John Grindrod: Keeping kids out of the crossfire, troubling times in Wapakoneta

During my tenure as a high school English teacher, a job I considered second only in importance to raising my lovely daughters, Shannon and Katie, I was fortunate never to have gotten anywhere close to the acrimonious school labor issue facing our neighbors to the south, Wapakoneta.

During the past several months, the 165 teachers in the Wapak system and the Board of Education have seen a rather sizable schism develop between them in their efforts to agree on a new three-year contract.

There has been issue-related vandalism of the administrative offices, where superintendent Keith Horner works, as well as threatening letters in Horner's home mailbox, both of which saddened me. You see, I first met Keith when he was in elementary school in the mid-1970s during the embryonic stages of my teaching career in the Perry Local School District after the Horner family moved from Fort Jennings to Perry.

While I had moved on to Allen East before Keith got to high school, I did coach Keith's elder brothers, Chuck and Dave, and got to know the Horner family well enough to realize they were an instant asset to the Perry community.

Now, years removed from his grade school days, Keith finds himself squarely in the cross hairs of what I'm assuming is the place a school superintendent most does not want to be, in the middle of a contentious labor dispute.

In the article in Thursday's The Lima News that focused on the school system's interviewing of potential substitute teachers in the event of a strike, Keith did what I believe he had to do, which is to inform the segment of the public that depends on compulsory education that, yes, in the event of a strike, there will be classes. Horner went on to say that, indeed, it's prudent to prepare for the worst while hoping for the best.

Citing the district's $1.2 million in deficit spending last fiscal year and facing an economic situation that is equally bleak, Horner and the board feel they have already issued a last and best offer for a three-year deal that includes no base raises and, in the second and third years, no automatic step increases in addition to teachers shouldering more of the cost of their insurance.

While hardly ideal, that is something teachers may have to abide. Now, where I agree with the teachers is, should the superintendent and board resolve to abolish step increases forever and exercise complete autonomy in selecting insurance carriers forever, that seems unreasonable to me.

Those who feel the board's position isn't unreasonable may point to the fact that no positions will be lost because of the reductions in force, something my daughter Katie has faced two different times already in her short decade-long career as an educator.

Given the fortunate way I went out in 2005, I feel kind of bad seeing what the Wapakoneta teachers are going through. During far better economic times, my St. Marys negotiating team was able to broker a three-year deal that came exactly at the right time for me, my final three years, considering the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio pensions are determined by a teacher's best three earning years, typically the last three. For me, that was a contract that featured a generous 5 percent increase per year for each of my final three years.

So, my still-active Wapakoneta teaching brethren, I can sympathize but not empathize with your plight. However, several years ago, the economy was a whole lot different than it is today. Workers all across the labor landscape have had to make concessions, and it appears from what I've read, you understand that.

Having said that, something at the end of Thursday's article disturbed me. I saw a term that, frankly, I'd never seen before associated with education. Horner acknowledged that there have been rumors of some teachers in his district doing something called “working to rule,” meaning they are doing only the bare minimum required of them in the classroom, as a sign of some sort of coercive protest.

Horner went to say that he believed the majority of teachers were, however, working hard, and to that I would say, I certainly hope those reports are more rumor than reality.

Until there's a new three-year deal, I'm hoping personal pride and the weighty responsibility that all teachers face to help kids as much as possible, take over.

Regardless of the labor unrest, children deserve more than a teacher who is, in terms of effort, just “mailing it in,” because when the victims of a dispute between adults are kids caught in the crossfire, there's something inherently wrong about that.