It’s certainly no surprise that the Greensboro News & Record would support tomorrow’s teacher walkout and protest in Raleigh. But read the editorial closely, and you’ll notice the N&R uses some interesting language, almost as if they’re straining to logically support a walkout that is costing students a day’s learning and putting a strain on parents who have to provide childcare.

For starters, the N&R cites the “responsive” school systems who closed due to the inability to find substitutes for protesting teachers. I would describe the school systems as “reactionary.” Guilford County Schools Superintendent Sharon Contreras said of the board’s decision to close “there is no way we could functionally run schools.” That doesn’t sound “responsive” to me.

The N&R also says the protest will not be a picnic for teachers—“they will have serious work to do”—like chanting “when public schools are under attack….what do we do? Stand up…fight back.”

Last but not least, the N&R says:

Actually our educators will be teaching Wednesday, only in a bigger classroom than usual, offering a civics lesson to the entire state by taking a longer view — not one day, but the decades that are required to teach our children — and by exercising their constitutional right to petition their government.

They may be teaching, but who will be attending class? The rest of us will be somewhere working, earning the money to pay the taxes that pay the teachers’ salaries.