We have altered the deal. Pray we don't alter it any further.

Nah, that's way more work. When doing these kind of meet-on-the-street videos, they'll just film the interactions up front and then have a secondary team of producers to get the people to sign releases afterwards. It's legal to film people in public, you probably just want their permission before showing their faces on TV to avoid a lawsuit. I'm sure these are all the natural reactions from these people, they were just unlikely to get releases from anyone who was particularly spicy (so they'd have to blur their faces and anything else identifying if they wanted to use those spots).

Private school teachers not feeling the need to unionize is not the flex you think it is. You are absolutely correct that private schools generally have better funding, though. Sounds like we oughta fund our public schools better if we want to avoid frequent strikes, right?

> Look, if you are good ignoring thousands of hours of learning loss, idk what to tell you. It’s a bad in if of itself, regardless of what causes it. It’s a significant price to pay by those who have the least control of the situation (the students).

Learning loss doesn't happen over a single week. If it did, there would be calls to eliminate break weeks and anyone who took their kid out of school for any amount of time would be guilty of child abuse. Grandma passed away in another country and you want to take your child to the funeral? Too bad! CPS is going to show up at your door and drag your kid to school instead.

You can't just aggregate school time loss into a big number and call it harmful because it's big. Learning loss happens individually, so you needs to consider the time lost on an individual basis, and losing a week isn't going to be a serious problem for any individual kid. I'm just saying, let's be honest about why the Woburn strike had people up in a tizzy. It's not the kids who were harmed: it's the parents' pocketbooks and time.

Look, obviously it would be bad for kids if teachers were striking all the time. Giving them the ability to strike legally doesn't mean that will happen. Not giving it to them does mean that schools will continue to rot and die from the inside.

> You are specifically arguing for strikes to become a regular tool available to unions in negotiations. If you can’t see that strikes will become more prevalent regardless of circumstances if they are legalized you are just naive.

They absolutely could be come more common... if the school districts insist on continuing to treat teachers like slaves. The point is that they wouldn't, because their failures to negotiate would be much more public and painful. They'd have to play ball instead of having all the power to themselves.

> The canary in a coal mine is a shit metaphor. You cannot separate teachers and the union from thr situation, they are not some neutral signal like the canary is, they make up the system collectively, with the district/local govt. they are not some neutral signal.

It's a perfectly good metaphor regardless of the interconnectivity of the system. Strikes don't happen in healthy workplaces.

> Sure- rules may need to be changed and updated, like every other single rule and law ever created by humanity. That’s not a good counter argument for why we shouldn’t create them in the first place.

I'm not arguing against legislating rules to force school districts to play fair. I'm arguing against solely relying on those rules. This situation cannot be solved unless teachers have the ability to advocate for themselves directly.

> Strikes aren’t just a foreshadowing of the collapse of public education, I’m saying they are the first stage of the collapse of public education. If strikes are legalized, they will become common and public schools will become wholly unreliable for parents and they will look towards other options. It’s already happening with enrollment numbers dropping and interest in private education jumping.

Because teachers don't have the legal right to strike, administrators know they effectively have them over a barrel. As such, they have minimal incentive to treat with them fairly at the negotiating table. As such, teaching conditions at public schools are terrible, thus driving teachers out of the profession or at least into private jobs. Meanwhile, you don't tend to see these kinds of strikes at private schools partially because their teachers do have the right to strike, so the schools have to play ball and treat them fairly.

If public schools are about to collapse, it's not because teachers are striking but because things have gotten so bad that teachers feel the need to strike. You're mistaking the signal for the cause. When the canary in a coal mine drops to the bottom of the cage, you should get out of the mine, not reprimand the canary for putting miners in danger.

> I don’t see how you can take students missing school so flippantly, hand waive it way with them being fine.

It's a week. School year lengths vary more than that from state to state. Dropping 5 days isn't going to make a big difference.

Now if this became a regular occurrence, or if it dragged on for months? Yeah, obviously that would be bad. Sounds like the school would have a pretty big incentive to play ball with the teachers if that were the kind of consequence that would be carried by ignoring their demands and demanding they grind themselves to dust.

Let's be honest here: the Woburn strike hurt because it pinched parents to find alternate childcare, not because these kids are actually going to see long term damage from spending a week out of school. I realize using children as a political football is a storied tradition in policy debates but they're really not the specific concern in this situation. It's because parents treat schools as just a place to dump their kids during the day for free.

> There are more options for teachers than your a)b)c), and the legislature can create a hell of a lot more as well as other bats to bear districts with that don’t fuck over students and families like a district/teachers union caused work stoppage does.

When you get right down to it, there really aren't other levers to pull here. If the district knows that you ultimately have to come in and do your job, then what reason do they have to give you what you need? Right now, we're only having this discussion because the teachers chose to strike illegally -- they made enough disruption that we've collectively realized that continuing to ignore them is not an option. Legislating school districts into paying better is nice and all, but when those laws become irrelevant and school districts go back to bending teachers into pretzels, we're going to ignore them again until they strike and make us pay attention.

