Once Bitterly Divided, N.J. District Achieves Accord

It was an ending to teachers’ contract talks that only cockeyed optimists in Middletown, N.J., would have been likely to predict a year ago: praise for both sides, hugs all around, and an agreement ratified more than two months before the current one expires.

Not in more than 30 years have the Middletown Township district and its teachers’ union come to terms before a contract was up. Moreover, strikes preceded both of the last two contracts—the second one, in 2001, landing 228 Middletown teachers in jail for as long as three days.

But now, observers say, that...