U-46 teachers, board must get fair deal done

That slight bubbling in the pit of longtime Elgin Area School District U-46 residents' stomachs isn't due to holiday excess. It's the knowledge that an unsettled district is edging closer to the sort of labor conflict that made a sick feeling all too common in the 1980s and early 1990s.

To be sure, the district's difficulty getting a deal done with its 2,400 teachers is a manifestation of other controversies that have simmered beneath the surface for four or five years.

Mass layoffs of teachers and aides to stem budget deficits. A mass student redistricting, during which the board and superintendent treated the public and teachers like recalcitrant children. No Child Left Behind. Bigger classes. Many teaching initiatives put in place with little teacher input. And, of course, the board's unwise capitulation to former Superintendent Connie Neale's outrageous financial demands.

Through it all, the district community worked hard together to solve problems and maintain stability. But the frustration of bigger classes and little acknowledgment of that classroom reality from the board and administration pushed the teachers to vote "no." It was a close vote on a proposed deal that the public felt was more than fair financially. That's why any solution to the class size problem cannot really come at additional cost to beleaguered taxpayers without upsetting them.

A 15-hour negotiation session that ended without a deal last week prompted a call for mediation and the Elgin Teachers Association's filing of an intent to strike notice. Mediation is scheduled for Thursday and Dec. 11, and teachers could take a strike vote 10 days after their intent to strike notice was filed.

Thankfully, neither side seems to believe it will come to that. Both said progress was being made when the exhaustive negotiations were stopped. And ETA President Tim Davis said mediators were called because he'd promised his union membership he would do so, not because the two sides were at impasse. He also called the intent to strike notice "procedural."

Indeed, the district has been here before, as recently as 2004, when a deal was reached after an intent to strike notice had been filed. But because of Neale's contract and her subsequent departure, frustrations and emotions are running higher now. The situation is more delicate.

The tone of the public utterances remains mostly civil, at least from those negotiating. But the time for sending messages has passed. The rejection vote and the volume at which teachers delivered subsequent comments at board meetings made their feelings clear enough.

And Connie Neale is gone. She made off with a lot of money and helped drag the district into a discrimination lawsuit that remains unresolved. The question now is whether teachers and the district will allow her, in absentia, to help drag us into a labor war, too.

We hope not. It's not Neale who would live with the aftermath. And longtime residents know that aftermath doesn't include minor stomach upset, but full-blown nausea that lives on and on.