Vandalia Republic News

Re: Comment by calebbrennan on March 31, 2011 @ 8:33 pm
>I agree with XL ,…the education system is working according
>to plan, dumb them down and warehouse them (sit down and
>shut up and learn to work for the company) The failings
>have little to do with unions

Now here I will disagree with you, the unions (in this case the teacher unions) have been infiltrated and taken over by TPTB, and they are using them to push their agenda even further.

It is really sad to watch this going on daily, they racheted up their pay to the point where their income is significantly higher than “average” salary in the local areas, they pay their retirement in addition to that, and then add the absolute best health care money can buy in as an additional bonus. This means that the “average” local teacher is making over 70K/year income when you add in the additional benefits (in the corporate world they take them out of the check instead), in a county where the “average” income is only around $36K/year. And this is for a job where you get every holiday off, work about 6 hours per day (with some exceptions) and only 9 months out of the year.

Why do I point all of this out? Because this is one HUGE SCAM!

The teachers union has their members trained extremely well, to the point where they are absolutely convinced that they are severely underpaid (ask one of them) and deserve every penny due to their being severely overworked. The unions have also made exclusive contracts with specific health insurance providers, and have managed to work that into their negotiations that using any other provider is grounds for imposing a strike. Even if a competing health insurance company offers an identical plan at half the cost, they cannot switch to that provider. They raised the prescriptions co-pay here a few years ago from $2 to $5, and they almost moved to a strike because of that!

In an era and area where budget cuts arrive practically every couple of weeks, you would think that the union would be understanding and agree to pay cuts or at a minimum they would allow the pay to be frozen. But, instead they keep pushing for more benefits and more pay raises, even though over 90% of the budget is spent on them already.

So, where do the cuts have to come from? They come from the remaining 10% of the budget, which covers all non-teaching staff and buiding maintenance. They can now justify cutting optional programs to limit the teaching spectrum, they can cut sports to keep the students more docile, they can cut custodial staff so the buildings look more run down and depressing, they can cut other support staff so any administrative work takes longer. Etc. As a last resort, they start cutting teaching staff, and put more students in each classroom, further lowering the educational impact.

The teachers have been brain-washed to the point where they are now perfect little union robots. When you see protests like what happened in Wisconsin (and to a lesser extent, Michigan), take a look at who shows up first to protest, it is almost always the teachers. They are the ones that are trained the best to fight for their union rights, even if it means total economic collapse is the result.

So, I would say that the Unions have just as much to do with the failings as anything else. They are the other side of the same coin, the same people that are inflicting the damage to the educational system are also in control of the unions and using them to speed their demise.