Teachers: Back to School, Bitterly

Teachers in Detroit and—barring a last-minute contract rejection by union members—New York agreed last week to go back to work. They won salary increases, broke through a few barriers on educational policy. But mostly they demonstrated their new political clout —and left more than a little bitterness in the wake of their walkouts.

Some 11,000 Detroit teachers, including 6,400 members of the American Federation of Teachers, will get raises of $850 annually for two years, work one week less a year, enjoy a bigger voice in textbook selection and curriculum changes. They also won a 30-child limit on class size in the first three grades of ghetto schools and a 39-student limit in all other classes. Unhappy school-board members could only shrug their shoulders when asked where most of the $18.7 million for pay raises will come from, nod hopefully toward the state legislature.

In New York, the United Federation of Teachers, an A.F.T. local, managed to keep most of its members out of class despite the coaxing of top school officials. As teacher and student absenteeism grew, Mayor John Lindsay and the school board came up with a $135 million package of pay and benefits spread over 26 months, an $11.9 million increase over their original offer. It will mean at least $1,200 more for some 55,000 teachers. In frantic bargaining, the union won an extra weekly hour of classroom preparation time for teachers in ghetto elementary schools, but allowed its demand for more power over disruptive students to be turned over to a study committee. At week’s end the union threatened to prolong the walkout when fresh disputes broke out over the contract wording of some of the oral agreements, such as for special programs in ghetto schools.

The New York dispute left Negro and Puerto Rican groups angry over union attempts to enforce more discipline in the classroom, and they threatened to bar the return of teachers at some schools—a move that would suddenly push the school board and the teachers back together as allies against such pressure. At the same time, the financial headache for the city was painful. Noting that other unions of city employees will soon begin contract negotiations of their own, Lindsay cried: “I don’t see how big-city government is going to survive.”