Members of the Columbus Schooling Affiliation rally earlier this summer time forward of their vote this previous Sunday evening to formally strike this week.

Columbus Schooling Affiliation/Fb

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Columbus Schooling Affiliation/Fb

Members of the Columbus Schooling Affiliation rally earlier this summer time forward of their vote this previous Sunday evening to formally strike this week.

Columbus Schooling Affiliation/Fb

When kids within the Columbus, Ohio, schooling system begin their college 12 months this Wednesday, they may possible be doing so on-line, as the college district’s almost 4,500 lecturers hit the picket strains.

For the first time in almost 50 years, the district’s unionized lecturers are hanging, the Columbus Schooling Affiliation (CEA) introduced.

On Sunday, the union voted to go on strike after weeks of negotiations over new contract language with Columbus Metropolis Colleges went nowhere. The union says it was pushing for assured air-con, “applicable class sizes” and full-time artwork, music and bodily schooling lecturers within the metropolis’s elementary colleges.

Jennifer Adair, the Board of Schooling president, mentioned in an announcement that the choice by the union to strike is an “unlucky scenario” for households, the group and kids.

“Our supply to CEA put kids first and prioritized their schooling and their progress. We provided a beneficiant compensation bundle for lecturers and provisions that might have a optimistic influence on lecture rooms,” Adair mentioned within the assertion. “Our supply was additionally attentive to the issues which have been raised by CEA through the negotiations course of. Our group’s kids are the Board’s precedence, and our supply mirrored that truth.”

The truth that college students can be beginning the brand new 12 months with on-line education “just isn’t best,” Adair mentioned. “However,” she added, “we now have an obligation to proceed educating and supporting college students regardless of the present circumstances.”

This strike comes as colleges throughout the U.S. are scrambling to fill vacancies introduced on by a instructor scarcity. The nation is dealing with a scarcity of 300,000 lecturers, in accordance with the Nationwide Schooling Affiliation.

After coping with two years of sickness and disruption introduced on by the COVID-19 pandemic, issues about college security and a sense of lack of respect, lecturers have reported being burned out, demoralized and fed up.