OEA putting kids before politics?
Thursday, June 11th, 2009 By Beth Lear
That would certainly be a first! On their website, the Ohio Education Association is declaring the need to “put our kids ahead of politics”. Oh the irony!
I can still hear Albert Shanker’s famous words ringing in my ears. It’s burned in my memory, because it’s the most honest statement I’ve ever heard from the teachers’ unions: ”I’ll start representing kids when kids start paying union dues.”
Most teachers support their students, but teachers’ unions do not. They support the Strickland/Democrat House plan because it’s tens of thousands of more dollars in their pockets from the $1 billion increase in education funding focused on increasing the number of teachers! All the research proving that throwing more money at education doesn’t improve academics is irrelevant to them. All the evidence that we’re in a severe economic slump, and Ohio is hurting more than most, does not concern the OEA. The fact that more and more Ohio taxpayers are finding themselves out of work, over 10% now, doesn’t change the union’s tune one bit. They want more taxpayer dollars to pay for more teachers to get more dues to support more pro-union politicians. How is that “putting kids before politics”?
The whole lack-of-evidence funding scheme is about payback to the unions who heavily supported Strickland and House Democrats in the last election. And all Ohioans get what the majority of voters asked for – more spending, bigger government, higher unemployment, and loads of new TEMPORARY union jobs. The jobs and spending will be unsustainable, but that’s irrelevant to those oinkers feeding at the government trough. And that, my friends, is putting politics before kids.
