars an hour to walk the picket lines.  I think teachers should have to risk a little more than that.  I think that for the leaders of the Teacher’s Union who allow walk-outs to occur on their watch should be forced to resign and failures to keep their people working should be seen as a failure in leadership than a badge of honor.

The only ones who seem to sacrifice most are the kids and the parents.  Parents now have to find a place to send their kids to keep them active during this walk-out and sometimes they have to pay extra money, out of pocket, to make this happen.  Children fall further and further behind and we often wonder why our kids are falling behind the school-age children of other countries.  Because teachers are required to teach to a test and with the increasing number of suspensions and expulsions in our schools, the days missed due to no fault of the student, is even more imperative in their development.

We asked if picket lines and protests are losing their flare and to this writer I would say yes to picket lines and no to protests.  Protests are about a crowd applying the necessary pressure to change the way something works and change it for the majority of Americans.  This seems not the case in picket lines, where much is mainly about far play for a certain group.  Bottom line, the legacy left by all parents are our kids and any action should have them front and center by all causes.