Teacher Sickout Shuts Down Wisconsin District

By Jeff Archer

Strikes by public employees, including teachers, have been illegal in Wisconsin for more than two decades. But don't tell that to the students in the state's third-largest district, where a labor dispute shut down the entire system for two days last week.

Administrators of the 21,000-student Racine district closed all the schools Feb. 23 and 24 after a week in which hundreds of teachers called in sick. The absences followed the breakdown of negotiations between district officials and the Racine Education Association, an affiliate of the National Education Association. The two sides went into this school year still negotiating a contract for 1995-96 and 1996-97.

The strife has some state education and labor leaders concerned that the same financial caps that helped precipitate the Racine shutdown...