Brook­lyn Friends School is closed today and tomor­row in response to its teach­ers strik­ing against the admin­is­tra­tion’s attempts at union-busting¹. Gothamist reports that as recent­ly as a few days ago the admin­is­tra­tion was work­ing on a “mission-aligned part­ner­ship” with a hir­ing agency so they could get enough sub­sti­tu­tion teach­ers to keep the school open dur­ing the strike. The agency balked when they learned about the strike but the BFS admin­is­tra­tion still has ads for sub­sti­tute teach­ers up on Indeed.

Gothamist includes a quote from long-time teacher Sue Aaronson:

I’ve worked under six heads of school and 16 upper school heads, and so many times what­ev­er process and pro­to­col has been there has been thrown out and the new admin­is­tra­tion has to start all over again… My mantra is that process and pro­to­col shouldn’t depend on the per­son­al­i­ty of admin­is­tra­tors. That means peo­ple are not treat­ed equi­tably and that’s the most impor­tant thing.

The union was vot­ed in before the cur­rent head of school arrived. That the new head want­ed to “decer­ti­fy” it as one of her first acts under­scores Aaron­son’s point.

Not much news report­ing on how the strike is going but the local labor coun­cil tweet­ed out some col­or­ful pic­tures this morn­ing.

Relat­ed: I wrote about the con­flicts at Brook­lyn Friends School in late August, Union Bust­ing and Quak­erism Col­lide at Brook­lyn Friends.

Update, Oct 8: Union win at Brook­lyn Friends

1. Tech­ni­cal­ly, peti­tion­ing the Nation­al Labor Rela­tions Board (NLRB) to clar­i­fy whether BFS employ­ees con­tin­ue to qual­i­fy for union rep­re­sen­ta­tion after Trump offi­cials allowed for exemp­tions for reli­gious institutions.