News

June 17, 2009

Injunction sought to stop NW teacher strike

Judge to rule on June 22 walkout. Pa. official: With strike, required 180 school days not reached by June 30.

By Mark Guydish mguydish@timesleader.com
Education Reporter
Mark Guydish on Facebook   |   @TLMarkGuydish on Twitter

UNION TWP. -- The state Department of Education has filed a petition in Luzerne County court seeking an injunction barring Northwest Area School District teachers from going on strike as planned June 22.

A court hearing has been scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Friday in front of Judge Thomas Burke, who will then decide whether to grant the injunction, union spokesman Paul Shemansky said.

State spokesman Michael Race said the Department of Education determined a strike would prevent the district from completing the state-mandated 180 school days by June 30. “They have no wiggle room,” Race said. So the secretary of education filed for the injunction to prevent the strike.

State law allows teachers to strike twice in one school year. The first strike must end in time for the district to complete 180 days of school by June 15, the second must end in time to complete those days by June 30.

The Department of Education determines the length of a strike based on those requirements, but does not have the legal authority to force teachers to end a strike or, as in this case, to not strike at all. Instead, the department must ask a judge to impose such mandates.

Northwest teachers went on strike in November and stayed out for the maximum number of days before returning to work. The School Board then approved a new school calendar that kept most planned vacation days intact, and pushed the final day of school to June 23. Snow days pushed it to June 30. As a result, there are no more scheduled days off that could be used to make up for days lost because of a second strike.

The union has argued that such calendar changes – adopted by several school districts in recent years following a first strike -- are a deliberate effort to skirt the labor law and deny teachers their right to a second strike. Northwest School Board members and their solicitor, Richard Galtman, have denied that.

Shemansky has said he believes the issue will eventually end up in court, and union lead negotiator Matt Gruenloh has said the planned strike at Northwest so late in the academic year was meant, in part, as a challenge to the calendar issue, but both have stressed the strike was prompted by a stalemate in negotiations. The contract expired in 2005.

The union pushed its legal argument in 2007 when the Lake-Lehman School Board made a similar calendar change after a strike there, keeping most scheduled vacation days intact and pushing the last day of school to June 27. The union filed a complaint with the state Labor Relations Board, but the board ruled in favor of the district.

Tweet	Follow @TLnews

This story also appears on the following websites...