I've been lax in my reading of the Seattle Times editorial board, so I've only just come across this bit of vindictive whining in response to the end to the Tacoma teachers strike:

Pierce County Superior Court Judge Bryan Chushcoff was too passive as teachers flouted his threat of sanctions for noncompliance with a court order to return to work.

So the editors would have preferred what? Fines? Imprisonment? Executions? The strike is over, and the kids are back in school, but I mean, fuck reconciliation. The union-hating editors at the Seattle Times can only be satisfied by blood.

Of course, this demand for teachers to be punished for exercising their right to strike (and yes, the teachers have a right to strike, they just don't enjoy the normal legal protections afforded strikers), isn't just anti-union, it's anti-teacher. Which is pretty much par for the course these days when it comes to the way we debate public education. After all, it's much, much easier to scapegoat teachers for what ails our schools then it is to, you know, raise the taxes necessary to adequately fund them.

I've been known to joke that the problem with Seattle's middle schools is all those damn middle school-aged kids. If we could just get rid of all those pesky students, our middle schools would be just fine. Well, the blame-the-teachers "reform" movement is no more profound.