> Sure- rules may need to be changed and updated, like every other single rule and law ever created by humanity. That’s not a good counter argument for why we shouldn’t create them in the first place.

I'm not arguing against legislating rules to force school districts to play fair. I'm arguing against solely relying on those rules. This situation cannot be solved unless teachers have the ability to advocate for themselves directly.

> Strikes aren’t just a foreshadowing of the collapse of public education, I’m saying they are the first stage of the collapse of public education. If strikes are legalized, they will become common and public schools will become wholly unreliable for parents and they will look towards other options. It’s already happening with enrollment numbers dropping and interest in private education jumping.

Because teachers don't have the legal right to strike, administrators know they effectively have them over a barrel. As such, they have minimal incentive to treat with them fairly at the negotiating table. As such, teaching conditions at public schools are terrible, thus driving teachers out of the profession or at least into private jobs. Meanwhile, you don't tend to see these kinds of strikes at private schools partially because their teachers do have the right to strike, so the schools have to play ball and treat them fairly.

If public schools are about to collapse, it's not because teachers are striking but because things have gotten so bad that teachers feel the need to strike. You're mistaking the signal for the cause. When the canary in a coal mine drops to the bottom of the cage, you should get out of the mine, not reprimand the canary for putting miners in danger.

> I don’t see how you can take students missing school so flippantly, hand waive it way with them being fine.

It's a week. School year lengths vary more than that from state to state. Dropping 5 days isn't going to make a big difference.

Now if this became a regular occurrence, or if it dragged on for months? Yeah, obviously that would be bad. Sounds like the school would have a pretty big incentive to play ball with the teachers if that were the kind of consequence that would be carried by ignoring their demands and demanding they grind themselves to dust.

Let's be honest here: the Woburn strike hurt because it pinched parents to find alternate childcare, not because these kids are actually going to see long term damage from spending a week out of school. I realize using children as a political football is a storied tradition in policy debates but they're really not the specific concern in this situation. It's because parents treat schools as just a place to dump their kids during the day for free.

> There are more options for teachers than your a)b)c), and the legislature can create a hell of a lot more as well as other bats to bear districts with that don’t fuck over students and families like a district/teachers union caused work stoppage does.

When you get right down to it, there really aren't other levers to pull here. If the district knows that you ultimately have to come in and do your job, then what reason do they have to give you what you need? Right now, we're only having this discussion because the teachers chose to strike illegally -- they made enough disruption that we've collectively realized that continuing to ignore them is not an option. Legislating school districts into paying better is nice and all, but when those laws become irrelevant and school districts go back to bending teachers into pretzels, we're going to ignore them again until they strike and make us pay attention.