Editorial: North Shore kids learn parents, not teachers, have their backs

Parents are fighting back at school closures due to striking North Shore teachers who have put students’ education — and extracurriculars — in peril.

As the Marblehead Current reported, two Marblehead parents were planning to file a petition Tuesday for emergency injunctive relief in Salem Superior Court to allow Marblehead students to participate in athletics and other extracurriculars during a teacher strike, which has shut schools in that town, Beverly and Gloucester.

Students and families are collateral damage during teacher strikes. The state is already making a slow recovery from pandemic learning loss, interrupting the school year with closures not helping. How are students to catch up with lessons lost during the strike? How are families expected to scramble for child care as they suddenly have school-age children not in school? These points get lost in protests over wages and benefits.

But students face more than missed classes. The strike also affects school athletics.

Jon Wales, whose two sons play Marblehead High School football, is one of the parents filing the injunction.

“One of the things we’ve been doing the last three-to-five days is identifying every team, every club, every event coming up,” Wales told the Current Monday. “We’ve been talking with parents involved with those teams to make them plaintiffs in this action. That’s been our focus.”

There are important games, competitions and field trips coming up. The MHS football team game in the Division 4 quarter-finals this Friday night in Grafton.

“They’re on a seven-game winning streak,” Wales pointed out, “and because of the adults in the room they will have to forfeit.” Since the finals are single-elimination, this would mark the end of the Magicians’ season, except for the Thanksgiving Day game at Fenway.

Also on the chopping block:

Junior varsity football’s last game of the year against St. Mary’s.

Performing Arts Senior Showcase in Boston Wednesday.

A field trip to the Boston Symphony Orchestra, with a total cost of $8,000 raised by parents.

The girls and boys cross country teams’ state meet this weekend.

Cheer team’s regional competition this weekend.

The MHS robotics team’s competition Nov. 23.

MHS powderpuff’s annual game against Swampscott on Nov. 23.

Will striking teachers reimburse parents for the BSO trip? How will teachers make up for the events and games facing the scrap heap?

They can’t, and the students are powerless in this. They always are in school disputes.

The kids are gaining a valuable lesson in all this: Teachers’ strikes are illegal in Massachusetts, but apparently following the law is optional.

And while sports and other school events that mean so much to students and their families are forfeit fodder for teachers, these kids now now their parents have their backs and are taking steps to get the school year back on track.

Things will be awkward, to say the least, post-strike when teachers face the students who may have lost out on season-ending games and other memorable events. But the scene around some North Shore dinner tables should be anything but frosty.

Good job parents, for putting your children first.