Students in the Duquesne School District need to be in their classrooms.

For too long, this tiny district has suffered from a shrinking tax base, declining population, one of the highest property tax rates in Allegheny County and among the lowest test scores in the state. Things were so bad that the state last year ordered its high school to close and Duquesne's older children now attend neighboring districts.

But yesterday, with the school year only days old, children in kindergarten through eighth grade had to stay home due to a strike over wages by the district's 50 teachers.

Their average salary of $44,000 is the lowest in the county and the pay rates are thousands of dollars a year less than teachers in East Allegheny and West Mifflin, which Duquesne's high school students attend. And the state board of control, which oversees the district, and Allegheny Intermediate Unit, which runs day-to-day operations, didn't help the labor situation when they set far higher salaries for administrators.

The two sides of the negotiating table are very far apart, with the teachers union seeking an unlikely 19 percent raise while the board of control is not budging on its offer of raises of 3 percent.

That doesn't bode well for the district's 462 students. The more interruptions they face in the school year, the less likely they will be able to make the progress they need in their new curriculum for reading, writing, math and science. We hope the adults find common ground, and find it quickly.