Teacher Walkouts Keep Nearly 100,000 Students Out of Class

Teachers in Rochester, N. H., staged a “sick-out” Tuesday to protest having their salaries frozen, canceling classes for 3,700 students. Meanwhile, professors at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey went to work without a contract settlement.

Continuing labor disputes nationwide left nearly 100,000 elementary and secondary students in 23 school districts without teachers. Officials said that 19,200 pupils in Illinois, 5,400 in Massachusetts, 17,471 in Michigan, 4,100 in Ohio, 44,471 in Pennsylvania, 1,900 in Rhode Island and 1,500 in Washington state were affected.

In Illinois, 102 teachers at Mount Vernon Township High School voted to strike over pay on Tuesday. No new negotiations were scheduled in the dispute, which affects about 1,600 students.

Rochester School Supt. Dick Hamilton said that about 100 of the 250 teachers in the district called in sick Monday night and said they would be absent from school Tuesday. Classes were canceled in the interest of safety, he said. The teachers apparently were protesting a decision to freeze their salaries at last year’s levels.

Professors End Walkout

In New Jersey, a strike affecting 14,000 students at Fairleigh Dickinson University ended when 426 professors returned to work at the school’s three campuses, administration spokesman Regis Ebner said. Ebner said that negotiations on salary and governance issues would continue. The walkout began Sept. 3.

A petition to decertify the university’s chapter of the American Assn. of University Professors as bargaining agent for the professors will be filed, Ebner said.

In South Holland, Ill., a professors’ strike at Thornton Community College kept about 10,000 students away from classes.

In Massachusetts, an overnight negotiating session failed to resolve differences between the Attleboro School Department and 400 unionized teachers who have been on strike for a week.

Court Hearing Resumed

The Attleboro Teachers resumed picketing and their union leaders appeared for a contempt-of-court hearing that began Monday but was postponed when the judge urged both sides to try to reach a contract settlement.

In Wissahickon, Pa., about 150 seniors protesting a teacher walkout there refused to enter school. Students carrying makeshift signs picketed alongside some of the district’s 221 teachers, who have been on strike since Sept. 3.