Three years is a long time to work without a contract. Unless you’re a teacher in Pennsylvania. Then it’s not very surprising at all. Take South Butler School District — which last week held the latest meeting in a series of contract negotiations that have run on for (you guessed it) going on three years now.

The thing is, the situation on display at South Butler isn’t all that uncommon. Teachers unions and school districts routinely push contract negotiations through years of proposals and counterproposals — and that’s despite most discussions beginning well in advance of the expiration date of the previous contract.

Currently the longest-standing contract dispute in Butler County is at South Butler, where teachers have been working without a collective bargaining agreement since June 30, 2014.

On balance, there’s nothing wrong with lengthy negotiation periods. They can help the parties refine their proposals, figure out what aspects of a deal are most important to their members and strike a balance between taxpayer and union interests.

As a practical matter, however, things aren’t so simple. Lengthy contract negotiations can also cost both sides money, sour public opinion on their elected officials and district employees, and siphon off valuable time and energy.

Finally, there’s the fatigue factor and its impact on future negotiations. The term of a delayed teacher contract is often retroactive to the date of the previous contract’s expiration. So after three years of negotiating a new five-year deal, teachers and school board members must often prepare to jump right back into negotiations. The process can become an exhausting and exasperating cycle that brings out the worst in both parties and produces lackluster deals — or another self-defeating cycle of extended negotiations.

Having said all that, let’s take a moment to appreciate the professionalism with which our county’s school districts and teachers unions approach these matters — because elsewhere it’s not nearly so genial.

Earlier this month a Philadelphia teacher put up a billboard criticizing city and school district officials for what he called lackluster teacher pay. After years of contract talks at Neshaminy School District in Bucks County, negotiations effectively blew up, with the school board president going public with negotiation details and some union members waging a campaign of intimidation and harassment.

It speaks to the character of our school districts that those things don’t happen here. But the problem at hand persists. Pennsylvania needs a better, more expeditious way to formulate union contracts with the men and women responsible for helping educate our young people. If you think these protracted stalemates aren’t costing our state young, promising teachers, think again.

What we’re seeing play out in South Butler School District right now isn’t an exceptional case. It’s par for the course in Pennsylvania. That’s a problem we need to learn from and correct, post haste.