The response from new IEA President Cinda Klickna to my colleague Jerry Mulvihill’s inquiry is an open invitation to snarkiness.
I’ll try to resist.
I may not be entirely successful.
Understand. The point of my last few posts had less to do with IEA Executive Director Audrey Soglin sitting on the Board of the anti-union National Council on Teacher Quality and more to do with the policies and practices of Soglin as the manager of our Association.
In fact, I can fully understand why Soglin Is on the anti-union NCTQ Board. What I don’t understand is why she is our Executive Director.
I had some hope that perhaps the election of Cinda Klickna might represent a turn away from the practices of former IEA President Ken Swanson.
Those hopes are quickly fading.
Snark alert.
The main difference between Klickna’s response to Jerry and previous responses from Swanson is the use of spell check. And it is well constructed. It makes no sense. But it is well written. McBarron probably wrote it.
Fred Klonsky 
Tokenism is a policy or practice of limited inclusion or artistic and/or political representation of members of a minority group, usually creating a false appearance of inclusive practices rather than discrimination, intentional or not. Typical examples in real life and fiction include purposely including a member of a minority race (such as a black character in a mainly white cast, or a woman in a traditionally male universe) into a group. Classically, token characters have some reduced capacity compared to the other characters and may have bland or inoffensive personalities so as to not be accused of stereotyping negative traits. Alternatively, their differences may be overemphasized or made “exotic” and glamorous.
I’m sure she’s on record challenging their anti-collective bargaining attitude as well as the methodology they use to give so many ed schools “F’s” and to recommend that they be shuttered. Can’t find any such statements with a Google search, but I’m sure they exist. Somewhere.
I’m going to try to stop caring about who the IEA hires, except for this one thing. If Audrey is going to be “sitting at the table” in the next pension grab, I think the membership has a right to know her actual feelings about public pensions, about what the state Constitution says on the matter, and about what kind of signals she’ll be sending.
You know Iove you Tim. But Audrey isn’t exactly someone hired. She runs it.