STRIKE COULD CREATE SNAG FOR FUTURE

CAIRO, Ill. -- The Cairo Public School District has days built in to its school calendar for emergencies but those will be used up today.

"We have about eight emergency days," said Ron Newell, president of the Cairo Association of Teachers, which entered its eighth day on strike today.

Teachers and students may be attending school here in mid- to late-June if the teachers' strike that started Nov. 17 lingers.

It could: Representatives of the teachers association said Monday that teachers were braced for "a long haul."

"We've made our proposal, and our members say don't back down," said Newell.

The Cairo Board of Education has taken the same position.

"The board has made an offer that it can afford," said Dr. Elaine Bonifield, superintendent of schools. "The board will not discuss the teachers' proposal."

A long-haul strike could create problems.

In the case of a 1993 teachers' strike at Carmi, teachers and students lost part of their Christmas vacation and all of their Easter vacation, and attended school through June 24.

"Still, we didn't make up eight days," said a spokesperson in the Carmi superintendent's office. "We lost state funding for those eight days."

The Carmi-White County strike began Sept. 13, 1993. After the first month of the strike, school boards from Wabash, Fairfield and Harrisburg sued because special-education students from their districts attended Brownsville School in the Carmi-White County District and were unable to attend class because of the labor dispute. They argued that federal law prohibits a disruption in educational services for special-education students.

However, U.S. District Judge J. Phil Gilbert said the federal courts do not have jurisdiction in public-school labor disputes and refused to intervene in the strike, which ended Nov. 3.