The teachers' strike that just wrapped up in Woburn followed an arc that is becoming familiar in Massachusetts. Teachers illegally walked off the job; students missed class; community members voiced support; and in the end, the strikers won a new contract with some key concessions.
Now, the Massachusetts Teachers Association and several state legislators are pushing to make strikes like that legal in the future. But should they be legalized, given the disruption they can inflict on students and families? And do they really need to be legal, since they're already happening anyway? Adam Reilly talked through the pros and cons of giving public school teachers the right to strike with Deb McCarthy, the vice president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, and Glenn Koocher, the executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees. The trio also discussed Gov. Maura Healey's opposition to making teacher strikes legal and her seeming interest in rethinking how the high-stakes MCAS test is structured and used in policymaking.
First, though, Reilly discussed a bevy of Boston political topics with Saraya Wintersmith and Sean Phillip Cotter, the city hall reporters for GBH News and the Boston Herald, including the composition of Boston's new reparations task force, the battle over the city's new participatory budgeting process, and the upcoming fight over reshaping the Boston School Committee, which is currently the only such body in Massachusetts not elected by residents.
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