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Teachers use kids to battle cuts
Topic Started: Jun 5 2011, 01:56 PM (342 Views)
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The schools exist to educate, not employ.
GOP: Teachers use kids to battle cuts

Karen Bouffard/ Detroit News Lansing Bureau

Lansing— Republican lawmakers said Tuesday they're swamped with letters from schoolchildren as young as kindergartners in a lobbying effort they say is being coordinated by the Michigan Education Association, a charge the union denies.

GOP lawmakers say the letters and voice mails are part of an opposition plan developed by the state's largest teachers union to single out elected officials for their votes or possible recall. Union officials said while they have devised a plan for political activism by its members, the MEA did not ask teachers to assign students to write letters or make calls to representatives.

"We've gotten letters from first- and second-graders that had teacher comments on them suggesting we not fire their teacher," said Rep. Paul Opsommer, R-DeWitt. "I did have a couple of phone calls from parents whose kids came home crying, saying their teacher would not be back next year because their teacher was going to be fired by Rep. Opsommer."

Organized letter-writing campaigns or phone banks are tried-and-true ways groups get their members involved in political issues. And many lay out political strategies and goals. But teachers asking students to participate in union activism has raised some concerns among lawmakers and others.

Rep. Jeff Farrington, R-Utica, said he's been attacked in TV ads and robo-calls focusing on K-12 schools, but he's particularly upset with a deluge of letters from schoolchildren.

"The other day we had 150 letters dropped off from (one high school) — form letters — and they had the students sign them and sent it in," he said. "The kids don't know what they're signing.

"They put the kids right in the middle."

MEA spokesman Doug Pratt said he has heard some teachers have been getting children involved in the political fight over funding cuts and legislation to force school employees to pay more for health care. But he said teachers are acting on their own, not on the union's behalf.

"That's not something that we've had a hand in, but I'm familiar with what you're talking about," Pratt said of the emails, artwork and phone messages from the students. "It's something our members have worked on, but not through MEA."

David Hecker, president of AFT-Michigan, which represents Detroit Public Schools teachers and other school employees, said teachers aren't necessarily behind the letters.

"Students are pretty smart, they know the impact of these cuts — I'm not at all surprised they sit down and write about them," Hecker said. "They know when there's big cuts to education, that programs will be eliminated, and their mom or dad could have helped them write it."

Hecker said his union has not encouraged teachers to involve kids in the education dispute.

Ari Adler, spokesman for Republican House Speaker Jase Bolger of Marshall said he believes there is an orchestrated strategy in the letter and email lobbying.

"You're seeing similar wording in some of these letters from kids," he said.

Ruth Post, an art teacher at Roseville's Dort Elementary School, said she has not gotten her students involved. She said she attended an MEA lobby day in Lansing, where she dropped off a poster she made, titled "Real Education Dashboard" — a spoof on Gov. Rick Snyder's "dashboard" to measure state progress in key areas — at her state representative's office.

"We know as teachers, as professionals, that we are not allowed to involve children in the process, but we can make parents aware," Post said.

The MEA's strategy is outlined in a confidential 10-page internal document obtained by The News and calls for picking lawmakers for recall and flooding local coffee hours and town halls for GOP legislators with red-shirted MEA members. It was presented to union organizers at an MEA assembly in April.

"We haven't made decisions yet about which or any lawmakers we're considering for recall," Pratt said Tuesday.

The Michigan Republican Party charged in April that a petition drive to recall Snyder was being orchestrated by the MEA. The Committee to Recall Rick Snyder describes itself as grassroots, but its treasurer, Gail Schmidt, works for the MEA and filed paperwork with the secretary of state that included a teacher union fax number.

She later removed the number, and the MEA said Schmidt's recall activities are personal, and not on behalf of the union.

Rich Studley, president of the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, said it's not unusual the MEA has a written plan to accomplish their goals.

"(But) it's obvious to even a casual observer that they are involved in efforts to recall the governor and others," he said.

The MEA in early April asked its locals to determine their own strategy for combating the education policy direction in Lansing, up to and including "job action" — a term Republicans took as code for a teachers' strike, which is illegal in Michigan.

Pratt said he hasn't seen the survey results and they won't be made public.

He said the union has not made plans for the start of the school year in September, but didn't rule out the possibility of a future "job action."

"Our members will seriously consider a variety of actions to make clear to lawmakers that we're not going to sit idly by as they destroy public education in our state," Pratt said.

kbouffard@detnews.com

(517) 371-3660



From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20110601/POLITICS02/106010369/GOP--Teachers-use-kids-to-battle-cuts#ixzz1OQQUAi43
“Child Abuse” means different things to different people....
----Randy Liepa 8/9/12
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