Taxpayers of the Mars School District owe district teachers a debt of gratitude for their acceptance of a one-year wage freeze that will help ease the district’s financial pressures.

Teachers in no other Butler County public school district agreed to the one-year freeze requested by Gov. Tom Corbett in March when he introduced his 2011-12 state budget proposal.

Two districts made smaller concessions. Butler teachers accepted just a small increase in their payments for health care coverage. Freeport teachers voted to give up only a part of a scheduled 6.17 percent 2011-12 pay increase.

Not only will the Mars teachers’ decision benefit the district during the current fiscal year, which began July 1, it will have cumulative effects during future years.

Teachers in only a handful of districts across the state projected a spirit of generosity like the teachers at Mars.

“The (Mars Area Education) association members understand the burden that Gov. Tom Corbett and legislators have placed on our public schools by gutting nearly a billion dollars in public school funding, so we tried to work with the district to confront the reality as it affects Mars School District and Mars students,” said Marcus Schlegel, a Pennsylvania State Education Association representative.

Schlegel, although refusing to divulge the teachers’ vote count, said teachers wanted to join with administrators, cafeteria workers and the district solicitor in acknowledging the current financial climate in education by agreeing to the freeze.

For the most part, teachers in other county districts chose to ignore that situation, regardless of the effect that would have on homeowners’ taxes.

In some if not most cases, those refusals will translate into the need for higher tax millage in the years ahead.

While Mars also will face the prospect of higher taxes, the teachers’ decision in the vote conducted Thursday will help the district make ends meet more easily — not only this year but for future years.

Thursday’s decision was included in the vote on a 2011-12 teachers contract that Schlegel said is a carbon copy of the previous contract that expired June 30.

While Mars teachers, like their colleagues in other districts, pay much less for their health care coverage than many workers in the private sector, that issue can be addressed in negotiations for what might be a multi-year contract beginning in 2012-13.

Suffice to say that the current wage freeze is a generous installment toward the district’s financial well-being for the short and longer term. It is an installment many other workers in the private sector have had to accept to keep their companies and jobs intact.

That was part of what Corbett alluded to in asking teachers to agree to sacrifice in these tough financial times.

The Mars School Board voted to approve the new contract on Aug. 9. According to Schlegel, negotiations toward a pact for 2012-13 and beyond will likely begin in January.

It is to be hoped that those talks will reflect the economic realities in play at that time while also acknowledging the teachers’ needs.

For now, the Mars district and its teachers are standing tall for what they have been able to accomplish, and for the concern for district taxpayers that the agreement represents.

Other districts experiencing serious financial stress — and even those that are not — should take notice.