Students turn to prayer to end strike

About 70 students and parents gathered outside the Seneca Valley School District main campus yesterday to pray for an end to the ongoing teacher strike, now two weeks old. More from the Post-Gazette:

Doug Raraigh, youth ministries director for Dutilh United Methodist Church in Cranberry, came up with the idea of a prayer circle around the flagpole as a way for students to feel they are doing something positive with the strike.

Various Seneca Valley students have come to him "confused and discontented," he said, with both the change in their daily routines and the heated rhetoric from both sides.

The church is remaining neutral in the contract dispute, he said, and he has urged students to consider both sides when they have expressed opinions during Bible study groups.

Meanwhile, board member Paul Adametz defended his comments in the published email that offended the teachers association. From the Tribune-Review:

Adametz, the only Seneca board member who has spoken publicly during the strike, sparked a furor earlier this week with the release of an e-mail in which he said the district has "more than a handful of useless, incompetent, deadwood teachers that I wouldn't want anywhere near my kids."

A new contract should give the board the right to fire 1 percent of the district's teachers at will, Adametz said in the e-mail, which he sent to administrators and other school board members.

Yesterday, he refused to back down from that position. "I do not think every teacher is dead wood, but there are probably more than a few who are not carrying their weight," Adametz said.

Andrekovich called the remarks outrageous and an insult to all of the district's teachers, who worked without a contract from June 2006 until walking out Oct. 15.

"This e-mail shows exactly why we are on strike. Mr. Adametz is pro-voucher and wants to run the Seneca Valley School District into the ground. He does not support public education and does not have the interest on the kids in this district on his mind," Andrekovich said.

Adametz's two children attend a private school.