Based on Monday's no-progress bargaining session between negotiators for the Seneca Valley School District and its teachers union, it looks more likely that the current strike will run its full lawful course before the district's more than 7,000 students return to their classrooms.

While families have been adjusting to the schools' shutdown, students have not yet felt the unwelcome impact of the teachers' work stoppage. That will come when their long Christmas break and other scheduled holiday days become makeup days, and when the scheduled end of the school year passes with class days still remaining.

For seniors counting on summer employment to earn money for college expenses, there are problems ahead — when jobs are lost because of the inability to report for work early in the summer due to the extended school year.

Then there's the uncertainty about what the coming winter holds for Western Pennsylvania.

While state law dictates that the duration of the current teachers strike cannot push classes beyond June 15, there is nothing preventing the school district from tacking on days until June 30, the end of the fiscal year, for weather makeup days.

There's also the possibility of a second strike this school year, if the two sides are unsuccessful in non-binding arbitration. Law allows that second strike, if it were to be carried out, to also extend the school year through June 30.

If the combination of a strike or strikes and the weather prohibit the district from providing 180 instruction days by June 30, the district would lose state subsidy money —about $70,000 a day — for the instruction days that could not be fit into the fiscal year.

The period from June 15 through June 30 would further disrupt students' summer job prospects and some families' vacation plans, and it presumably would have a similar impact on teachers who have summer jobs or who enroll in classes during the traditional off-months.

Also, some teachers who might have been optimistic about a settlement in recent months, already might have made plans or paid deposit fees for late-June trips.

Those trips could be scuttled.

But, unlike the situation facing students and families, the teachers are the ones holding their own summer plans hostage, and they have the power to urge their leaders to lower the union's demands if they feel that what is being sought is excessive.

Reportedly, some teachers embrace that position.

For the Seneca Valley community, the most frustrating aspect of the current impasse is that the two sides remain so far apart more than a year after the teachers' previous contract expired on June 30, 2006.

The two sides reportedly are approximately $14 million apart on wages and about $350,000 apart on health care contributions for a five-year pact. The teachers have remained steadfast in their demand for pay raises of more than 6 percent for each year of the proposed contract — more than double the inflation rate — while the district has remained steadfast in offering 4 percent annual salary hikes (what the district says is its last, best offer) that also exceed the inflation rate.

Prior to the start of the strike, the district said it would reduce that last, best offer for each day that the teachers are on strike. Whether the district follows through on that threat remains to be seen in the deal that eventually is hammered out.

Judging from school district negotiators' stance, they are prepared to accept whatever subsidy consequences result, in their desire to spare district taxpayers from significant tax increases that they say would result if the district were to cave in to the teachers' demands.

In addition to whatever future impact that a teachers contract holds, taxpayers also face a big financial hit in coming years as a result of state lawmakers' vote in 2001 to increase teachers' retirement benefits by 25 percent.

As for the district and the potential for $70,000-a-day losses for instructional days that it might not be able to provide, that impact would be felt during the 2008-09 fiscal year, when the state will reimburse districts for 2007-08.

The Seneca Valley Education Association has contended all along that the district's $14.1 million fund balance is big enough to meet its demands. However, Tom King, the district's chief negotiator, has countered that, assuming no money is added, the fund would be exhausted by the new contract's third year.

Meanwhile, the growth in the district has posed many challenges for Seneca Valley in recent years and it remains to be seen what new challenges the district and its taxpayers might face as a result of the arrival of the new Westinghouse headquarters and other new enterprises.

It's many taxpayers' opinion that just because the district has been able to accumulate the surplus doesn't mean the district should cave in to the union's demands — which many taxpayers regard as excessive.

Having seen the surplus injected into the contract dispute by the teachers, some residents might prefer that, rather than the money being given away in higher wages, that the district return the money to the taxpayers so it no longer will be a bargaining issue.

Already in its second week with no end in sight, the strike portends to result in bitterness that will take a long time to repair.

The bottom line is that if both sides hold firm to their current positions, Seneca Valley will enter the 2008-09 fiscal year without an approved pact in place and with continued dissension and unrest.

The Seneca Valley strike has many troubling tentacles capable of writing many unwelcome chapters for the district. Both sides should acknowledge that possibility as they weigh their negotiations positions in the days ahead.