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Our County's Board of Education is basically trying to screw over the teachers. They met with a third party mediator and agreed that they would go with what the mediator decided. With that decision, the Teachers Association would give a little to gain a little as would the Board. However, the Board went against this promise and decided that they didn't want to give anything because they are incapable of compromising.

Our protest to the Board of Education as students was not as successful as we thought it'd be. I hope they at least listened to us. My two friends and I organized the event, writing speeches and getting other friends to come with us. We broke it up into six speeches: an introduction stressing our independence, a speech focusing on the importance of teachers' planning time, one on benefits, one on the idea of compromise and arbitrators (this one was a teensy bit condescending, but we honestly think it was still rather polite and that there was nothing wrong with pointing out exactly what a compromise is and that some of them need to learn how to do it again), then I did one on how much the teachers do for us and that they're not obligated to do any of it--they do it because they're great people, and then we had a closing speech tying everything together and addressing once again that we've acted on our own without the teachers' influence.

The Board brought another total BS motion, which almost got unanimous approval.

The teachers all came up to us afterward and thanked us for everything and complimented us on how great we all sounded and that we're all brave and lots of other nice things. Even though the Board didn't listen, I'm still happy that the teachers know that they're not fighting this alone.