-By Larry Sand
With teacher union enabling, child abuse goes on unabated.
A male business owner joking about life for homosexuals in prison, forced a junior accountant to bend over a desk, lined up behind him to simulate a sex act, then quipped, “I’ll show you what’s gay.”
An insurance company middle manager who had been warned about touching secretaries brushed his lower body against a new employee, coming so close that she told company investigators she could feel his genitals through his pants.
A corporate vice-president sent text messages to and called one of his female underlings nearly 50 times in a four-week period and, over the winter holidays, parked himself near her home.
In its definition of sexual harassment, the EEOC says it is “unlawful to harass a person (an applicant or employee) because of that person’s sex. Harassment can include ‘sexual harassment’ or unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature.” As such, the above scenarios fit the EEOC description of a crime. The perpetrators should face serious legal charges, loss of employment or both.
The tragedy is that the above cases did not occur between employers and employees, but are real life examples of teachers abusing children. According to a recent New York Times story,
A health teacher at a high school in Manhattan, joking about life for homosexuals in prison, forced a male student to bend over a desk, lined up behind him to simulate a sex act, then quipped, according to an Education Department investigative report, “I’ll show you what’s gay.”
A high school science teacher in the Bronx who had already been warned about touching female students brushed his lower body against one student’s leg during a lab exercise, coming so close that she told investigators she could feel his genitals through his pants.
And a math teacher at a high school in the Bronx, investigators said, sent text messages to and called one of his female students nearly 50 times in a four-week period and, over the winter holidays, parked himself at the McDonald’s where she worked.
Surely these teachers are no longer employed as teachers, are they?
Well, yes they are.
After promising not to do it again, they were given a slap on the wrist by an “arbitrator” and returned to their classes. One can only guess that the “arbitrator” is shilling for the teachers unions, which seem to have no problem with degenerates remaining in the classroom. A recently retired New York State teacher union lawyer quipped,
A person has a right to be heard, and the right to respond to whatever you’re accused of, and it’s got to be decided by someone other than you, the boss. If the person is punished in some fashion and now realizes that this is something they should not do, and they feel remorse, you ought to be able to get to a point of simply moving on.
Feel remorse? Move on? That in a nutshell is the teacher union mentality. Keep every last harasser and molester in the classroom, no matter what. Their dues money is as good as Mother Theresa’s.
Several years ago, a union rep in Los Angeles said (referring to wayward teachers), “If I’m representing them, it’s impossible to get them out. It’s impossible unless they commit a lewd act.” Now it appears as if it’s impossible to remove them even if they have committed a lewd act.
But, in a perverse sense, the union stance is understandable, but where are the paladins of the oppressed?
Where are the feminists?
Where is the anti-bullying brigade?
Where are the civil rights groups?
It seems as if children in our society don’t have advocates. Not even the Children’s Defense Fund has said “boo” about the rash of pedophiles working in our schools. Of course, parents speak up for their children, but they are not always welcome. In West Covina, just east of Los Angeles, the mother of a 12 year old boy had good reason to believe her son was being physically abused by his teacher. The teacher has been removed from the classroom until the matter is sorted out. But, in the meantime, the California Teachers Association is threatening to sue the mother if she continues to make accusatory comments toward the teacher in question.
However, there is some good news on the horizon. It was recently announced that,
Leaders of a national education reform movement, including Joel I. Klein and Michelle Rhee, the former schools chancellors in New York and Washington have formed a statewide political group in New York with an eye toward being a counterweight to the powerful teachers’ union in the 2013 mayoral election.
Klein and Rhee have locked horns with union leaders many times, most notably American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. As such, I can’t think of any two who better understand the union mentality, have fearlessly confronted it and fiercely advocated for children. Additionally, they have assembled an impressive board which includes successful educators and some interested parties with very deep pockets.
On the board are some of the most well-known and polarizing figures in public education, including Ms. Rhee; Mr. Klein, now a News Corporation executive; and Eva S. Moskowitz, the former councilwoman who now runs a chain of charter schools. Also on the board are former Mayor Edward I. Koch; Geoffrey Canada, the founder of the Harlem Children’s Zone organization, a network of charter schools; and a number of venture capitalists and hedge fund managers, who have served as the movement’s financial backers.
Upon hearing about the new coalition, United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew responded with a lame attempt at class warfare, “If these 1-percenters want to mount an AstroTurf campaign with their deep pockets, they’ve done this before.”
What Mulgrew and his brethren can’t quite grasp is that parents all over the country are getting sick and tired of the teachers unions being in control of what has become a failing public education enterprise. The unions, with their own deep pockets, won’t back down easily. But if parents and others like Klein and Rhee can join forces and build solid coalitions, the unions may have finally met their match.
To be sure, some well-meaning compromisers will try to engage the union in a round of Kumbaya. But this accommodationist approach rarely achieves victory for parents and children. Perhaps Mr. Canada best summed up the situation. “Folks are genuinely looking for opportunities to make peace and not war. And I think that’s terrific. But someone has to make war.”
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Larry Sand began his teaching career in New York in 1971. Since 1984, he has taught elementary school as well as English, math, history and ESL in the Los Angeles Unified School District, where he also served as a Title 1 Coordinator. Retired in 2009, he is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues – information teachers will often not get from their school districts or unions.
“CTEN” was formed in 2006 because a wide range of information from the more global concerns of education policy, education leadership, and education reform, to information having a more personal application, such as professional liability insurance, options of relationships to teachers’ unions, and the effect of unionism on teacher pay, comes to teachers from entities that have a specific agenda. Sand’s comments and op-eds have appeared in City Journal, Associated Press, Newsweek, Townhall Magazine, Los Angeles Times, San Diego Union Tribune, Los Angeles Daily News, San Jose Mercury News, Orange County Register and other publications. This past May, after his weekly blog proved to be very popular, he began writing a monthly article for City Journal, the Manhattan Institute’s policy publication. He has appeared on numerous broadcast news programs and talk radio shows in Southern California and nationally.
Sand has participated in panel discussions and events focusing on education reform efforts and the impact of teachers’ unions on public education. In March 2010, Sand participated in a debate hosted by the non-profit Intelligence Squared, an organization that regularly hosts Oxford-style debates, which was nationally broadcast on Bloomberg TV and NPR, as well as covered by Newsweek. Sand and his teammates – Terry Moe of the Hoover Institution and former U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige, opposed the proposition – Don’t Blame Teachers Unions For Our Failing Schools. The pro-union team included Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. In August 2010, he was on a panel at the Where’s the Outrage? Conference in San Francisco, where he spoke about how charter school operators can best deal with teachers’ unions. This past January he was on panels in Los Angeles, San Diego and San Mateo in support of National School Choice week. Additionally, CTEN has hosted two informational events this year – one addressing the secret agenda that is prevalent in many schools these days and the other concerning itself with California’s new Parent Trigger law. The latter event was covered by both the English and Spanish language press.
Sand has also worked with other organizations to present accurate information about the relationship between teachers and their unions, most recently assisting in the production of a video for the Center for Union Facts in which a group of teachers speak truthfully about the teachers’ unions. At this time, he is conferring with and being an advisor to education policy experts who are crafting major education reform legislation.
CTEN maintains an active and strong new media presence, reaching out to teachers and those interested in education reform across the USA, and around the world, with its popular Facebook page, whose members include teachers, writers, think tankers, and political activists. Since 2006, CTEN has experienced dramatic growth.