As most of you know Mark and I both got our degrees in History Education. Each state and each school district has a union to support teachers. As most of you are aware public education in the Untied States is really struggling for various reasons one large reason being the lack of funding. During this election season, (I am so glad its over!) CTA donated 1.25 million dollars to Proposition 8. (Which if you aren't aware was an amendment to California's Constitution that would effectively ban all marriages that were not between a man and a woman) Putting aside all feelings about Prop. 8 (whether you were for or against) I am so irritated that CTA donated this money to this cause! I have been trying really hard to just forget about it but I am clearly not there yet so I thought maybe writing about it would help me vent my frustration and move on. I mean really, I do not teach in California nor plan on teaching there anytime soon so its crazy that this is bothering me so much. That said here we go:
My mom has been teaching in California the last 20 years so since I have been trying to learn all I can about CTA's donation I asked her where on Earth they got that money. Most articles I had read (and I have read A LOT) talked about the money being used from teachers dues but I wanted to make sure I knew what the story was. So I talked to my mom and she said that the money donated came from CTA's political fund. When a teacher joins the union part of their dues gets put into a political fund. Okay fine, my problem is that they would dare use this money on something that according to everyone against Prop 8, has nothing to do with education. Again and again those voting NO on Prop 8 claimed that this ballot would not effect education in any way so why the heck is the state teachers union donating money toward defeating Prop 8?? In my opinoin there are a hundred worthier causes to put this money toward.
As I have been reading articles on the donation and people's reactions it appears that CTA has completely shot themselves in the foot. CTA put the money towards defeating Prop. 8 and because of that lessened their chances of getting support for future ballots that actually have to do with education. Many people wrote that the next time CTA tried to gain financial support for an educational ballot they were not going to support them because they put this money towards something that didn't have anything to do with improving education in this instance. They also hurt their own position against Prop. 8 because many teachers who were undecided about which way to vote decided to vote yes on Prop 8 because they were so angry that CTA used the money for this while they have no funds for their schools. They further hurt themselves because many teachers have decided to pull out their membership in CTA and only be a part of the local school district union. Now I am fully aware that there are thousands of teachers in California and plenty of them will remain in CTA and are glad that they donated the money to defeating Prop. 8 but I don't blame the other teachers for pulling out their membership or as some did, asking that their money be taken out of the political fund.
Now while people taking out money or discontinuing their membership shows their anger that CTA did this (which I totally agree with) it also hurts education in the future. Now they will have less money and support for true causes that will help education. Stupid CTA!!! It is so irritating that they took so many teachers money on such a controversial and emotional cause that supposedly "will in no way affect education". Many people have talked about how this measure will effect education and so forth, but there are just so many things that the money could be put toward. Here are a few ideas that the money could be used for: these were "hot topics" on the CTA website:
No child Left Behind, charter schools, class size reduction, health care, school funding, schools of greatest needs, school and student safety, special education, teacher shortage, testing and accountability, vouchers.
These are only a few of the topics they could have put money towards or even better worked to put to a ballot to use money from the political fund for! Like I said, I read a lot of articles from a lot of sources and could have of course found only that ones that people were angry in but I find this not that likely. We can only hope that President-Elect Obama holds true to his promises to help education we sure need them!
