Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 14, 1990 TAG: 9003142930
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: kevin kittredge
DATELINE: LEWISBURG, W.VA. LENGTH: Long
Many county school teachers have been absent from the classroom for nearly a week as part of a statewide teachers' strike. But skipping school today, the county school board has said, may cost them their jobs.
The edict has created a showdown in Greenbrier County--the only county in West Virginia whose teachers now face a work-or-be-fired ultimatum, said Steve Benson, director of field services for the West Virginia Education Association in Charleston.
The WVEA called for a statewide teacher walkout to begin last Wednesday, after a proposed 5 percent pay raise for teachers failed to materialize. Only two other states pay their teachers less than West Virginia does.
Gov. Gaston Caperton has said the pay raise proposal was withdrawn because the WVEA refused to back down from its threat of a strike.
Teachers in 46 of the state's 55 counties reportedly were on strike Tuesday. In Greenbrier County, 275 of 400 teachers were not at work Tuesday, said Greenbrier County School Superintendent Stephen Baldwin.
Of the county's 18 schools, Baldwin said, only seven were operating Tuesday, leaving about 4,800 of 6,000 county students out of class, he said.
Baldwin said he attended a meeting of county school superintendents in Charleston on Sunday at which they were advised by state officials to tell teachers they would be fired if they didn't return to work by March 19.
At an emergency meeting of the Greenbrier County School Board held that evening, Baldwin said, "The board felt, and I concurred, that it was too long a time to keep teachers out of the classroom."
He said the board voted 5-0 to tell teachers to return by today or be fired. Teachers said Tuesday that they were being informed by registered mail.
"As of right now, the letter still stands," School Board President Gary Wilson said at 5 p.m. Tuesday. The board had a regularly scheduled meeting Tuesday night.
Meanwhile, WVEA's local chapter was to meet privately Tuesday night to decide what to do about the threat, said Houston Arbuckle, the chapter president. He said teachers had a tentative plan for today, but declined to say what it was.
Arbuckle criticized the School Board, which he said decided to order the teachers back to work during a "secret meeting" Sunday.
"If they were going to take this drastic action," Arbuckle said, "I had a right to plead my case. I would have asked for understanding."
Baldwin said the meeting was legal under state laws that allow unannounced meetings in "emergency" situations.
Both Baldwin and Wilson, the School Board president, said if the strike continued today, the board would meet before firing anyone.
And if the teachers are fired?
"That's a good question," said Baldwin. "We're simply reacting. . . . Plan A is, people show up for work. Plan B is, the number who don't show up is not brutal. Plan C is, if 300 teachers don't show up for work tomorrow, we'll just have to finish out the school year as best we can."
Meanwhile, state WVEA officials said teachers from surrounding counties will head to Greenbrier County today in a show of support - "just to let them know we're all in this together," said Benson, the WVEA field director.
Benson also said the WVEA will file grievances on behalf of any teachers who are fired.
Baldwin said all the picketing in Greenbrier County has been without incident.
"To my knowledge, the teachers have been very well-behaved on the picket line," he said.
A dozen or more teachers lounged around parked cars and a cooler of Gatorade at Greenbrier East High School about 1 p.m. Tuesday. Some held signs that read "United we stand," "Don't tread on me again," and "If you give a hoot, toot."
Many wore red T-shirts, shorts or caps as a sign of solidarity. Inside the nearly empty high school, Principal Charles Carney said the school has not had any students since the strike started Wednesday. That day 813 students showed up for class, but only 17 staff members out of 77 did. The students were sent home, he said.
Five teachers showed up for work Tuesday, Carney said. Four of them declined to talk to a reporter.
The fifth, physical education teacher W. "Mac" Parks, said he still was coming to work each day because he considers the strike illegal. State Superintendent of Schools Hank Marockie has been quoted as saying the strike is a violation of the teachers' contracts.
"They [the strikers] made their choice," said Parks, a former assistant principal. "I respect their position. I hope they respect my position, too."
At Lewisburg Junior High School, strikers and non-strikers alike have met at nightly faculty meetings to help promote school harmony, teachers there said.
"We're going to try to keep our faculty together," said music teacher Charles Fauber, who was on the picket line Tuesday afternoon.
Teachers said relations with the community during the strike have been good. Fauber said police share coffee and doughnuts each morning with the striking teachers at the junior high school in Lewisburg. Asked what they will do if they are fired, some teachers said they already have sent applications to school systems in other states.
Others, like Lester Simms at Lewisburg Junior High, already have other sources of income that would cushion the blow if they lose their teaching jobs.
"Teaching's always been a love of mine," said Simms. He estimated he makes more money from his private computer service than from teaching computer science. "I just always wanted to do it."
Teachers in West Virginia make an average of about $21,000 a year.
"We knew how to do other things before we became teachers," added A.J. Vance, a high school vocational education teacher who had dropped by the picket line Tuesday afternoon. "There's a lot of options."
Vance said he hoped teachers can return to the classroom soon. But he also said teachers are "demanding respect."
"This is not a strike for money," he said. "We're not greedy. We just want to be respected."
***Correction Published Mar. 16, 1990*** CORRECTION Ruth Iles, a teacher for the Greenbrier County, W.Va., school district, was incorrectly identified in Wednesday's paper. Because of a copy editor's error, a cutline under a photograph of picketing strikers at the Lewisburg Intermediate School incorrectly identified her as an intermediate school teacher.
Memo: correction