If South Butler School District teachers ever expect to reach a contract agreement with the district, they ought to move closer to a compromise, not farther away from one.

At a negotiations session Tuesday, the teachers (whose average salary is $51,249) upped their salary demand to 5.2 percent. They had agreed to a salary increase of 4.3 percent proposed by an arbitrator under non-binding arbitration in the spring, but the settlement was shot down as the result of the school board's rejection of the pay increase.

The 5.2 percent increase would take the average salary to $66,033 after five years of the contract.

On Tuesday, the teachers moved farther away from a settlement. At the same time, district residents were shut out of the teachers' reasoning as a result of the teachers union spokesman's unwillingness to make a statement.

Butch Santicola, the Pennsylvania State Education Association representative working as spokesman on behalf of the teachers but who does not actually sit in on the negotiations, deferred comment, saying only "It's not going to be resolved quickly. We're still holding out hope."

District taxpayers deserve a better explanation.

Santicola has a personal interest in the teachers getting a generous contract; his own job in the state group depends on his success in helping local teachers unions maximize their salaries, regardless of the cost to taxpayers and educational disruption caused by a strike.

District residents might be wondering whether success in the talks would be more possible if the board and teachers met without the influence of Santicola or district chief negotiator Tom King. Right-thinking district teachers can't really be anticipating that upping their pay demand will bring the two sides closer to a settlement.

One thing is certain: South Butler teachers aren't negotiating in the spirit of Pittsburgh Penguins winger Bill Guerin and forward Craig Adams, both of whom agreed to pay cuts for the coming season in order to stay with the team and allow the Pens to retain some room within the league salary cap for their negotiations with other players.

Of course, there isn't a "league" salary cap for teachers. The PSEA and many local teachers unions operate under what they perceive to be the limbs of an unlimited-funding tree — the local taxpayers.

Perhaps this state's educational system needs a free-agency provision.

Butler County Prison officials and the county Sheriff's Department merit praise for getting the new prison up and running — four days early.The target date for full operation was Wednesday, but the last county inmate, who had been sent to Lawrence County, was moved to the new Butler facility on South Washington Street on Saturday.That brought to an end the prison construction saga that was 18 months longer than originally projected."We couldn't have asked for a smoother transition," said Warden Rich Gigliotti.And, despite a slightly smaller deputy sheriff contingent, the Sheriff's Department was excellent in the way it handled its transition responsibilities.The smaller deputy staff was not a problem in this instance, Sheriff Dennis Rickard said.In addition to the old Vogely Street prison and the temporary prison annex in the city's tier parking garage, as well as in Lawrence County, Butler County prisoners had been housed most recently in Armstrong, Beaver and Greene counties.Now that the new prison operation has gotten off to a good start, county residents are hopeful that the facility's operation will remain uneventful.It will be the responsibility of the prison staff to ensure such a day-to-day scenario.

The Bush White House was criticized, and rightly so, for being overly secretive and refusing to make public the names of people who had visited the executive mansion for discussions with administration officials over policy.During the presidential campaign, candidate Barack Obama promised an open and transparent government in which the public could see who was involved in influencing, or attempting to influence, policy.For that reason, now-President Obama earns a jeer for refusing to release the names of visitors to the White House. The Obama administration is continuing the same cloaked-in-darkness policy it criticized George W. Bush for defending.The Obama administration does say that the policy is "under review."A request for a list of all White House visitors from Jan. 20 to the present made by MSNBC has been rejected by the Secret Service. A similar request for White House visitor logs has been made by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). It too has been rejected.Obama administration officials claim the visitors log list is a presidential record, and not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. But a federal judge ruled against the Bush White House's attempts to keep its visitor logs secret based on the same executive-secrets argument.Refusal by any president's administration to let the public know who is visiting the White House, presumably to have influence over policy and legislation, is wrong. And it is even more troubling when the refusal comes from an administration that promised repeatedly throughout the campaign to be an open and transparent White House.The American people have a right to know who is visiting the White House to speak with the president and administraton officials. Period.