Defiant, Striking N.J. Teachers Jailed

For the first time in 23 years, a judge took the extraordinary step of jailing teachers in New Jersey for criminal contempt when they ignored a court order to end a strike.

Amid tears and vows not to return to work until they received a new contract, teachers in Monmouth County’s biggest school district Tuesday told Superior Court Judge Clarkson S. Fisher Jr. they would rather be behind bars than bow to school administrators they distrust in the central New Jersey suburb of Middletown Township.

The judge began sentencing teachers Monday in alphabetical order. Fisher reached the Cs on Tuesday and there are now 47 teachers in the Monmouth County Jail, where officials said they were being housed two to a cell.

“Everyone I know who has been in the courtroom has come out in tears,” said Karen Joseph, a spokeswoman for the union. “The people who stand in front of the hall of records are in tears when they cheer the people who have to go in.

“There is this bucolic Christmas tree and Christmas lights and evergreens. . . . It’s not a happy holiday season here. Every couple of hours, we have to watch people being taken to jail in handcuffs.”

“I think the judge is caught between a rock and a hard place,” said Patrice Thornton, a drama and English teacher for more than 20 years in the district. “He’s caught between the letter of the law and what he ethically and morally feels is right.”

Starting today, an additional judge will be assigned to the labor dispute, which could speed the jailings.

As darkness descended, hundreds of teachers gathered in front of the building housing Fisher’s court for a protest vigil.

A negotiating session took place Tuesday night at a hotel in Red Bank, N.J., with two mediators present.

The strike began Thursday after talks broke down primarily over the amount the more than 900 teachers will contribute for medical benefits. All 17 schools in the district were shut, leaving 10,500 students without classes.

Fisher, at the request of the school board, issued a back-to-work order. When the teachers refused, he threatened jail. The board had wanted a tougher penalty--that the strikers be fired.

Negotiators for the Board of Education are demanding that the teachers, who average about $56,000, a year, contribute on a sliding scale up to 7% of their salaries to cover medical benefits. Teachers contend that could eclipse any salary increases they receive.

Among the speakers at the rally was Jean Bennett, a member of the union’s bargaining committee, who was let out of jail temporarily by Fisher to attend the meeting with the mediators.

“We are angry and scared about having to go to jail. It’s awful,” said Jim Pincus, a high school math teacher for 33 years.

“The Board of Education has been mistreating us for years and trying to destroy the union for years,” he charged.

Mary Grace Killmer, a calculus teacher for 30 years, said she was served with a subpoena for defying a court order Friday as she watched her principal point her out. When she got home, she found a second subpoena jammed in the front door of her porch.

“I feel numb,” she said.

In the past, members of the Middletown Township Education Assn. and the Board of Education have experienced bitter relations. The teachers went on strike for a week in 1998.

An hour before Fisher was to start a hearing that could have resulted in the dismissal of the strikers, the 1998 labor disputed was settled.

Strikes by teachers and other public employees are illegal in New Jersey. Generally, pressure from courts has been sufficient to bring resolution at the bargaining table.

But during a strike in Camden, N.J., in 1978, several teachers were sent to jail for 26 days before that labor dispute was settled.