TVGrapevine mostly focuses on celebrity and entertainment news, but sometimes there are topics that hit close to home.
Today, a good friend of mine told me about a strike happening in her child’s school. According to my research and chat with mom and wedding planner extraordinaire Danielle Rothweiler, her son’s school district, East Stroudsburg, is going on strike starting Monday. This will cause the students to miss school until the matter at hand is resolved.
What is the reason for the strike? According to Rothweiler, teachers have been working over 700 days without a contract. “The teachers took a pay freeze and made health care concessions saving the district multi millions in the last contract and have negotiated in good faith for over two years without a new contract!” she told TVGrapevine in an exclusive interview. She added that the strike and cancellation of school “will essentially eliminate the entire month of June.”
According to the Pocono Record, the school released the following statement: “The Board is confident that it has made every reasonable attempt to reach an agreement and that the union leadership is making a serious mistake in taking its membership out on strike,” the statement read. “The end result of a strike will accomplish nothing useful in the negotiation process and, of course, will only hurt the students and their families.”
This is not the only issue the district is facing, Rothweiler said. She revealed that the school implemented a new dress code, which seems to be taking priority over the contract and strike issue. According to Rothweiler, the new dress code requires students to “only wear approved solid colors of black, white, gray, purple, royal blue and Carolina blue.” Students are not allowed to wear anything with patterns, zippers or other colors. They are also not allowed to wear the same color shirt and pants (i.e. no black shirt and black pants).
Rothweiler said that this is “not only is this a financial hardship, but it is a waste of all of the clothes parents already had purchased that were perfectly acceptable last year.” She added that it is causing bullying within the schools and is a distraction from the real issue, which is the strike.
TVGrapevine will bring updates on the issue as they become available.
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