N.J. Teachers Get Mixed Reception After Strike

Middletown Township teachers went back to their classrooms Monday after a weeklong walkout that got more than 200 of them thrown in jail.

There were plenty of hard feelings to go around: Teachers, parents and students all expressed resentment over the walkout, which disrupted child-care arrangements, left children idle and teachers feeling unappreciated.

“It’s a serious tear in the community,” said Mel Clifford, an English teacher at Middletown North High School. “I can’t imagine how it will heal.”

In all, 228 teachers were jailed in the nation’s biggest mass teacher lockup since 1978. The teachers are still without a contract, but a judge released them Friday after they agreed to go back to work.

Teachers tried to avoid discussing the strike in the classroom, but they were peppered with questions from students.

“Were you in with murderers?” one asked English teacher Chuck Best, 51. Best, who spent three days in the Monmouth County Jail, said he was relieved to be back in the classroom.

“I’m sad rather than bitter. This is not what I got into teaching for,” he said.

Ryan Oswin, 18, a senior on the wrestling team, said one teacher began to cry when she was pressed about the strike and had to leave the room.

“They want to use us as leverage--as a pawn in the game,” Marc Sim, 17, a senior soccer player, said of the teachers. “I know a lot of the teachers didn’t want to go on strike.”

Superior Court Judge Clarkson Fisher Jr., who jailed the teachers last week, has appointed a mediator to try to break the stalemate between the 1,000-member Middletown Township Education Assn. and the Board of Education.

The teachers’ contract expired June 30. On Nov. 29, more than 700 walked off the job in a dispute over health insurance benefits and were sent to jail after defying Fisher’s back-to-work order.

“They hurt the kids is all they did. And for what?” asked Bill Brown, 46, waiting in his car outside the high school to pick up his daughter.