Teacher strike disrupts Gary schools

GARY -- Unionized school bus drivers refused to cross picket lines on the first day of school Wednesday as striking teachers carried protest signs and handed out fliers to parents in the first work stoppage in the district in 22 years.\nTeachers carrying signs that read "No Contract, No Work" picketed all three entrances to West Side High School in Gary, the largest school in the district of 16,000 pupils. Teachers, who have not had a contract since December 2004, last staged a strike in 1984.\nSchool and union officials broke off several hours of negotiations early in the morning without resolution after hundreds of people packed a union hall Tuesday for a rally in support of the strike.\nGary Community Schools Corp. officials said they expected a full day of classes, with substitute teachers and administrators filling in for the strikers.\n"We are going ahead with business as usual," spokesman Eric D. Johnson said late Tuesday.\nBut mostly empty buses were dropping off children farther from the school than they normally would, as drivers refused to go onto school grounds.\nTeachers on the picket line said only about 100 students showed up for classes at the school, which normally has an enrollment of about 1,400. Students who were leaving the building said there were only six or 10 adults inside and agreed that about 100 children came to school.\nThose who showed up were sent to the auditorium, then split up by grade level to classrooms, students said.\n"They have somebody so-called 'teaching a lesson' to these kids," said junior Taleesa Malone, who decided to leave.\nPicketing teacher Foster Stephens, who was part of the negotiating team, said both sides are still talking.\n"I'm very optimistic that something will get done today," he said. "I hope so."\nTeachers began picketing Monday — the day they were supposed to report to their classrooms for the start of school. More than 800 teachers and paraprofessionals voted unanimously Friday to strike.\nTeachers said they hoped the work stoppage would be short but that they were willing to stay off the job until they had an acceptable deal.\n"We've reached a boiling point, and when you let things go too long, then they collapse," teacher Sherrell Garth said Tuesday. "We have a collapsing system here."\nState figures show Gary teachers had an average salary of $52,433 last school year, about $5,000 more than the statewide average.\nThe district struggles with discipline problems and one of the state's highest poverty rates while also having some of the lowest scores on standardized tests among Indiana's schools. The district also has had small increases in state funding as the estimated number of pupils for this school year is down from some 22,000 a decade ago.\nEarline Murphy, whose daughter Tamara was starting 11th grade, said she was disappointed.\n"It's sad," she said. "They're already having trouble passing this ISTEP. The school board should have already had this taken care of by now. Our children, the black children, always get the bottom of the buck."\nOn Monday, school officials made a new offer to teachers calling for a 1.5 percent stipend, retroactive to 2005, and 2 percent salary increases for 2006 and 2007. Teachers' shares of health insurance premiums would rise to 10 percent from 7 percent previously.