> Teachers work over the summer, obviously not as much as during the normal school year, but there is summer school, PD and other activities.

Those activities are mostly not part of their usual teaching contract. Summer school in particular is a separate gig -- and how is it even better, according to you, for teachers to strike when they're supposed to be teaching summer school anyway?

More to the point, there's so much less going on then that a strike would be wholly ineffective.

> Yes! The government should’ve done way way more, I blame local districts way more than teachers unions. But at the same time it’s typically 10-20 morons in district/gov doing it. I’m saying the legislation needs to weaken their ability to be that moronic and set up more stringent rules for them to follow in negotiations to prevent work stoppages from that end.

That's a good start, but ultimately the teachers themselves still need leverage for negotiations to be equitable. No set of rules can adequately adapt to changing circumstances forever.

> The parents are only part of a voting populace! What about people without kids? Or whose kids are fully grown or two young? Never mind the fact the don’t directly vote for teacher pay but rather school committee members and even then that’s only ever 2 years. Yes- those elected officials may get voted out, but they are insulated until their next election.

That's just how Democracy works and ultimately we have to find a way to respect the will of the majority without crushing the minority. There's no magic wand we can wave to make everything neat and tidy. We'll need to convince those without kids that voting for more teacher pay -- in whatever form that takes -- is in their best interests. If we can't, well, I guess we just don't get to have public schools then and society will slide into a collapse until everyone else gets the picture that schools are important for everyone. Strikes bring those apocalyptical possibilities to our attention long before they become actualities.

> This isn’t one kid out for a week. It’s an entire district. We just saw what happened when learned is disrupted, students academic performance and learned regressed massively over the pandemic. We saw how important it was to keep kids in school, and students are still clawing out of it. Any loss of learning is a significant loss and I’m saying state government needs to take action to prevent that from happening while protecting and strengthening teachers. Sure, the most recent strike in Woburn MA, was 1 week, but no one knew how long it would be day 1.

One kid or a thousand, a week out still isn't going to cause serious learning loss. The school year simply isn't calibrated that tightly. A few months? Sure, that might cause problems. Sounds like we better give those essential workers what they need to do their essential work rather than prey on their empathy.

> I’m not saying teachers need to be ground to the dirt.

That's absolutely what you're saying by denying them the right to strike, though. That's the inevitable effect of denying them sufficient leverage to advocate for themselves during contract negotiations. Our economic and political systems only function properly if the network of checks and balances is intact, and the ability to strike is a potent check on the power of the employer. Remove that and the only remaining options teachers have are, a) beg, b) quit, or c) die, and we as a society should not be happy about any of those outcomes. What's next, making it illegal for teachers to quit? How Kafkaesque do we want this situation to get?

We need strikes like the Woburn teacher's strike to remind us that these people are not our slaves and that they are doing us a great service that deserves commensurate compensation. They cannot be treated like 14-year-old babysitters, paid $5 an hour plus snacks and no boyfriends/girlfriends over until the kiddos are asleep!

What's the point of striking when you wouldn't otherwise be working?

If teacher strikes are so bad for kids, then shouldn't the government have pulled out all the stops to reach an equitable deal before this became necessary?

What are teachers supposed to do if their pay and work conditions are so bad that they'd want to strike over it? Should they just lie back and starve to death for other people's kids? Should they just all quit en masse? Because that seems way more disruptive for the kids than striking for a week.

You gotta think these things through. Yes, it sucks for kids to lose out of a week of school, but honestly it's probably fine. Lots of kids get taken out of school to go on family trips for a week and they're fine. They can catch up. Yes, it sucks for parents to lose free daycare, but they can avoid that by voting for better teacher pay.

What would be truly unconscionable would be a mandate for teachers to grind themselves into a paste to grease the wheels of their workplace. They are not our slaves and they do not deserve to be treated like garbage. They deserve fair wages and a workplace that allows them to thrive.

Dems aren't great, but they're still miles better that the GQP. It's the difference between vanilla ice cream with a shit-flavored swirl vs a cup of actual disease-laden shit. We can press the Dems to be better without, "both sides,"-ing our way into Fascism.

They have had tremendous public support for decades. All that, "tough on crime," BS gives the police unions a ton of leverage.

Bold of you to assume Conservatism has any legitimacy left after 45 took the party to Fascism Land.

Yeah, I agree. It's just wild when someone tries to do this on a public forum where the posts are all available to anyone who cares to look.

> I am addressing each point.

Ok now you're just straight-up lying and/or delusional. It is comical that you'd think this will fly when your posts are still visible. Like, we can see that you didn't do that, dude. We can see it.

EDIT: You do know that blocking me doesn't mean that other people can't see your lies, right? Your posts are still there, dude! Everyone else knows what you're doing.

> The townies here hate anything that resembles conservative thought.

