ON THE TOWN:Many to blame, just one solution

The teachers in our school district have finally had enough. They are willing to take to the streets to get the higher wages they deserve, but they are going to have several forces working against them.

The first one is public opinion. While I believe that the overwhelming majority of locals believe that teachers deserve more money and have the right to protest, there is a vocal minority who will use the usual guilt trip to keep them in classrooms.

“Students are suffering� is what they can expect to hear. And there is no rebuttal to that.

But in response, it should be noted that all of this turmoil could have been avoided had our three local governing bodies and the teachers union done their jobs properly.

Students will suffer not because teachers will call in sick or because they may strike, but because our local leaders have swept low teacher salaries under the rug for years.

In return, those leaders have expected teachers to do what they have always done, namely, take the crumbs they are given and return to their classrooms so that students don’t “suffer.�

Nice try, but the monkey in this case does not belong on the backs of teachers. Our children have already suffered more from years of bureaucratic mismanagement of this issue than any amount of time without some teachers in their classrooms.

And in a larger sense, students will suffer more if we fail to do what it takes to attract and keep the best teachers.

Another force working against them is the Costa Mesa City Council majority’s belief that teacher compensation is a school board issue.

No one should be surprised. That type of small-minded, not-my-job thinking has become the hallmark of this majority.

But what about the Newport Beach City Council? I have yet to read or hear a syllable from any of them on whether they feel some responsibility to try to provide a better package for our teachers.

To believe that the school board should have all of the responsibility for negotiating teacher compensation is simply a way to avoid responsibility for an awesome task.

The compensation of our teachers is the responsibility of the school board, the city councils of Costa Mesa and Newport Beach, and the teachers union.

The failure of all of them to properly plan and communicate with one another has led directly to the walkout and will, I predict, lead to a strike unless some serious compensation is offered.

Besides two city councils and a school board that have shown little or no desire to increase compensation beyond a measly 1%, the teachers had its own union asleep at the wheel.

Before all of this began, the union’s public relations machine should have been working overtime to get public opinion on its side.

Among other things, the union should have polled teachers to find out how many would leave for other districts over the next two years if the 1% solution were approved.

With that information, they could have determined that the cost of recruiting, hiring and training the replacements is money that could be used to pay the teachers who are still here and who have ties to students, parents and the community.

The union should have dragged out all of those years of “roses and rainbows� spin that the board has been cranking out and then used it against them. After all, if things are so good, shouldn’t we reward the people in the trenches — our teachers — who are the ones making it happen?

Some have underestimated just how far teachers are willing to go to get a better package.

The sick day was just a start. But teachers will have to move quickly, for once school is out, their protests will have little meaning until school resumes in September.

And teachers will protest. This time around, teachers will strike at their earliest opportunity. Teachers will strike because it is the only leverage that the decision-makers seem to understand.

In a way, you and I are also responsible for the walkout. When we attend, for example, a professional sporting event, purchase clothes licensed by the professional sports leagues and otherwise support the high salaries of those in this field, we are sending the message that a pitcher with a low earned-run average or a batter on his way to 40 home runs or an actor making $10 million a picture are all more important to us than the compensation of the dedicated people who teach our children.

We have been sending this message for years.

So how about that, readers? Would you be willing to see one less professional sports event in exchange for a small tax increase that would pay teachers more? I would, and I’m guessing that almost all of you would too.

But it should not have had to come to that because the monkey should not be on our backs either. In the end, again, this is a crisis of leadership.

When all is said and done, as was predicted here a long time ago, Measures A and F are going to make our schools look pretty. But unless we take care of our teachers, the classroom situations will be ugly.