Are 'union bosses' really forcing teachers to oppose the Luna laws?

 by Clayton Trehal

As I take a moment from the campaign trail to write this letter, I have before me the latest Melaleuca ad, Mr. Hoffman's recent article, and like everyone else, each morning I hear the “vote yes” commercials on the radio on the way to work. If you take what the vote yes side says literally, you get a picture of powerful union bosses running the education system throughout the state, paralyzing any efforts for reform and forcing rank-and-file teachers to support a union agenda whether they want to or not. As someone who participated in the Recall Luna campaign and who got thousands of signatures for the referendum, and who now has knocked over 2,000 doors trying to convince people to vote no on the Luna laws, I find this laughable because I am not a union-member and the IEA is not endorsing me in my run for the Legislature.

So if the IEA is not forcing me to be against the Luna laws as Mr. Vandersloot and Mr. Hoffman say it is, why would I oppose them in the first place? When these laws were passed (over intense opposition) in 2011, the online school I work for was just beginning to divorce ourselves from the for-profit educational management organization (EMO) that shared management of our school. Both the teachers and the leadership at my school felt that our students would be better served if full control of my school was local, not shared with an out-of-state management company as is the typical arrangement for online schools. When the laws were being debated, I felt they would greatly expand the role of for-profit education in our state. I knew based on experience as an on-line teacher how for-profit management companies ran schools, so I wrote several letters to every legislator in the state. Like so many other stakeholders who wrote in, I was virtually ignored. Few responded, and not one Nampa legislator would write me back. This is when I knew that these laws would be passed whether we wanted them or not.

Once I realized that the Luna laws would be passed regardless of what stakeholders thought of them, I heard of the campaign to recall Luna and I called a number to join. For two months I painted signs, sat at tables, and collected signatures for the referendum. I later helped my friend Travis Manning form a group called the Common Sense DemocracyFoundation, and we followed the SCF technology meetings and researched this issue. The more I learned, the more alarmed I became: Luna's style of reform is being seen all across the nation because there is huge money is public education, and politicians who support this “reform” can earn large campaign contributions from for-profit education; it's common knowledge that Luna has. I decided to run for the legislature not because I felt I had much of a chance of winning (I'm a Democrat in Nampa!), but because I knew that my run would afford me an opportunity to discuss education with large numbers of people.

I oppose the misnamed “Students Come First” laws for several reasons: 1.) Most of our school districts don't have textbooks that go home with students, which I consider to be the central problem in many schools because this hobbles a teacher's ability to assign homework. This has been the case for nearly 15 years in many districts. Once we buy laptops for all the students, I fear we'll never get textbooks back because of the cost of the laptops and new issues they create. 2.) I know what for-profit education looks like and I'm not impressed. When an EMO ran my school, I “taught” 380 students; now (that we kicked our EMO out) I teach less than 150. I strongly believe that schools should be local and non-profit. 3.) I believe that on-line education should be a choice, not a mandate. For some students and districts, lots of online classes make sense, for others they don't. There are both pros and cons to online education and I believe that students/parents/local school boards should make these choices, not the State Board of Education and Mr. Luna.

Back to the union bosses: where was the union in all this and how has the union helped me? The people who volunteered their time and effort to the referendum were a mixed bag: some were parents, some were political activists, and some were teachers. Union bosses? I never saw them, and I also know that the IEA didn't even send me a candidate questionnaire so they never even considered endorsing me. If the teachers' union in Idaho is so strong, why don't we have more pro-education, union-backed legislators? Remember that Luna's union-busting legislation sailed through the statehouse easily, despite "union-boss" protest. Here's what else I know from experience: the minute an Idaho educator leaves our state to teach in another, they get a pay-raise of at least $10,000/year no matter what state they move to. Back east or maybe in Chicago teacher's unions might have the power many here fear, but that's certainly not the case in ID. If our teachers' union was half as strong as Hoffman and others say it is, the Luna laws would have never passed in the first place.

I suspect that we will all hear a lot about Propositions 1,2,&3 in October, and every voter has to make up their minds about what they feel and how they will vote. I tell my story here to help people make that choice and to dispel some of the hype one hears from the vote yes folks. If you are reading this and you are a teacher, please tell your story. If you know a teacher, ask them where they stand and try to listen to their story.