It is beautiful in this quiet outpost in the Pacific Northwest. Days are getting noticeably shorter; blossoms are fading; fewer swimmers in front of my house and much less children’s laughter and chatter. The tourists and summer cottagers are winding down and packing up. It is back-to-school time and the tempo of life changes. I have pleasing reveries of my child-raising years as I see the school supplies on the drugstore shelves. I am deeply grateful to be here, of all places, in our troubled world.

But wait! There is no back-to-school for the local children. Their teachers are STILL on strike. WHAT? A months- long negotiation between the teachers union and the BC government has gone no-where.? How can this be?

Before the school year finished, picketing teachers outside empty schools invited the passing public to honk in support as they drove by and the air was generally loud. Personally thought their abandonment of their duties pretty damned unhelpful to mostly working parents, not to mention the kids, but I believe in unions and no one seemed too bothered.

But this is too much now. It offends my sense of fairness that people who have already paid some of the highest taxes in the Western world for these services, buildings, facilities are summarily cut off from them. I protest! And I Google.

Provincial data show that between 2001-02 and 2012-13, total compensation for teachers increased by 45.5 per cent to $88,695 from $60,695 (including benefits and employee pension contributions). Over that same period, B.C.’s inflation rate rose by 19.1 per cent.

From another source:

The average B.C. teacher gets $89,624 a year — $70,624 in wages and $18,000 in taxpayer-funded benefits. Taxpayers also contribute 16.13 per cent of teacher wages to the B.C. teachers’ pension fund.

So WHAT is the  strike for exactly?

In extraordinarily tenuous times for working people this seems a decent wage for 188 days of work a year vs. the average taxpayers 238. Such perks and benefits are only being a dream for most local workers.

Hmmmm. I inquire further. Whispered stresses from working single mothers as their summer childcare comes to an end. They do not speak against the teachers but the additional stress lines on their foreheads move me to ire. The nervous motherless 10 yr old who did not get a report card and has been stressing all summer long about where she stands, concerns me.

I hear from teachers who speak of stress loads in classrooms with multiple special needs children, often wild and disruptive. No doubt it’s a hard job – that has to be taken as a given. I sympathize, I respect. Change has to happen.

And then they cross that line where cognitive dissonance clangs loudly. When they say they are doing it – striking, disrupting the school year – for the children. No you are bloody-well not.

There is a common sentimentality abroad in recent years that all teachers are good, have a vocation and are undervalued by society. Some teachers undoubtedly are priceless, gifted, kind and compassionate; I still treasure the experience of those, in my own and in my children’s educations. . Others are mediocre, crabby, with poor people skills and a long-suffering demeanour. Regardless, the labourer is worthy of his hire, but enough already about you, teacher. What about the students? The stress your action is causing in every family is unconscionable.

What the children need from you, first and foremost, is that you be an adult in whom they can trust and upon whom they can rely. To keep your word and to be an exemplar, at least while in their presence, of what a grown-up is. You are so influential in the lives of your students.

How are parents to inculcate values of integrity and ethics and respect for the system if the system treats the kids like this? Two taxpayer funded groups, government and union, salaried and secured come together on this and in all of these weeks can’t produce a result that opens the schoolrooms?

Striking is a revolutionary action when all hope of fairness has been exausted. Useful and necessary for exploited workers with recalcitrant employers. But get a grip! You want to teach these young Canadians that this is how to resolve things amongst Tax-paid civic workers?

Not good enough. Go to the back of the class.