I haven't seen anything that resembles thought from Conservatives in years, and it is honestly depressing. Everyone suffers from this.

Friend, I am being charitable here. If someone can't stop spouting absolute nonsense, especially when their job requires them to appear neutral and rational, the options are, "idiot," or, "asshole." There's no third option there. Sorry, I'm just calling it like it is. I don't mean to offend your delicate sensibilities.

Ok, so you're going to ignore that it was the SJC that said this judge was out of line. Got it.

Hey, what about, "one does need to know about the person"? You don't know anything about me, my dude, yet you're diagnosing my real motivations off a brief post on reddit? Make up your mind! You can't even avoid contradicting yourself for one sentence, which is honestly impressive.

Also, are you going to address that the SJC agrees with us, or nah?

A judge's job is to be impartial. This chucklehead was making it abundantly clear that he was anything but. Even putting aside that we don't need to refute claims that have absolutely no evidence to recommend them, judges cannot fulfill the terms of their employment if they post a bunch of stuff that makes them look hopelessly biased and unhinged.

Would you want a judge known for making pro-BLM posts and replying, "ACAB," to every story about police misconduct to judge police brutality cases? Of course not, they would appear biased. Same thing here. Nobody would take this motormouth seriously and he would provide grounds for mistrials any time he sat a case with the barest whiff of politics attached to it.

I mean, you really don't need to know anything about someone other than that they believe this kind of shit to know that they have cottage cheese where their brain should be.

Also, this is a weird hill for you to die on when it's not just random redditors saying this guy is unfit to be a judge but the state's highest court after looking at his resume, speaking to his references, and interviewing him.

Brother, I have some bad news for you: conspiracy theories are the only thing holding Conservatism in the US together right now.

Honestly, I did you a favor. Reddit arguments where we passively buy into each other's ridiculous argumentation and try to snit over every little fractalizing sub-point are absolutely interminable. I've been dragged into enough silly discussions like that to know that they benefit absolutely no one.

> You say "partially"; if you were to draw up a pie graph of "Not allowed to strike" versus "Paid absolute dogshit" what do you think the sizes of those respective sectors would be?

Ok, this kind of question is just sealioning. What I'll say is this: I don't see how you bargain with an employer who knows that you are, when all's said and done, legally obligated to come into work and do your job. The one chip you have left to play is to quit, and these jobs don't pay enough to make quitting a feasible option for most people, especially since health care is tied to employment.

> I have some unfortunate news for you: We're already faced with bad/inexperienced employees saturating administrative positions the public sector.

Yes, I was speaking rhetorically. My prediction was really just a reverse-engineered description of the present. This sad reality is partially because these employees aren't allowed to strike.

> You want your municipality attract the same talent as the private sector, and top-shelf public sector workers from other municipalities, do what I do: Say "I could stand to pay more in property tax," show up for your local elections, and approve budget overrides.

None of that means anything if employees aren't allowed to advocate for themselves. The additional money will just get thrown somewhere else in the budget. This is exactly what happens with lottery money: in theory it's meant to support schools, but in practice, the government just lowers school budgets by exactly the amount that the lottery adds so they can use that money elsewhere. The school is basically only in the mix to launder gambling dollars.

We absolutely do need to put more money into our public sector, schools especially, but we need to solve the problem at both ends. A rising tide doesn't actually raise all boats when some of those boats are frantically pumping sea water to their private-sector buddies with sea water businesses.

> There's a reason 9A exists, and it's to prevent labor unions - who do not hold public office of any kind - from holding public services hostage as a negotiating tactic.

Public workers need to be able to bargain for good working conditions. Otherwise, they're just going to quit and public services will end up being run entirely by a churn of bad or inexperienced employees who really hate their jobs. If their bargaining power is insufficient without the ability to strike legally, then they need that option returned to their quiver.

As with anything, we need a system of checks and balances in place in order to create a healthy work environment.

They do this already. It's called a, "sick-out," and they can't really be punished for it because they're the ones who would do the punishing.

Our policing system needs a complete overhaul.

That's fair, and you're welcome! Next time you see her parents, though, you should ask them if they can shift her birthday to the Summer. Would make for much more outdoorsy birthday trips to New England! ;)

You picked a bad time of year for outdoor activities. We're in the dead of winter, which means anything outdoors is probably shut down for now. You can go hiking in any of a number of spots, but those might be kinda rough when it's so cold out.

That said, there's still a lot of fun stuff to do in Mass. There's the Minute Man National Historical Park (a series of small museums covering the opening battles of the Revolutionary War) and Boston's Freedom Trail if you like to walk. For more indoor activities, there's the New England Aquarium, the Boston Tea Party Museum, the USS Constitution, Bunker Hill Monument (it's not outdoors but climbing to the top is a bit of a workout!), Hammond Castle, the Eustis Estate, the Witch House at Salem (call them up for times, as they're open less often during the winter), the Salem Witch Museum, the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Science (lots of museums in Massachusetts!), and the JFK Presidential Library, among other options.