Keep trying to fuck over kids you don’t give a shit about. You just want to strike to be vindictive , which is fine the district administration can be a load of ass holes, but it’s entirely wrong to say it’s in the interests of the students and the legislature should disregard those students and allow teachers to strike legally.

Why do we do it! Makes no sense to.

I didn’t say non-unionized private schools were good/better because of their non-unionization. I’m saying your logic that because those teachers can strike, it is the root cause for why they don’t strike is a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy and provide what I believe is the alternative mechanism for why they don’t experience strikes.

There are absolutely folks questioning the utility of the winter and spring breaks in mass, as well as the summer gap, and if our agricultural society based education calendar is still appropriate today.

If you are dealing with district wide learning time loss, you absolutely do have to aggregate it together. Is each student going to ‘suffer’ the exact same? Not at all, some will have it hit them more than others. But you can’t just hand waive it all away. Those examples you present are individual kids and situation as determined by the parents. If school district decided to close a school for a month because of utility issues and just sent the kids home you’re sure as shit there would be an inquiry. If a parent took their kids out of school for a month? Sure as shit CPS and the school are going to have questions.

Strikes aren’t the only tool possible to protect teachers. They are just your preferred tool.

Northamton is very nice with great restaurants but western MA does not have what eastern MA has for jobs.The colleges are the primary employer in Northamton area,so if you have a skill that a college would need you are in luck otherwise you may need to commute to the Springfield area which is quite do able at 15-18 minutes.

Wow...you nailed it.

It's all a sham. I prefer to babysit starting at 9 so I left and took my kids out of this ridiculous school system.

Never in a million years had I ever thought I'd become a homeschooling parents until the state of Massachusetts, one of the leaders in education in the nation, told me straight up I was a babysitter.

For the record I have no issue with babysitting, it's still time and labor....but that's not what I signed up for...even though I kind of new, but thought that I could make it matter, back when I was naive and thought more of us wanted that too...

..."the kids just want to go back to normal"... Right, the same normal all parties have been bitching about for at least my entire lifetime.

Edit: To be clear, the state of Massachusetts as in the Department of Education didn't tell me I was a babysitter, which I thought would be clearly interpreted as hyperbole, I meant the state as in the totality of its citizens and local/national media coupled with the indirectly said "hey these people need to get back to work, so we have to get back into the classroom, asap"...as the person in the classroom, I will 100% stick to my statement on the apathy that exists in the American classroom, particularly in high school.

I haven't heard a good thing about the state of education in my experience as an educator other than the obligatory, end of year, end of high school romanticization of the experience...the day to day is miserable and had over the last 15 years, at my school, and my kids' schools increasingly become about mitigating problems and not about servicing the educational needs of individuals. Checking boxes. Fuck that.

Simultaneously beautiful and almost completely unusable

i legit forgot about covid and every dumb subplot of covid until now.

They strike anyway and prosecutors don't investigate and charge those illegal strikes. We should just give them the right to strike. It's just matching the law with reality. A short waiting or negotiation period might be appropriate so strikebreakers could be hired, since those services are essential.

I'm a big Greenfield fan.

This state is 100% run by Democrats. There is nothing stopping them from passing laws to allow teachers the right to strike.

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Lmao right? Every high schooler on that bus is drifting in and out of consciousness at 0630.

2 days, but those are part of the 183-185 day contract. Summer school is optional already. Prep is optional, and the onus to prep is put on teachers without pay anyway. Keep trying these entry-level responses to an actual teacher.

Private school teachers not feeling the need to unionize is not the flex you think it is. You are absolutely correct that private schools generally have better funding, though. Sounds like we oughta fund our public schools better if we want to avoid frequent strikes, right?

> Look, if you are good ignoring thousands of hours of learning loss, idk what to tell you. It’s a bad in if of itself, regardless of what causes it. It’s a significant price to pay by those who have the least control of the situation (the students).

Learning loss doesn't happen over a single week. If it did, there would be calls to eliminate break weeks and anyone who took their kid out of school for any amount of time would be guilty of child abuse. Grandma passed away in another country and you want to take your child to the funeral? Too bad! CPS is going to show up at your door and drag your kid to school instead.

You can't just aggregate school time loss into a big number and call it harmful because it's big. Learning loss happens individually, so you needs to consider the time lost on an individual basis, and losing a week isn't going to be a serious problem for any individual kid. I'm just saying, let's be honest about why the Woburn strike had people up in a tizzy. It's not the kids who were harmed: it's the parents' pocketbooks and time.

Look, obviously it would be bad for kids if teachers were striking all the time. Giving them the ability to strike legally doesn't mean that will happen. Not giving it to them does mean that schools will continue to rot and die from the inside.

> You are specifically arguing for strikes to become a regular tool available to unions in negotiations. If you can’t see that strikes will become more prevalent regardless of circumstances if they are legalized you are just naive.

They absolutely could be come more common... if the school districts insist on continuing to treat teachers like slaves. The point is that they wouldn't, because their failures to negotiate would be much more public and painful. They'd have to play ball instead of having all the power to themselves.

> The canary in a coal mine is a shit metaphor. You cannot separate teachers and the union from thr situation, they are not some neutral signal like the canary is, they make up the system collectively, with the district/local govt. they are not some neutral signal.

It's a perfectly good metaphor regardless of the interconnectivity of the system. Strikes don't happen in healthy workplaces.

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It is another form of nickle and dimeing people at every step.

You mention NYC and their enormous tolls, well they didn't start out that way and this is the direction MA is headed.

So the tobin costs 2.50/day with is another 10.50/week, 42.00/month, 504.00/year. That is a lot of money and now people think we need to add more tolls. Are these the same people who tip for takeout food too? Must be nice to have disposable income to just throw it around, but most do not.

Greenfield might be worth considering. It's got an Amtrak station, a cute downtown with some very good restaurants, easy highway access to Boston and northern New England, and tons of great hikes very close by (some even in city limits).

It's 1 hour from Bradley Airport, 2 hours from Albany, Boston, and Providence, about 3 hours from Burlington, Portland, and NYC, and only about 4.5 hours to Montreal.

The winters aren't terrible, especially by Vermont, NH, and Maine standards, but usually pretty snowy.

In this case, it's less puritans & more corporate focused politicians.

Whether or not teachers should be payed more (they should) isn't the point. The question is should public servants be able to withhold critical services as leverage for higher wages, I say no.

Was just gonna say. It depends who you ask, I guess. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings

The Trump administration loosened the restrictions on hazardous materials on railways. Biden didn't back the unions.

Middle school was very early - got on bus around 6:20/6:30 (first pickup) and would sleep until we pulled up to the school at 7:00. High school I lived in walking distance so the 7:30 start time was nothing. I never once thought about starting school later, I liked being out at 2:00. I worked too and the shifts were all over the place 5-9, 2:30-5:30, 3-7. We had a free period every other day so I’d do most work in there and finish whatever was left at home. It’s definitely a busy life especially with a job - athletics/art is still busy but definitely different impact than working a job.

Also will add - I was very very tired all the time and was very depressed in high school. The biggest factor was my inability to stop watching videos or tv on my phone at night. I’d stay up until 2am-3am, completely boning myself to be exhausted every single day. I would never have admitted to this in high school, but in college I realized if I didn’t straighten up I’d be wasting serious money. I would bet money that staying up too late on the phone is the majority of the problem, not the time that school starts in the morning.

I like Talbots. Get a nice blazer and blue or black pants. I always shop the sales.

nope, even saudis allow abortion.

Almost a whole hour earlier in Boston, than Indianapolis..