Schools are closed since including Friday Jan 19. The involved parties cannot agree on a new contract for the teachers. In fact, they can only agree on two things:
1. The kids should be back in school asap.
2. The other party can end the strike right now.
In the meanwhile, high-school kids are at home playing Need for speed: Unbound, and smoking pot, thank goodness we have the stores here in Newton. Residents are kept on the edge, bombarded with emails offering ray of hopes, like “we have one goal today: to send the kids back to school tomorrow” or “closest we’ve ever been” followed by “Schools closed tomorrow, strike continues” the evening before. After a lot of tension, now it’s the new normal and it’s starting to feel like the COVID-19 closure. People talk about “rebuilding community” when/if this is resolved. But there is no strong community here. If there was one, staff and parents would step in and open the schools themselves. They would cook, clean, and teach (no shortage of teachers in town).
During my high-school at the Liceo Scientifico Borromini (now vanished) in Rome, at some point the students “took over the building.” This was a significant experience of my childhood. I was there every day, mostly playing poker and wandering around previously inaccessible rooms, but also teaching a math class (my first couple of years in high school were disastrous, I almost failed, but for inexplicable reasons towards the end I improved and became sort of well known in math, even though the teacher didn’t think much of me, and besides computer programming I had little skills beyond doing fast and correctly what they were teaching us). I would be happy to volunteer to cook, and teach in Newton; I’ll mop too.
Of course, this is much bigger than just a local feud. There are big political forces here clashing against each other. NEA (the country’s largest union labor) President Becky Pringle is speaking this morning in support of Newton educators because this reflects “what all students and educators in public schools across the country deserve.” Read this.
Thoughts 
My friend, it’s always a pleasure to read your posts, although I understand that sometimes you address complicated social issues and other times math concepts that I barely understand despite having an (old) engineering degree (you make me feel like Howard of Big Bang Theory! :D ).
Ciao
Amleto
PS: the Borromini’s High School years together were the best :)
Hey Amleto, thanks! I agree, those were fun years. It’s been a while! (Se ti va, mandami una mail, sarebbe bello restare in contatto.)
I truly don’t understand how an otherwise seemingly intelligent professor has such consistent terrible takes. You’ve already publicly outed yourself as a NIMBY and gone on unreasonable rants about marijuana. Now you want parents to voluntarily act as scabs against teachers, a notoriously underpaid, underappreciated, and overworked profession? I get you’re frustrated about kids being home, but come on man…
Thank you for your message. I am not sure what’s so unreasonable (about this or the marijuana), all I am saying is that it would be nice to have more community here and provide some structure and social and learning opportunities while this is being resolved. And I don’t see why it would be “against” the teachers.
From your link: “…on Tuesday, the mayor for the first time participated in negotiations.” Do you think she should have gotten involved in this sooner?
Yes, I tend to think this was really weak leadership, especially because she’s doing it now, so it could have been done much earlier. What, only now things are serious enough? The NTA has been calling for this for weeks. Of course, she is saying there’s a limited number of seats at the table, in other towns mayors didn’t participate, etc. On the other hand there’s also videos of people trying to talk to her and she disappears from the back door. It’s hard to know who’s right, there’s a lot of numbers to be crunched if you really want to understand. But the easy numbers are that the school system has been rapidly declining in reputation since I moved here and she became mayor, class sizes have been swelling, AP offerings dwindling. At the same time a lot of money is being apparently squandered for things I value much less, or simply don’t want! Constructions I don’t want are booming. I generally would rather support anything that improves the school system.