About 30 minutes southeast of here is a little town called Reynoldsburg. It's a suburb of about 35,000, and many of its residents are poor and of color. The teachers there have been locked in a struggle with the school board about class sizes and merit pay. I'm not impartial, of course, but from what I can see, there is little to no concession on the side of the school board, and a large amount of offered compromise on the side of the teachers. So, for the past week, teachers have been on strike. This means that they aren't paid, and get no benefits, including medical. They get up in the morning, grab their signs, and picket. And the students go into school and are watched by substitutes who have no lesson plans and no classroom management. The last I heard, laptops have been purchased for each student, and they are completing online lessons while they are allowed, one by one, to go to the bathroom. Fights have broken out; the worst day was last Friday. Since then, things have calmed down a bit -- but I think that, really, kids just aren't going to school.
The biggest newspaper in the state, the Columbus Dispatch, is influenced by the governor, who is very supportive of the school board, so they have lovely articles which are swayed against the teachers. Their biased reporting is disgusting. I get much of my information from my teacher's union Facebook pages and the Reynoldsburg teacher pages.
The strike is sad because it's a strike, obviously. People can't feed their families and they're fighting for their rights.
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