Author: StgCoach

Retired teacher and public education leader. Pastoral musician, community activist, parliamentarian, and photographer.

Lessons of 2010

Governor Ted Strickland’s election-night email to supporters says that last night, he “thanked the Congressman [Kasich] and his supporters for a hard-fought race that allowed all Ohioans the opportunity to consider the kind of future they want for themselves and for their families.”
If this campaign was in fact an “opportunity to consider the kind of future” we want, it probably didn’t provide that opportunity in the way Governor Strickland meant. It may have given us an opportunity to consider the kind of campaigns we want, but that’s not the same thing.
Governor-elect Kasich articulated a vision for the Ohio he wants to see. In many ways, it’s the wrong vision: he says he intends to balance the budget, but he was never required to identify just how. It is clear to me as a retired public educator that in some way or another my colleagues and I will pay part of the bill: he said as much in the campaign, and he refused even to meet with education union leaders.
But as wrong as his vision is, he wasn’t shy about articulating it. Governor Strickland, a good man with a lack of imagination, never articulated a vision for his second term as Ohio governor, instead relying for the most part on attack ads that made the point that Kasich was a Wall Street insider. Unfortunately, many taxpayers probably figure that being a Wall Street insider is nice work if you can get it. (The problem with class warfare as a campaign strategy is that many people are Democrats but aspire to be Republicans.)
More damaging, by using limited campaign resources to beat a dead horse, Strickland lost opportunities to use those resources to expound his own vision–which, granted, presumes that he had one.
George W. Bush showed us how far you can go by being wrong and strong; consider the power of slogans like “No Child Left Behind” and “Mission Accomplished.” Ted was right, but he was weak, and voters don’t reward that.

Ambition Trumps Truth in Mandel Ad

The Columbus Dispatch certainly isn’t a Democratic mouthpiece, and it’s taken plenty of shots at public schools and educators over the years; but the newspaper recently analyzed some Josh Mandel campaign ads that seem to show the Ohio Treasurer candidate to be a liar.

This is pretty sensitive to me since it seems Mandel has been able to get a free pass; evidently a lot of people assume that a Marine wouldn’t say anything dishonorable, but that overlooks the effect of ambition. I’m told by friends who screened him years ago when he sought the OEA endorsement for Ohio House that he said then that he was opposed to school vouchers. That was before he was elected, after which he promptly began doing the bidding of his party managers and supported vouchers and Ohio’s runaway charter schools. So educators have reason to question Mandel’s veracity, especially when there are votes to be won.
The Dispatch article documents a series of lies contained in a recent Mandel campaign ad. In addition to misrepresenting a bidding process which The Plain Dealer says saved Ohio taxpayers $7.3 million, the campaign ad introduces islamophobia by stretching a connection between Boyce and a friend’s mosque.
I’ve met Kevin Boyce and found him to be bright and personable. Perhaps more important, he actually knows what the Ohio Treasurer’s office is for and can articulate a clear vision for that office.

Had Enough Yet?

The Michigan-based Education Action Group posts billboards in southwestern Ohio asking, “Did you get a raise for not dying this summer?”
Ohio gubernatorial candidate John Kasich tells an audience, “We need to break the back of organized labor in the schools.”

And now, as governor-elect, Kasich says, “the public-employee unions, particularly the teachers union, you know how I feel about them, . . . but for the unions that make things, I’m going to sit down with them.”

Oprah Winfrey lends her reputation to the film Waiting for Superman, and provides its producer with a virtual infomercial for charter schools and union-busting.
Have you had enough yet?
  • If you are a public educator in Ohio, you sit squarely in the crosshairs of a movement which has decided that you are the problem.
  • If you are a Republican public educator, your party has walked away from you. With relatively few exceptions, Republican candidates refused to meet with the educators serving on our screening committees for this year’s elections.

But wait, it gets worse: the Republicans aren’t the only party we’ve lost. The Obama administration’s embrace of merit pay, union-busting, and charter schools tells us that a “D” after the official’s name doesn’t reliably label a friend.

Republican and Democratic attitudes toward public education aren’t the same, to be sure; but the nuances of their attitudes toward us are a topic for another day. if the Republicans hate us and the Democrats disrespect us, what does that mean? Are we – gulp – alone?
Yes.
Long before we lost the Republicans and the Democrats, we lost our fellow citizens. We have a big persuasion job to do with society at large: too many think that ripping on public employees in general, and public educators in particular, are fine ideas. We’ve done little to tell them otherwise.
Worse yet, our own members are unreliable supporters of public education. Here’s what I mean.
  • Far too many of our colleagues don’t believe us when we tell them about the peril they’re in. If the Republicans are smart, they’ll treat us right and show that all the fear we’ve been mongering among our members is just hysteria. But I don’t anticipate that; that would be far too subtle, and subtlety isn’t the strong suit of politicians of any stripe.
  • Too many of our colleagues support public education only when it suits them. They support public schools in the suburbs but not in the cities. They support the public schools where they work but not the ones where they live. Or (I’m a parent, and I know this is problematic) they send a message to their neighbors by sending their own kids to nonpublic schools.
  • Unfortunately, many public educators belong to locals whose presidents don’t deliver the organization’s message. So we keep preaching to the saved but we never get a chance to preach to the rest.
We are in danger from the new Republican government of Ohio, but not just because they share their party’s loathing of public employees. When they attack us, they’ll be supported by many of our fellow-citizens. And many of own members will be right there with them.
Ho, ho, ho, indeed.