Editorial: Much work needed to mend fences in District 23

Teachers and students have been back in class since Monday in Prospect Heights, where things are returning to normal. But can you just erase the past week and a half - forgetting the hyperbole, the insults, the deliberate misstatements of fact and the suspicion - all of which permeated the lives of employees, administrators, the school board and parents for one of the longest 10-day stretches of their lives?

Board member Kevin Novak is pretty new to the board, so he can be excused his surprise.

"I was kind of ... in awe with the amount of animosity that was shown between individuals on both sides and the lack of ability to have good, professional discussions," Novak said Tuesday, as the board voted to approve the contract that teachers ratified a few days before.

What Novak will undoubtedly realize, if he hasn't already, is that negotiations in District 23 have a history of tension that spills over into ugliness.

This is the first teacher strike in District 23 history, but the relationship between teachers and the administration has been strained for decades. In 1998, a strike was avoided at the eleventh hour - when many parents stepped forward to demand a settlement, not taking one side over the other, but pressuring both sides effectively to find common ground.

Another strike was defused in 2000, again after a marathon bargaining session.

This time, there was no last-minute saving grace.

Contract negotiations are serious business. You are talking about people's livelihoods and safeguarding taxpayers, all at the same table. It's impossible to be coldly dispassionate, and when things get tense, emotions boil over.

On Tuesday night, a joint statement was issued, saying teachers and the board "look forward to continuing to work together."

Politic words. District 23 is now in the post-strike phase, where everybody has to figure out how to walk back all that vitriol so they can constructively collaborate again. As a settlement neared, there were small signs of hope - a shared pizza; a concerted rush to get student musicians to their IMEA auditions.

More will be needed. If the various parties don't figure it out, the animosity will fester and carry over to the next set of negotiations four years from now. Maybe that's been part of the problem all along.

Going forward," Novak said, "my request would be that we drop all the history and move forward acting as a cohesive school district with one objective: bettering our children."

Good advice for a school district with a lot of history in this arena, not all of it good. Can they do it?