November 12, 2007
Free Al Wolting!!!
I'm sorry for continuing to play the role of the chief apologist for teachers union leaders who get quoted saying idiotic things, but somebody's got to do it.
Last week, I was sticking up for Washington Teachers Union vice president Nathan Saunders for supposedly saying that "money should be used to serve children, not fire administrators." I noted how the news report paraphrased his remarks and that anyone with a brain would understand that no one could possibly say something so stupid.
This week we're bailing out Indianapolis Education Association President Al Wolting, who is all over the blogosphere for his remarks to WISH TV 8 in Indianapolis indicating that his union played a role in unseating Mayor Bart Peterson because of the mayor's strong support for public charter schools.
Lots of bloggers have been all over this. But give Wolting a break. He was clearly talking out of his ass school.
You know what really happened. Wolting clearly doesn't dig Peterson very much, and he was so giddy that the mayor lost the election that he wasn't thinking clearly when the TV crew showed up. So his mouth starts moving and all this junk starts flying out.
There's no way he was serious. Otherwise, he would have had a better explanation for the rationale behind helping a pro-charter Republican oust the pro-charter Democrat. In her post on the topic, EdWeek's Michele McNeil wonders what the union was thinking.
Give Wolting a break. He wasn't thinking at all. He was just talking a bunch of crap.
Like you haven't done the same thing!
In all seriousness, read McNeil's post because she explains how important Indiana's charter school law actually is to unionized teachers:
Could these IPS teachers be forgetting the great victory they won back in 2001, made possible because charter school legislation passed? I haven't, because I covered the legislative battle as a Statehouse reporter for The Indianapolis Star. To get legislative support to pass charter schools, legislators gave IPS teachers their collective bargaining rights back. Teachers lost those rights back in 1995 when a GOP-controlled legislature passed a sweeping accountability law designed to improve this struggling, urban district. It was a typical political trade-off: Republicans and other charter-school supporters got a new charter school law, while Democrats and the teachers' union got IPS teachers their collective bargaining rights.
What's more, Indiana's charter school law is friendlier to teachers' unions than a lot of other state's laws. In Indiana charter schools, teachers can form a union or negotiate salaries independently. And any public schools that convert to charters must abide by existing union contracts.
So Wolting is either a selfish, greedy bastard or he jost got a little bit ahead of himself in his comments. I'm assuming the latter.
