Audience members impacted by the Ottawa Township High School teachers' union strike are looking for just one thing — a solution.

About 150 to 200 students, parents and community members attended a forum Tuesday night hosted by the OTHS Education Association to answer questions and share their side of the breakdown in negotiations that led to the strike that began Sept. 30.

While those attending differed on who was right, the majority agreed the two sides were at an impasse and binding arbitration may be needed to settle the dispute and get children back to class.

"It seems like the only way out is to arbitrate," said an audience member.

Four OTHS teachers — Joe Haywood, Bryan Guenther, Sue Williamson and Steve Johnson — fielded the majority of questions, with members of the union's negotiating team also weighing in.

Residents questioned why the teachers hadn't taken the board's last proposal to its membership for a vote, as the board had requested.

"Our entire association is kept informed and the overwhelming majority of teachers do not need or want a vote," said Williamson.

The problem, she added, is that with the board's latest proposal, 35 percent of the teachers in the membership will take a pay cut because of insurance contributions.

Some in the audience supported that stance, but others questioned it, saying many people in the community were losing out on take-home pay because of increases to their insurance plans, pay freezes and even pay cuts necessary to hold onto their jobs.

Teachers said they would be more willing to make sacrifices if they knew the district was in financial straits. They said so far the board has not provided them with a copy of the budget and has not filed it with the state, instead requesting an extension.

"If the board showed us they were in trouble, we would be with the board," said Williamson. "But they haven't showed us a financial report."

Teachers were also critical of the self-insurance program they said cost the taxpayers more than what is paid by other school districts and in the private sector. Work has been done to come up with a new plan with better coverage at the same or better rate, but the board has not accepted those ideas.

Teachers also said they would not go back to school and continue negotiating because given the board's reluctance to meet now, they did not trust that bargaining would continue in good faith. Students could be uprooted again if the union went back on strike.

Union members were critical of the board's reluctance to meet to negotiate and to stay late until an agreement was reached. Haywood, who served on the negotiating team when Ottawa Elementary School teachers went on strike in 2003, said they met every night until an agreement was brokered.

Of the 20 days the teachers have been out, the two sides have met only four times, said Johnson.

Many questions from the audience centered around arbitration, a position the union supports. Union members said the cost would likely be about $10,000. While a solution may be months away, they said, they would return to school while a neutral third party made the final call.

"The minute the board says we go to arbitration is the minute 113 teachers walk back into school,"said Williamson. "But we'd prefer to negotiate to a settlement."

Teachers were reluctant to assign blame as to why the two sides couldn't come together, saying it was about personalities. Pete Armstrong, a member of the negotiating team who has served on three other negotiating teams, said in the past this level of tension has not been present as a contract was hammered out.

He also explained why the union has not released its numbers to the media, as the school board has done.

"We have never negotiated in the press," he said. "We take it to our membership. We bring it to them first because the paper doesn't always get it right."

"But as parents, we need to know what you are arguing about," said Renee Hermann, a parent of three OTHSstudents.

One resident suggested that if personalities are getting in the way of settling the dispute maybe new negotiating teams should be appointed. But others believed — standing and clapping in a show of support — that it is time to contact board members and urge either arbitration or negotiating until an agreement is reached.

"The bottom line," said Tim Burgess, a member of the OTHS negotiating team, "is that they need to hear from you guys."

Gene Duffy, a 12-year veteran of the Wallace Elementary School Board and the parent of an OTHS student, agreed.

He said he served on the negotiations committee for 10 years and sometimes things got emotional but the two sides were able to establish trust. He'd like to see the same at OTHS and called on audience members to become more involved, exercising their rights as taxpayers to call their school board members and get to the polls during elections.

"All this rhetoric doesn't do any good unless you people do something," he said.