How did we get here?

I guess I still can’t get over the letter to Region 36 that IEA President Ken Swanson wrote. I still can’t get over his example of why we should find common ground with a group like Stand for Children who despise teacher unions and collective bargaining.

How did we get here?

How is it that our 130,000 member union has a man as president who doesn’t even stand for the basic principles of unionism?

Let’s look at his hypothetical once more.

For example, if two RIf’d people are nearly equal in seniority for a recall and one has excellent evaluations and the other is in remediation, should the one in remediation be brought back ahead of the excellent teacher because the excellent teacher was hired ten days after the remediation teacher was hired?

This is not really an example of anything that is a common occurrence.

I challenge Swanson to give me some cases like this that have happened in the past year. Or five years. Or ten.

However, it does reveal Swanson’s view of our union and its responsibilities.

Let’s look at his hypothetical teacher, our colleague, who is on remediation.

Our local collectively bargained agreement has a process for terminating a bad teacher and for remediating a struggling teacher.

Remediation is a process reserved for teachers who show some weakness or problem in their work, but who, in the view of administration can improve. In our case, our contract provides for a mentor teacher and a time line.

In the view of our union president, that teacher, a full member of our Association, should lose their contractual rights. They should become a second class Association member.

Ken sure didn’t mind collecting full dues from that member.

There was a time not so long ago when our Association stood for exploring ways of recruiting, mentoring and improving our profession. In fact our own Park Ridge local was a recognized ground-breaking local in the establishment of a mentoring program for new teachers that was created by Board and Association collaborative efforts. In those days, our IEA knew that the problem wasn’t that we couldn’t get rid of teachers fast enough, but that public schools couldn’t retain good teachers long enough.

But apparently that’s all changed.

How did we get here?