It sometimes seemed lonely.
Our little Park Ridge local knew it was a bad bill.
But the IEA leadership kept telling us we were wrong about Senate Bill 7.
IEA Executive Director Audrey Soglin and IEA President Ken Swanson were at the table. They wouldn’t have agreed to do something that hurt teachers.
But our folks in the Park Ridge Education Association looked at it. We scratched our heads and wondered out loud.
We’re going to lose our tenure and seniority.
We’re going to be evaluated by test scores of students. Tests that were never designed to assess teacher performance.
Chicago teachers will find it harder to strike and collectively bargain.
How was this good for teachers?
We would hear from teachers from around the state who asked the same question. But the leadership kept talking about the table we had been at. We just didn’t understand that being at the table was the important thing.
Then we saw the Jonah Edelman presentation at Aspen. Edelman was head of the Oregon-based Stand for Children. He had come to Illinois. He had raised $3 million from corporate funders which helped elect a bunch of anti-union legislators. He boasted that he got Speaker Mike Madigan to set up a House education reform committee. He boasted how he had bamboozled the IEA and the IFT and got them to bully the Chicago Teachers Union. He boasted that Senate Bill 7 was a great victory over the teachers and their unions. He also said that at the end of the day, IEA Executive Director Audrey Soglin couldn’t have been more pleased.
Although the Edelman video was terribly embarrassing for the IEA leaders, they never shifted their position.
When we lobbied our State Senator he was surprised.. “Your union lobbyists told me this was good. I thought I was doing the right thing.”
We shook our heads.
NEA President Dennis Van Roekel praised Senate Bill 7 as a model for the nation.
We said no, Dennis, no. This is Scott Walker light.
And last year when we went to Springfield, our local filled a bus and all the way down we tried to figure out how we were going to lobby for pensions and against SB7 when our union wanted us to support SB7. At the Lobby Day rally they brought out Democratic Assistant Senate Majority Leader Kim Lightford who praised SB7 as pro-teacher because she had insisted that teachers be at the table. How could it be bad if we were at the table? And Charlie McBarron ran that video on our IEA website over and over again.
Lightford was awarded the Friend of Teacher award at this year’s RA by IEA President Cinda Klickna.
PREA members scratched our heads. How could we be so wrong?
We weren’t wrong, of course.
And we weren’t alone.
At the final session of the IEA RA delegates approved the last New Business Item #16.
The text of the motion: The IEA RA directs the Executive Director to report to the 2013 RA the feedback of the implementation of SB7. This feedback will be gathered between now and 2013 RA with a mid-term report made available to members.
Rationale: Due to the actual negative effects that SB7 is currently having on many teachers, especially veteran teachers, we need to be proactive in its revision.
Make no mistake. The vote was not close. It is a rejection of the IEA leadership by the delegates and the members they represent on the issue of SB7.
The chickens have come home. Jonah was able to bamboozle the leaders, but not the members.
And we were never alone.
Fred Klonsky 
Fred,
To add insult to injury–
Toward the end of the RA, the IEA was passing out awards as they usually do, when Cinda explained that they had gone back as far as they could to look at all the past Student IEA leaders. They contacted as many as they could and had them on stage with the IEA leadership for the presentation of this years student of the year award. As they were introducing and giving short bios on each they eventually came to this particular gentleman. Cinda announce that he did “this and that” while student IEA president, and now he works for Stand for Children. To me it seemed that the delegation almost gasped. Some clapped, but some looked stunned. I personally booed.
I do not give a rat’s ass what he did in college. For our leadership to have a “Stand” stooge on our stage during our RA to me, is pretty much unforgivable. I am still shocked and dismayed that they could breech our trust with a stunt like this. It would be like George Washington walking into John Adams’s house for dinner and Benedict Arnold is sitting at the table. That stupidity would have ruined GW’s dinner, like our leadership’s stupidity ruined my RA.
Matt
I feel your pain, Matt. But far, far worse than introducing a former student member who presently works for Stand is Audrey plotting the destruction of our seniority and tenure rights with the head of Stand for Children, Jonah Edelman. If the kid got an award, it should forever be known as the Audrey Soglin Screw the Members Award for Exemplary Efforts in Destroying Collective Bargaining Rights from the Inside.
Make no mistake. The vote was not close. It is a rejection of the IEA leadership by the delegates and the members they represent on the issue of SB7.
The chickens have come home. Jonah was able to bamboozle the leaders, but not the members.. And we were never alone>>>
I’m so glad to see this. Someone in my Facebook group, ordinarily a very discerning guy crowed about Stand for Children, and the legislators they were backing. I felt like I was handed a gift in being able to discuss it.