Posted on 03/29/2012 8:03:10 AM PDT by MichCapCon
Some teachers were working at poverty level. Others could be fired because they were pregnant and unmarried, or they were gay. And students were sitting on the floor without any desks.
Those are some of the charges made by teachers union officials since Gov. Rick Snyder took office and transformed the face of public education in Michigan.
But those charges and more were either untrue or highly unlikely to occur in what has turned into a two-year rhetoric campaign by teachers and the unions.
Michigan Education Association Spokesman Doug Pratt told MLive that the MEA has been targeted by the Republican Party that "doesn't value public education and the middle class..."
Union leaders and some teachers, however, have made a series of comments that have warranted a closer look.
In May 2010, Warren Education Association Executive Director Jennifer Miller was quoted at a MEA rally by a newspaper saying that there were kids on the floor without any desks. After Millers comments were published, School Board Member Brendan Wagner and Brian Walmsley, the districts chief economic officer, said they both were not aware of that happening in the district.
Ric Hogerheide, an MEA UniServe Director, claimed that first-year teachers in the Lansing School District were paid below the poverty line. A first-year teacher with a bachelors degree earned $35,741 in 2009-10. That teacher would be below the U.S. Census Bureaus poverty level if the teacher had a family of eight.
In March 2011, the MEA sent a letter asking its members to give it the authority to call for a work stoppage. Teacher strikes in Michigan are illegal.
When Snyders cuts were released, the MEA exaggerated their costs by almost twice as much. The MEAs Renaye Baker sent an email to union members claiming Snyders cuts were at $700-per pupil. Snyder had proposed a $300 per-pupil reduction and extended another $170 per-pupil cut made last year that federal dollars made up.
Michael Van Beek, education policy director for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, said that Baker probably included increased mandatory pension contributions into that $700-per-pupil figure, something Snyder had nothing to do with.
Some teachers wrote to the newspapers to criticize Gov. Snyder on his budget cuts.
Krista Weber, an elementary teacher at Hemmeter Elementary School in the Saginaw Township School District wrote to the Saginaw News and complained she put her masters degree to work dusting and vacuuming her own room.
She said in the letter she took out a home equity loan to finance her continuing education.
If anyone wants to be added to the Michigan Cap Con ping list let me know.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.