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Schools, Part 1

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Illinois

Capitol Fax readers saw (if not read) a long story in today’s edition about Speaker Michael Madigan and the teachers’ unions. My newspaper column is a shortened version of today’s piece.

Anyway, it’s generated some response. Randy Fritz will go first. Fritz is a high school teacher and somewhat of a Renaissance Man. He chairs the Citizens Utility Board and is a website designer in his spare time.

He is referring here to the very costly (to taxpayers) early retirement program for teachers, and Speaker Madigan’s opposition to extending its lifespan by another five years. He also refers to Madigan’s repeated comments about wanting to end teacher tenure.

You know, Rich, I think I’m a minority of one when it comes to teaching and teachers’ unions. I’m IEA-NEA as a teacher at Williamsfield (I wish I was IFT), but I have long believed that we all bear some responsibility for fiscal responsibility. Remember: I’m a high school teacher at this small district in west-central Illinois.

At lunch, etc., when teachers get together and talk about how best to “game” the system and max their retirements, I remind them that we’re doing so on the backs of 1) younger teachers, and 2) the people of Illinois in general.

I can only imagine what the comments about me are when I leave the room. Good thing I don’t care.

It’s all, of course, a part of the larger disease affecting our generation: “I want mine, I want it now, and I don’t want to pay for it.” In other words: “Passing the debt to another generation? I don’t really care.”

I agree with Madigan that an almost absolutely guaranteed job is really passe. Teachers, like everybody else, need to be fired if they’re not doing their job (and no school district is without such teachers, including mine), but they need a system than ensures a fair hearing. “Tenure” is about academic freedom, and how does that apply to a public, classroom teacher today?

The system most non-teaching union shops have in place provides such protections. I’d like to think of myself as a pofessional, but that’s clearly not the case right now–I’m a union employee.

We’ve also got to have a fairer way to fund schools, regardless of what it might be. Politicians have to step up and have some guts about this. FAR too many are too worried about THEIR pensions to do anything that might threaten their re-election. An even sweeter deal is the GA’s retirement system.

BUT, you know and I know it’ll be business as usual, change will be incremental (if at all), and the GA, if they can possibly get away with it, will do nothing. Hope I’m wrong, but I’m not, I’ll bet.

posted by Rich Miller
Friday, Dec 10, 04 @ 5:42 pm

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