Who won in Newton? Not the students.

So who won?

Rest assured that the Newton Teachers Association will try to spin a victory narrative after having waged an 11-day strike, the state’s longest teachers strike in three decades.

The union can claim that it won cost-of-living increases of at least 12 percent over 4 years and a generous new parental-leave policy, among other benefits. But the School Committee can also argue that it blunted the union’s most exorbitant demands and fought the good fight for taxpayers, many of whom seem restive about perpetually rising property taxes.

The real question, however, is this: Could the two sides have reached this outcome, which on many levels seems to have essentially split the baby, without engaging in a protracted battle whose sour aftertaste is sure to remain for months? Did either side gain something substantial from a work stoppage whose clearest outcome was to hurt students?

That’s a question both unions and school committees around the state should ponder carefully before the next contract impasse prompts militant calls for another illegal teachers strike. And there will almost certainly be more such impasses: Glenn Koocher, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, told the Globe that 15 to 20 districts are worried about upcoming contract negotiations.

Districts and unions should start by evaluating the impact of strikes on the people for whom the teachers claim to be fighting: students. Study after study has demonstrated that students have been hurt academically, emotionally, and psychologically by the COVID-19 pandemic and the school closures it wrought.

Though high-income, high-achieving districts like Newton have recovered much better than most, more than two weeks of shuttered classrooms are sure to be a setback for most of the city’s nearly 12,000 students, particularly English learners, and those with disabilities or who come from lower-income homes. Many parents made clear that their children felt dismayed and confused by the strike.

“This really impacted, deeply, many people — every parent, every child in Newton in a really difficult, kind of traumatizing way,” Laura Towvim, who has two children at Newton North High School, told the Globe. “When things like that happen, people wonder, ‘How could this have happened here?’ ”

Another question worth pondering is whether the courts, state government, and the state’s congressional delegation could have played more constructive roles in resolving the fight.

Judge Christopher Barry-Smith levied $625,000 in fines against the Newton Teachers Association. But as substantial as that penalty might seem, he scaled back the daily fine midway through the strike, perhaps unwittingly signaling to the union that it could continue to hold out without fear of substantial sanctions.

It seems notable that the strike was resolved only hours after Barry-Smith pledged on Friday to increase the fine to $100,000 a day. That final threat was the right one all along. Teachers strikes are illegal, and fines should not be gentle prods but punitive measures intended to end work stoppages and discourage future illegal actions.

The Massachusetts Teachers Association, the NTA’s parent union, has made it abundantly clear that it would like to rescind the prohibition on teachers strikes. That is of course its right.

But the state’s top elected officials have signaled that they oppose legalizing teachers strikes — opposition that may well have hardened in the wake of the Newton battle.

So long as teachers strikes remain illegal, it would seem only reasonable to expect that the state’s elected officials would not encourage them. Yet that is precisely what the state’s two US senators, Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, did, along with Representative Ayanna Pressley. In a year when Democrats have made the rule of law a pillar in their campaign against former president Donald Trump, the last thing they should be doing is cherry-picking which laws they plan to obey.

Somewhat richly, some Newton teachers asserted that they were simply engaging in civil disobedience because they were in a battle against an unjust law that somehow robbed them of a constitutional right.

Newton is not Selma, Ala., however, and the right to strike is not protected in the state or federal constitutions. If the MTA can win the right to strike from the Legislature, so be it. But there is a solid rationale for not allowing teachers strikes: Unlike workers in most private industries, public school teachers hold a monopoly on their services. When they withhold those services, parents have few options to educate their children beyond homeschooling or sending them to private schools.

During the pandemic school closures, more and more parents did both of those things. The union would do well to take note of that trend. It would also do well to recognize that the mayor and School Committee that it vilified throughout the impasse were elected by voters who may well have supported their holding the line.

Many parents and students are understandably sympathetic to the plight of teachers, who have been priced out of the housing market in places like Newton and who, like many workers, have seen prices rise faster than their incomes. School committees around the state would do well to pay attention to that sympathy as well.

There are many demographic and economic challenges facing public schools today. The student population in Massachusetts is declining even as education costs continue to escalate. The state is aging, heightening resistance to increases in the property taxes that finance local schools.

The time is not right for militancy, for lines in the sand by either side, for overheated rhetoric, or for establishing a pattern of strikes that disrupt life for everyone in the affected communities. Voters and union members should reward civic and union leaders who show an ability to engage in constructive give-and-take and demonstrate an ability to get things done at the bargaining table.

Could the two sides have reached this outcome, which on many levels seems to have essentially split the baby, without engaging in a protracted battle whose sour aftertaste is sure to remain for months?