Sooner Teacher Candidates Run Against NEA-Boss
Platform and Win
In the spring of 2018, Oklahoma was one of a number of
states in which government union bigwigs helped incite some teachers to engage
in illegal strikes that shut down government schools.
It’s a fact: Americans overwhelmingly support higher pay for
hardworking and effective teachers, and when necessary in order to fill
particular teaching positions with qualified individuals.
Of course, these are not the aims of teacher union bosses
and the other political radicals who collaborated with them to orchestrate last
year’s school strikes.
In the Sooner State, for example, the self-styled Big Labor
front group “Oklahoma Parents and Educators For Public Education” (OPEPE) used
the illegal strikes as a vehicle to ram through a $447 million tax hike on
targeted consumers and businesses.
Throughout last year’s primary and general election
campaigns, OPEPE operatives supported pro-tax incumbents and challengers and
bitterly attacked pro-taxpayer candidates who favored across-the-board pay
increases for teachers, but wanted to fund them by reallocating resources
rather than through higher taxes.
It’s ‘Wrong to Assume All Educators Walk in Lockstep’
With Union Dons
Meanwhile, the hierarchy of the Oklahoma Education
Association (OEA) union, which is a subsidiary of the gargantuan National
Education Association (NEA) union, touted its so-called “Oklahoma Education
Caucus.”
This was a list of Sooner teachers and other individuals who
are or once were in some way professionally affiliated with schools who were
running for public office in 2018.
According to a November 13 editorial published in Okahoma
City’s Daily Oklahoman, the OEA union brass “identified 60 general
election candidates as educators, including 56 running for legislative seats.”
On Election Day, 15 of the 56 won a seat in the Oklahoma state
Senate or House of Representatives.
However, the editorial continued, just five of the 15
winning “educator” candidates were endorsed by the OEA union’s so-called “Fund
for Children and Public Education”!
It dryly concluded: “[I]t’s wrong to assume all educators
walk in lockstep or parrot the views of teachers’ unions and activist groups,
let alone owe their campaign success to them.”
Bucking NEA Bosses, Educator Candidates Backed Charters And
School Choice
Oklahoma state Reps.-elect Toni Hasenbeck and Kelly Albright
and state Sen.-elect David Bullard are cases in point.
Ms. Hasenbeck, a middle school teacher in Comanche County,
opposed Oklahoma’s Big Labor-backed 2018 tax increase and rejected OEA
officials’ demand for a moratorium on public charter schools, which unlike
traditional government schools are overwhelmingly union-free.
Ms. Albright, an elementary school teacher in Oklahoma City, also endorsed charters and school choice, as did Mr. Bullard, a longtime teacher from Durant, Oklahoma.
Undoubtedly because they refused to toe the union line, Ms.
Hasenbeck, Ms. Albright, and Mr. Bullard did not receive OEA officials’
endorsements for their campaigns. But they all won anyway.
Meanwhile, “educator” candidates like incumbent Reps. Donnie
Condit (McAlester) and Karen Gaddis (Tulsa)kowtowed to union political chiefs
and went down to defeat.
“A very small minority of American teachers regularly agree
with the stands that the bosses of the NEA and its subsidiaries and other
teacher unions take on education, taxes, and an array of other issues,” noted
National Right to Work Committee Vice President Mary King.
“But until the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling last summer in Janus
(a case that was argued and won by a National
Right to Work Foundation staff attorney), teachers and other public
school employees in more than 20 states were routinely forced to pay dues or
fees to union officials who were misrepresenting them.
“If they refused, they were fired.
“Thanks to Janus, it is now legally prohibited in all
50 states to force teachers and other public employees to pay for union
advocacy with which they disagree as a condition of working for the taxpayer.
“That’s genuine progress. The next major step is revocation
of government union bosses’ monopoly-bargaining privileges.
“Today more than 30 states still have laws on the books
empowering union bosses to speak for all public servants who choose not to join
their organizations, as well as those who do, in discussions with the employer
regarding working conditions.
“Many teachers, such as those who are qualified for teaching
positions that school administrators normally have trouble filling, routinely
get paid less due to union monopoly bargaining.
“Elimination of union bosses’ so-called ‘exclusive representation’ privileges is essential to protect independent-minded teachers.”