Teachers’ Strike Brings Chaos To School

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29797, 13 April 1962, Page 11

Teachers’ Strike Brings Chaos To School

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) NEW YORK, April 12. The New York public school system was almost crippled today as more than half of the city’s 40,(MM) teachers continued their strike for higher pay.

The Board of Education has obtained a Supreme Court injunction against the strike. However, the head of the striking United Federtion of Teachers (Mr Charles Cogen) said his group would defy the order. Yesterday classroom disci-

pline collapsed in many schools and idle students by the thousands ran wild inside the buildings and rampaged through the streets outside.

Defying police, non-strik-ing teachers and strike pickets who tried to quell them, disorderly boys got out of hand at several schools and engaged in wild melees. The boys battled each other with their fists.

They threw toilet paper, books and other articles out of school windows. Outside the schools, they hammered on cars, threw stones and eggs, shouted jeers and catcalls at adults and created general pandemonium. The most serious incidents erupted at Seward Park High School, in Lower Manhattan. when 2300 pupils began hurling books and paoers out of the windows. Then they surged into the streets and began fighting among themselves.

Police broke up the fighting and closed the school, said the British United Press. More than 20 schools were closed yesterday with their tens of thousands of pupils turned loose. Countless others went through the motions of holding classes The board said it was unable to tell how many of the Im city school students attended yesterday. Strike To Continue

After a protest meeting, a strike official told reporters that the strike would continue and that picketing would be intensified today. Defiance of the court order could lead to the arrest of the strikers and leaders for contempt. They also face possible loss of their jobs under a State law banning strikes by public employees

One Board of Education official claimed their jobs were already forfeited. But the New York Mayor (Mr Robert Wagner) announced that his legal srtaff was work, ing on plans to allow striking teachers to return to their schools “with dignity and without penalty.”