Teachers at Columbus City Schools in Ohio have voted to strike due to alleged disagreements over learning and teaching conditions, including functional air conditioning and heating inside classrooms.
The members of the Columbus Education Association teachers union, an affiliate of the National Education Association, the largest teachers union in the country, voted with 94% in favor of rejecting the school board’s final offer Sunday evening. The strike will be the union’s first one since 1975.
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“CEA is committed to bargaining for the safe and welcoming, properly maintained, and fully-resourced public schools Columbus students deserve,” the union said in a tweet announcing the rejection.
“As the board stated last night, the decision to strike by the Columbus Education Association is incredibly disappointing. We are very saddened by the unfortunate situation our families, our community, and, most important, our children now face,” said Jennifer Adair, president of the Board of Education for Columbus City Schools, at a press conference Monday.
Adair continued, “School starts on Wednesday, which means our children will be learning online. We know this is not ideal, but we have an obligation to continue educating and supporting students despite this current circumstance.”
The teachers union outlined what it was hoping to achieve in labor negotiations in its notice of intent to strike and picket filed earlier this month.
The union said in the notice that it was having disagreements with the board over “smaller class sizes, full-time art, music, and P.E. teachers at the elementary level, and functional heating and air-conditioning in classrooms.”
The school board says it believed its offer to the union was “generous” and would “positively impact” teachers’ classrooms.
“Our offer to CEA put our children first and prioritized their education and growth. We believe we offered a generous compensation package for our teachers and provisions that would have positively impacted their classrooms and our students. Our offer was responsive to the concerns that CEA brought to us during the negotiations process. Our community’s children are the board’s priority, and our final offer we felt did reflect that,” Adair said.
The school board’s “last, best and final offer” included guaranteed raises of 3% annually for three years, a commitment to fix and install air conditioning in most schools, and adjustments to paid family leave.
Adair said at a press conference that the board had not been told by the union what the “sticking points” in the negotiations were.
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The Columbus City Schools board is scheduled to have an emergency meeting Monday evening to discuss “next steps” but will not vote on any matters. The board has said classes will still begin on Wednesday but with substitute teachers instructing students online.
