Opinion/Editorial

Tacoma's News Tribune published this column on August 30, 2011.

Tacoma’s parents and children don’t know whether their schools will open on time Thursday.

The reason: Teacher union executives are considering a strike as part of their long-range plan to intimidate school boards in communities around Washington.

What better way to flex union muscle than by denying class time to the 28,000 students served by the Tacoma School District, the third largest in the state?

The dispute is over implementing “cuts” in state education funding. This is odd because Olympia only “cut” education in relation to what the education establishment wanted to spend over the next two years. Education funding is actually going up. State lawmakers increased education spending from $12.9 billion in 2009-11 to $13.7 billion in 2011-13, an increase of nearly $790 million.

Also, the Legislature’s action affects only one source of education funding. Teachers are still eligible to receive money from local levy funds, step increases and Time, Responsibility and Incentive (TRI) pay.

The call for a teacher strike in Tacoma is no accident. It is part of a concerted plan to punish school kids that was developed by the state’s largest teachers union, the Washington Education Association.

Last spring, union executives decided to pick a prominent school district, like Tacoma, and make an example of it. In April, the WEA board of directors adopted a plan to “connect the dots from state cuts to local kids.”

Here’s what it says:

• “Association leaders should recommend to their governing bodies and membership that their local adopt a ‘reduced pay means reduced work days’ position.”

“Reduced work days” means eliminating school days for children.

• “Locals should continue to bargain for TRI increases (and maintain current TRI provisions) provided that any current TRI or improvement is not contingent on service being provided on one or more of the unfunded 180-day school year.”

This means using funds from local levies for teacher salaries instead of paying for unfunded school days.

• “Locals should not agree to eliminate instructional work dates at the end of the school year or those occurring before/after a normal holiday or vacation period. Instead, the eliminated instructional work days should be on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday of a normally scheduled five-day work week.”

Translation: Local unions should insist that canceled schools days occur at times that hurt working families most – a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday during the work week; unions should not agree to close schools on a Monday or a Friday, or near a scheduled holiday.

• “Locals should plan for and initiate awareness actions on a ‘school day canceled’ due to the salary reduction.”

“Awareness actions” mean telling parents and the news media that school is canceled because of salary reductions, to arouse public anger against lawmakers.

• “In the event a district refuses to agree to reduce instructional days, the local association should consider unilaterally determining the dates their members will not report for duty.”

Translation: If a school district won’t cancel school days, the local union should plan to strike.

This plan was approved as New Business Item No. 6 at the May 12-14 WEA meeting. Union president Mary Lindquist said its purpose is to “make cuts visible,” and “we can’t allow our members to bear the brunt of the pain as we’ve done the last several years.”

She added, “Voters, legislators, parents and the media need to know how these cuts hurt students and families in their communities.”

The WEA effectively instructed local unions, such as the Tacoma Education Association, to create maximum pain for working families and to plan for strikes if local districts do not agree to union demands. The intent is to reduce educational opportunities for students and ensure that lawmakers in Olympia get the blame.

You can expect to hear more stories about children being hurt by “budget cuts.” This is by design.

It is part of a strategy by union executives to make the cuts visible to the public by taking school days away from children. They call it “connecting the dots from state cuts to local kids.”

Others would call it hurting kids because some of the adults are upset about the education budget.