It’s unfortunate that the South Butler School Board’s rejection of an arbitrator’s teachers contract proposal will set the stage for further unrest in the district.

But the school board was right in standing tough against a contract that is out of sync with current national economic conditions and the difficult challenges many district taxpayers are experiencing as a result.

Unfortunately, the Butler and Slippery Rock school boards ignored their taxpayers in approving sweetheart early bird contracts with their teaching staffs this year. South Butler teachers currently are working under provisions of a contract that expired last June 30.

What the South Butler board rejected Wednesday was a five-year contract, including the current school year. At a time when inflation is below 1 percent nationally, the

proposal would have provided raises of more than 4 percent each year.

The contract proposal also included a laughable concession by the teachers on health care coverage payments — a $5 increase with no change in deductibles. Currently, teachers pay $10 a month for individual coverage or $20 a month for

family coverage. That’s a pittance in comparison with what many other workers in South Butler pay toward their health care plans. And, many of

the plans covering other workers provide much more limited coverage than what South Butler’s teachers receive.

Meanwhile, those with lesser coverages are, through their taxes, paying

for the more comprehensive coverage that the teachers enjoy.

With the $5 increase stipulated in the proposed contract, only $10,000 of the $300,000 increase in health care coverage costs coming next year would be covered.

If the unrealistic spiral that has been marking teacher contracts for many years — and hurting taxpayers with much more limited means along the way — is going to be brought under control, it will necessitate stances like South Butler’s on Wednesday.

Unfortunately, students — and working parents who will have to make daytime child-care arrangements— will be hurt, when tough stances against exorbitant teacher demands result in strikes.

In South Butler’s case, the decision by the board to set seniors’ graduation for June 19, two weeks later than originally scheduled, will keep some seniors from starting or obtaining summer jobs aimed at providing money for college. It’s unfortunate

that those students must get such an early lesson in the perils of a troubled

economy but, unfortunately, that’s one of the products of unreasonable demands and unwillingness to engage in meaningful compromise. Slippery Rock and Butler succumbed to excessive demands, for which their property owners now

will be required to foot the bill.

And, in South Butler, as what occurred in Slippery Rock and Butler, the issue of taxpayers’ big teacher pension obligations starting about 2012 has not been a central point in shaping the direction of the contract talks.

Robert Gifford, the arbitrator in the South Butler contract dispute, sided in most part with an earlier report prepared by a state-appointed fact-finder. Both the teachers and the board rejected the fact-finder’s report in May.

Wednesday’s rejection vote by the board, which makes any vote by the teachers inconsequential, sets the stage for another teachers strike this year, should the teachers opt for that response. The district’s 185 teachers were on strike from Oct. 23 to Nov. 17.

Should another strike be called this year, by law it must end in time for the district to provide 180 days of classroom instruction by June 30.

The final day of school now is scheduled for June 22.

It’s the job of the board and teachers union to achieve a responsible

contract, and the final decisions are theirs alone.

But observers of labor negotiations say the best contract is one in which both sides make concessions and neither side is happy with the final result.

The contract proposal on which the board voted Wednesday was clearly a

win-win deal for teachers and a loselose deal for everyone else.

Regardless of what has occurred in other districts, it is to be hoped that South Butler is able to agree on something much better.