NEA’s Van Roekel: “Parents Will See Through That,”
NEA President Dennis Van Roekel was referring to a former US Solicitor General’s campaign to prosecute an admitted child abuser, who was paid $40,000 to resign. Dismissing this and other cases where teacher union officials have defended teachers who have clearly broken the law, Van Roekel, like other teacher union officials, remains relentlessly hopeful that the public will continue to swallow their excuses for defending members, and forcing others into paying for this defense.
While teacher union officials say they are just deferring to “due process,” they are really seeking to preserve their own power. Parents will see through their thinly veiled attempt to disguise their greed and power.
Stephanie Simon has the story in Politico.
Former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson expects to go to trial in California next month with an audacious lawsuit that aims to overturn teacher job protections, such as tenure, that unions helped muscle into state law.
His work in the courtroom will be paired with a broad PR campaign painting the teachers unions as obstructionists who protect their members at all costs.
Olson has gathered hair-raising stories about a small number of teachers who sexually harassed students, refused to plan lessons, appeared on campus under the influence, yet held onto their jobs for years because of union-backed job protections. Exhibit A: The Los Angeles Unified School District, which spent a decade and $3.5 million trying to dismiss seven teachers for poor performance — and only succeeded in ousting four. Rather than attempting to fire Mark Berndt, a veteran teacher who pleaded guilty last month to lewd acts with his students, the district paid him $40,000 to resign.
Union leaders say that Olson is distorting the picture by focusing on a few bad apples. “Parents will see through that,” NUnion leaders say they don’t protect bad teachers, just seek to ensure due process. And they brush off the negative publicity as a political ploy that won’t gain traction. The American public, they say, is much more interested in talking about scrapping high-stakes testing, broadening the curriculum, reducing class sizes and spreading resources equitably — all issues that unions have championed. EA President Dennis Van Roekel said.