Late yesterday afternoon the WEA union posted a defensive reaction to news headlines  reporting, “Teacher union’s greed causing massive deficits, layoffs across the state,” and “Big raises for teachers led to pending cuts.”

The negative news reporting is making union executives worried that their top political goal for the year is in trouble; getting lawmakers to break their no-more-taxes promise and impose high local taxes on top of the recent state property tax increase.

The union defensively claims that their top priority is children:

            “As professional educators, we put our students at the center of everything we do...”

Well...not really.  Their top priority is getting more money out of taxpayers, by any means necessary.  Consider the following:

Last fall the WEA union used strikes to close public schools in 15 districts, shutting out over 164,000 children from access to educational services.

The WEA used the secretive collective bargaining process to secure pay raises for teachers based on seniority, leaving younger teachers behind, and putting many district budgets into deficit.

Now many young teachers, librarians, school nurses and support staff face layoffs, because the money from the state property tax increase went to double-digit raises and other priorities.

WEA executives have cut local levy money for charter public schools, refusing to allow these families, many living in poor communities, to participate in local voter-approved funding.

The WEA wants HB 2140, to overturn the McCleary education funding fix and bring back funding inequities in education funding, which would reward wealthy school districts at the expense of property-poor districts.

The WEA is using considerable behind-the-scenes influence to kill the Palumbo Amendment in SB 5313. Senator Palumbo, a Democrat, simply wants funding fairness for charter schools, so these families can participate on an equal basis in the levy support voters have approved for local schools.

In the meantime, the WEA union’s private yearly budget, taken from teacher paychecks, has ballooned by 38%, up from $29 million a few years ago to over $40 million today.

The WEA union backs seniority-based raises that hurt skilled younger teachers, tenure rules that force districts to keep the worst-performing teachers, multiple lawsuits to close charter schools, denying ORCA bus cards to charter school children, and an effort last year to defund the popular Running Start program.

In lobbying for HB 2140 WEA union executives are working overtime to secure maximum public dollars and power for themselves, while shutting down popular learning opportunities for children and families.

Does that sound like an organization that is putting students “at the center of everything we do”?