The Patriot Post® · TEA's Brewing Storm

If you think the howling winds and savage rain that pelted the state of Tennessee last week were bad, you still haven’t seen anything with the fury of what the state legislature is getting ready to unleash on the Tennessee Education Association.

To wit: Last Wednesday the state Senate advanced legislation that would strip the 52,000-member TEA of its ability to make appointments on the state pension board while the House approved a bill that will alter the process for state teachers to obtain tenure. And as a weather prognosticator might tell us, “The forecast is even worse today.”

Now let’s be real honest. This is a lot more about union-busting than it is about what happens in any classroom. This is because, in the minds of many, the TEA has become greedy, loathsome, and demanding, all of which has nothing to do with teaching kids, either.

C'mon, the idea that a union would even have the power to appoint members to a government board is stark-raving nuts. So the way I see it is that the Tennessee Legislature, voted into office by all the people, is now grappling with ways to fix quite a mess that, in truth, has been in the making for a lot of years.

The mess is further heightened by the fact the state’s Democratic leaders have been stunningly batted down because of a “perfect storm” of more far-ranging blunders. It hardly takes a weatherman to foresee any union-driven initiatives right now don’t stand much of a chance and the Tennessee Education Association – in the eyes of the lawmakers – ain’t nothing but a union.

At a TEA rally last week, the wind and rain did little to keep the TEA (union) from gathering up 3,000 teachers and paying for their bus ride to Nashville. There, as sympathizers from the UAW and United Steel Workers mingled in their midst, one teacher was heard to say, “We appreciate ya’ll joining us. It would take worse weather than this to keep us away. We’ve seen worse than this doing bus duty!”

In Thursday’s Nashville newspaper, a guy named Al Mance, who is the executive director of the TEA, tried mightily to plead the case by pointing out in an Opinion piece, “The public has never understood professional teaching but thinks it does. To everyone who has attended school teaching looks deceptively easy. Exploiting this perception of teachers gave No Child Left Behind its political traction.”

While I readily agree with Mr. Nance, he embarrassed himself with his apples and oranges analogy. Again, what we have here isn’t about education, not by a stretch, but about unions. Organized labor, with its longtime Democratic allies now in a sprawled heap, is very much in disfavor on Capitol Hill, especially after the UAW brought down the huge plant at Spring Hill while the non-union Nissan plant was expanding.

Another barometer can be found at the new Volkswagen manufacturing plant in Chattanooga where, today, nary a union label better not be seen. Too many people remember that Chattanooga was once a union stronghold yet still wonder why all the industry suddenly disappeared in a resounding poof. Now the TEA has gotten into the same hot water and, within a week or two, will make its first faltering steps towards extinction.

The reason is just like Jennifer Casiello, a third-grade teacher at Nashville’s Granberry Elemintary, told reporters as she stood in Saturday’s rain, “I think for the most part, unfortunately, from the things I have seen, the (TEA) is most active protecting teachers that might not need protecting.”

But, get this; while Jennifer is not a member of the TEA (Tennessee is a right-to-work state), her salary along with 52,000 other teachers is negotiated by the union. Now she wonders, “If we lose that contract, what does that mean? Will we get cuts? Anything is on the table now…”

Today there are dark clouds in Wisconsin. That is where a delft-footed legislature side-stepped their sulking and exiled Democratic brethren to put in motion a bill that will most assuredly clobber public workers. Want to know the “net?” Each of those public-union workers will now get about 8 percent less pay.

While I am very much for reform, and sending the TEA’s misguided on a leaky skiff down Nashville’s Cumberland River, we will quickly become a of blithering idiots if we now fail our teachers. Once again, don’t penalize education because you hate the creeps the teachers have ignorantly employed.

Sure, cut the union war mongers but please embrace the educational initiative and those who we pray will deliver it. I have “a newest friend” in the little town of Selmer, Tenn., who writes that she has been teaching for 32 years and her private email to me was absolutely priceless, as were many others who have cried out since it first told of the pending darkness.

She starts her day at 5 a.m. and works past dark teaching kids. She despises what has happened with the standardized testing but, living in an economically-depressed area, she has gotten only one raise in pay in all the years she has taught that hasn’t been due to the TEA. Don’t the people in Selmer care?

Whoa! That lady still needs a voice. It isn’t her fault that the TEA has become sullied, that some of its 52,000 members have reduced it to this week’s rubble. Teachers need time to plan lessons, enough classroom materials and resources. We’ll all stand in the rain for that!

So the hope is while the state legislature will take firm steps to fix the system, the 80 percent or so of the great teachers we’ve got will design a lesson plan that will either fix or fire the rest, bring thinking back to the forefront rather than that damnable one-day test that needs to promptly go in the shredder, and that we’ll join forces to finally climb out of “the bottom ten” worst educational systems in the country.

Contact: [email protected]