The losers in any Fresno teachers strike are the kids both sides claim to care about | Opinion

As 4,000 teachers in the Fresno Unified School District plan to walk out of classrooms and go on strike next week, make no mistake about it: The losers will be the children that both sides profess to love.

On Tuesday the Fresno Teachers Association announced that 93.5% of its voting teachers chose to start striking on Nov. 1. It will be the first such labor action since 1978.

The district is the third largest in the state, with about 72,000 students. Fresno Unified is offering $500 a day to anyone who can become a replacement teacher. So far, it has hired over 2,200 replacements who are credentialed substitutes. With another 150 credentialed district managers added in, FUSD believes it can fill every classroom with an instructor.

But while those fill-in staffers will aim to do a good job of teaching, they are not the regular instructors who have spent this fall making relationships with students. The temporary teachers’ efforts may be sincere, but would be less effective than the instructors who have made it their careers to educate Fresno’s schoolchildren.

It has been well chronicled how deep the learning loss was for the nation’s youth when schools shut down during the COVID pandemic. Labor disputes now just compound that problem.

Last year Sacramento teachers walked out for eight days until they agreed to a new contract — instructional minutes that were simply lost.

Then earlier this year teachers walked out in the Los Angeles Unified School District for three days in support of bus drivers, classroom aides, cafeteria workers and other union-backed colleagues.

Better pay, smaller class sizes and improved health benefits are the issues now in dispute in Fresno Unified.

But here is the heart of the matter: The Fresno Teachers Association and district leaders must continue to meet and negotiate with all due diligence to get a contract done as soon as possible. There is no excuse for anything less if helping students is the real aim.

Unfortunately, a report by a fact-finder hired to mediate between the two sides does not offer much hope. It found both the district and FTA guilty of undermining the quest for mutual trust, the key ingredient to successful negotiations.

Trust and confidentiality

Labor negotiations are tense, hard-fought deliberations, so achieving a level of trust is critical.

But the chairman of the fact-finding panel, Donald Raczka, said he “witnessed behaviors that were antithetical to establishing trust, the needed foundation of an interest-based system.”

Raczka said that he presented an informal settlement to the two sides with the caution of confidentiality. “However, the district was unable to keep elements of that suggested settlement from being publicly reported on by an outside party,” Raczka said.

“On the other side, the president and the executive director of the association chose to leave the hearing after their presentation, even though they were an essential part of the association bargaining team.,” he added. “Both these behaviors, confidentiality and respect for the other side’s right to their viewpoints, are overt trustworthy behaviors.

“It is no surprise that interest-based bargaining was unsuccessful with disrespectful behaviors such as these two examples. Clearly the parties, though expressing a desire to return to an interest-based approach, have much to learn. Acting in a trustworthy manner is paramount to the success of this style of bargaining.”

Students must come first

The Bee Editorial Board does call on both sides to act professionally. The fact-finder’s characterization is embarrassing to all concerned. A walkout of any duration creates an unacceptable learning loss for students.

The two sides were to return to the bargaining table on Tuesday. May the sides redouble their efforts and get a deal done. Educating Fresno’s youth is at stake.

This editorial has been updated from its initial posting to report the strike authorization vote.

This story was originally published October 24, 2023 at 5:30 AM.