As a teacher, how you do feel about the mass use of sick days to shut the school system down and encouragement by the teachers for students to join in protesting (in lieu of attending school)?
"sick outs" are a standard tool of unions to demonstrate power and resolve - sounds like this union has a legitimate fear and thus needs to demonstrate both those things - admin is within its legal rights to punish the abuse of sick days of coursse, but in reality will likely only intensify hostility if it does so in this case
there is practical educational value for kids (and adults) in participating in politics, but no, i don't tell kids what to think about a particuliar issue, just try to understand the various sides viewpoints personally, present them in some sort of interesting fashion to the kids, then encourage them to sort them out themselves and figure out how to turn their thoughts into practical political actions - just spent my last class helping kids w/ radically different political values then mine map out their plan to destroy that which i want to protect - ironic, eh?
dickhead that i am, were i to encourage my kids to skip school for a protest, i'd of course give them homework to do while they were there