Logic and evidence? Or bullying and intimidation?
A member of a local Pennsylvania teachers union has demanded the resignation of the vice president of the West Chester Area School Board, Heidi Adsett, for suggesting in a letter to the editor that, instead of threatening to strike, teachers unsatisfied with hefty compensation packages try their luck elsewhere.
Adsett had also said that Pennsylvania should ban teacher strikes.
The member of the West Chester Education Association spoke up at the school board meeting after the letter had been published, objecting to Adsett’s statement on the grounds that it expressed “publicly venomous animosity [against] our teachers,” and clashed with support for public education. Other union members applauded. Others professed confusion about whether Adsett was speaking officially for the whole board.
In his report on the fracas, Ben Velderman quotes the president of Stop Teacher Strikes, Simon Campbell, who observes that congressmen “are interviewed all the time. None of them say, ‘Well, I want to make it clear that I’m not representing the whole of Congress.’”
Union defenders “can’t argue the facts,” says Adsett, “so they have to try and argue by bullying and intimidation.”
Whether public employees should be permitted to strike is debatable. Were education privately run and unions not free to bully persons crossing picket lines, then parents, taxpayers and schools wouldn’t have to worry about being pushed into paying teachers far above market rates. But that’s not the current situation. We have public schools, and our democratically elected school board members should be just as free to speak — to debate — as voters are.
Democracy, after all, requires free speech. And public education, for all its problems, surely doesn’t require democracy’s suppression.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
6 replies on “Demanding Demands”
Overlooked is that it is We The People who will pay whatever it is that the teachers want and the board agrees to provide. The crux of this matter is that We The People are not at that bargaining table and so, we have two other parties deciding what We The People will do while We The People are not represented.
……and that cannot fly in our democracy – We cannot be bound in this manner as it denies us all of the freedoms our Constitution and the Bill of Rights gives each and every one of us.
Make pay commensurate with number of students and then give the parents the option of spending their tax dollars at a private school instead. Then let em strike all they want.
Great points! Thanks.
A bit off topic–but not much. In Phil., PA., a girl wore a ROMNEY/RYAN shirt, on a school ” dress down” day. A GEOMETRY TEACHER ridiculed her, compared them (as I recall, or perhaps all Republicans) TO THE KKK AND RACIST.
AND SAID ” THIS IS A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL” (Only Dems taxes pay for it?) The PRINCIPAL read a “letter” of apology– and the union said — to the effect–all si resolved.
BUT CAN YOU IMAGINE IF A CAUCASIAN TEACHER SAID SOMETHING TO A BLACK STUDENT WEARING AN OBAMA SHIRT?
THE LYNCH MOBS WOULD BE OUT IN FULL FORCE, AND THE TEACHER FIRED.
AS, THE TITLE OF A BOOK GOES, ” FREE SPEECH FOR ME, BUT NOT FOR THEE”.
The woman who called for her resignation is NOT a member of the teacher’s union, so get your facts straight. Also, this was not simply over that one editorial–Heidi Adsett has been an embarrassment to this board and this school district for quite a while now.
Fing union takes money out of my pay and I did not have a fing choice in the matter, I really have hated the last couple years why are people so insanely stupid