OEA’s 2007 Agenda
Tuesday, December 19th, 2006 By David HansenMike Antonucci reports in his EIA Communique that the OEA is on the hunt for still more money for failing schools.
Ohio Education Association Plans Constitutional Amendment for 2007 Ballot. The Ohio Education Association Representative Assembly passed a new business item earlier this month that sets the stage for placing a constitutional amendment on the November 2007 ballot to address school funding.
The agenda item calls on the union to “use all necessary resources and take a leadership role to work with the governor, legislature and coalition partners to draft and support a constitutional amendment to guarantee a quality public education as a fundamental right for all children in the state of Ohio.”
The item goes on to direct that the proposed amendment include provisions for growth in school expenditures and an end to what the union sees as an over-reliance on local property taxes. If agreement is not reached with the governor and legislature, the union plans to use the ballot initiative process to place the issue before the voters in the November 2007 election.
EIA readers got wind of this last June (see Item #6), but the delegate action makes the effort official union policy.
Hmmm. So according to the OEA, it is bad to write into the Constitution explicit protections of economic freedom in the form of the TEL, but it is good to write into the constitution a teacher pay escalator and job guarentees unavailable to us in the private sector (and who pay through our taxes for these public employee perks). Does anyone else feel like they are working for government school teachers instead of them working for us?
