Picket Duty : A Tearful Time for a Teacher

Ginny Stickney broke into tears as the school buses arrived.

Children on the buses smiled and waved at her. And Stickney, who teaches third grade but on Wednesday was on strike, started weeping. “I love those children,” she said.

Stickney had tears on her cheeks most of the morning as she and other teachers carried picket signs in front of their school, Perry Elementary in Huntington Beach. “It’s not in the nature of teachers to be on strike,” Stickney said.

Stickney, 42, of Laguna Beach, has been a teacher for about 15 years--a hard occupation that tends to weed out, by attrition, the physically or emotionally frail.

Stickney had a bout with cancer of the thyroid about six years ago. She had to miss about five years of school and go on unpaid leave of absence. But she won the battle with cancer and returned to Perry School two years ago. It felt grand, she said, to be back with the schoolchildren.

“I never thought I’d be on strike,” she said. “This is the first time teachers in our school district have ever been on strike. We’ve never even been close to a strike before. But this time it’s necessary. We have to fight to be paid what we’re worth. I have an MBA (master of business administration degree), and I could certainly make more money in some other field. But I love teaching.”

Stickney, in fact, has three graduate degrees: two masters’ in education-related subjects in addition to the master’s in business administration. She noted that she has spent large chunks of her adult life becoming educated. In return, she said, she and other teachers expect to at least be kept ahead of the annual cost-of-living increases.

The Huntington Beach City School District, where Stickney and the other strikers teach, is offering a 3.5% pay raise this year. The consumer price index for the Los Angeles-Anaheim-Riverside urban areas rose 4.4% between March, 1987, and March of this year, according to the state’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. Stickney’s union is asking for a 5.5% pay raise for the Huntington Beach teachers.

Stickney said her annual salary is about $38,000 a year. “The main reason I am working is for my children,” she said. “I want them to be able to go to a good college, and college is expensive.”

She and her husband, Sam, an electrical contractor, have two sons, Chad, 8, and Brent, 13. Brent on Wednesday morning walked the picket line with his mother.

“Brent is studying representative democracy in school, and I thought he might as well see firsthand how things like this take place,” his mother said.

“I’d like people like my son to come into teaching, and they won’t unless the teaching profession gets respect.” She said researchers have found that a prime reason the teaching profession is held in low regard by many Americans is because of the low pay.

“The average pay raise for teachers in Orange County this year is 4.5%,” Stickney said. “The teachers felt we should at least be offered the county average.”

Stickney served as the “crisis representative” for teachers at Perry School--a sort of captain of the strikers. The other men and women in the picket line frequently gave her words of support and encouragement.

‘I Like Mrs. Stickney’

Even so, Stickney found the morning emotionally draining. When one of her third-graders, 9-year-old Deanna Walsh, walked up to the schoolyard, the child saw Stickney, rushed to her and hugged her. Stickney burst into tears again.

“I like Mrs. Stickney,” Deanna said shyly. “She’s just like a mother.”

Stickney said that to try to help her students understand why she was on strike, she left a letter to the students in the classroom.

Part of that letter read:

“I care a great deal about each of my students, almost as though you were my own. I know your parents entrust you to my care every day, and I take that responsibility very seriously. A decision to strike is a very hard one for a teacher to make.

“But when we feel strongly about something, it is our right and duty to put actions behind our words. I hope this situation will be over soon. I, too, like things to be normal and peaceful.”