Mira Costa’s teaching staff should continue to close its doors to student-run clubs at lunch in order to increase awareness about teacher concerns, but should not escalate the severity of their responses.
During last year’s salary negotiations, teachers not only closed doors to students, but also refused to write letters of recommendations for those applying to college. After the recent actions of the Manhattan
Beach Unified Teachers Association, many students are concerned about MBUTA taking a possible next step. Teachers should keep their doors closed to students during lunch and nutrition because of the awareness it provides within the district, but taking any further measures would have a negative impact on teacher-student relations.
According to French teacher Laurie Gonalons, MBUTA first requested information regarding district budget records on Aug. 1, 2012 and since then has requested the same information multiple times without receiving a concrete response. Because the district has been considered uncooperative by the MBUTA the actions teachers have taken to highlight the issues of this year’s negotiations are warranted.
MBUSD Superintendent Dr. Michael Matthews stated that the district has provided MBUTA with all of the necessary information on the Manhattan Beach Unified School District website. Matthews also affirmed that the district intends to provide MBUTA with the best compromise even though they were unable to negotiate on Oct. 18.
According to MBUTA President Shawn Chen, the website’s mutability due to MBUSD control allows the district to limit the information seen by MBUTA. She feels this is inappropriate because it is a biased medium for information and is desensitizing to the entire process. If MBUTA feels that the district has not provided all the relevant information, it is the teachers’ right to close their doors at lunch.
Although closing doors to students may seem to greatly penalize the student body, the intentions of MBUTA are merely to demonstrate its disapproval and concern with the district’s negotiating approach to the entire community. Considering the limited ability of teachers to exact any direct change, MBUTA’s current action of closing doors to clubs at lunch is one of the better options to increase awareness with relatively few detrimental effects. Many students support the actions of the teachers to gain fair negotiation ground but feel that this should be the most extreme step in their campaign for further awareness.
Last year, when teachers refused to write letters of recommendation for seniors, the student support for teachers plummeted due to the major impact of their practices.
When they took this action, many students felt that teachers lost sight of their role as educators on the quest for wage and benefit improvement. If the MBUTA aims to repeat these actions, students must be informed of the reasoning behind its actions in order to preserve teacher-student relations and convey the correct message.
MBUTA’s current actions are effective in spreading awareness about its concerns, but there is no need to implement any extreme action harmful to students that would negate sympathy toward union concerns.
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