“There are better ways of doing things than to just implement it on us. It hurt a lot of teachers that we couldn't compromise. For every one bad teacher you get several good ones. We don't want the collective bargaining changed for one bad teacher.”
“We are encouraged by the progress. It went miles further than it has in three years. We've been wanting to negotiate like this all along, with both sides resuming their responsibilities.”
“With their current offer the board is given the option of protecting themselves by rehiring every three years to avoid firing. We also want to protect experienced teachers.”
“It had more to do with the letter of the law than anything else. It's really difficult to say much more about it. It was what we felt was a minor infraction - certainly not something that merited termination.”
“The students were genuinely concerned about this. I was proud of the way they behaved themselves, not that I condone skipping school. The [state teachers' union] says you can bring in a 100 people and it won't make any difference, but I think it did last night.”
