By Ben Velderman
EAGnews.org

LAKE FOREST, Ill. – The 150 teachers of Lake Forest High School ended their five-day strike early Wednesday morning and were back in class a few hours later, reports the Chicago Tribune.

The Lake Forest Education Association – the local teachers union – has been threatening to strike since late 2011, so the community must be anxious to learn the details of the agreement that finally ended months of contentious contract negotiations.

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But residents will have to wait for those details, because neither side is talking, at least until union members officially ratify the new pact sometime next week. By then, it will be too late for Lake Forest taxpayers to demand any changes to the deal – which is exactly the Education Establishment’s plan.

Before this new contract, Lake Forest teachers were already among the highest-paid in the state, with the average income north of $100,000 a year. One of the reasons for the LFEA strike was the union’s demand for pay raises of 5 to 6.5 percent, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Everybody involved in the contract negotiations knows it’s outrageous and irresponsible for Lake Forest teachers to be demanding a hefty pay raise when Illinois is in the middle of a historic financial crisis. The state’s economy is among the worst in the nation. Lawmakers have already passed huge tax increases and are searching for ways to keep the state teachers’ pension fund from going bankrupt.

Lake Forest residents – the people who actually pay the school district’s bills – will probably be angry when they discover how much this new contract is going to cost them. There’s a chance they might become furious if the new agreement takes money away from student programs to fund teacher pay raises.

Members of the Education Establishment understand this, and have circled the wagons to protect each other from the potential backlash. It only proves that even though school administrators and union members may squabble, at the end of the day they’re all on the same team and they look out for each other.

Lake Forest’s teachers strike was nothing more than a lover’s spat, and now the two sides can once again work together to keep parents and taxpayers at bay.

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What makes this slightly ironic is Illinois’ new education reform law, which requires feuding school district and union officials to make their final, best contract offers public once negotiations are declared to be at an impasse.

An obvious companion law would be to require the two sides to allow community members to monitor contract negotiations. Many districts across the nation are now doing this in the name of transparency.

Since teacher contracts affect everything from the local tax rate to the length of the school day and year, community members have the absolute right to know what’s being discussed and how it will affect them.

It’s time to end the secrecy.