Will Neshaminy teachers step up and be part of the solution?

www.neshaminytaxpayers.com

After a decade of nearly bankrupting our school district, the Neshaminy Federation of Teachers remains exclusively focused on increased monetary gains using their legal right to inflict damaging work slowdowns and strikes on innocent children. However, when a union’s self interests collides head on with residents’ well-being, the community must rise and use all our legal rights to protect children and taxpayers. This is precisely what the Neshaminy community has done for the past four years.

Most recently, the NFT rejected a generous board offer while insisting on more unaffordable demands, as well as maintaining 100 percent of their 2002 contract terms that caused deficits and destructively codified 25 years of union control of the district’s financial and educational direction, which has spiraled downward. The NFT’s new contract offer guarantees further devastation of our district’s budget and educational quality. Let’s stipulate, teachers’ unions provide zero value to education and in our case, they are a huge negative.

Union bosses speak for members. A few teachers, albeit cautiously and without facts, occasionally talk honestly about the contract impasse. This separates them from programmed entitlement mentality union extremists and their leaders, who make ad hominem attacks on board members and citizens.

The majority of teachers support union goals. We often hear these teachers say, “This is about protecting our professional rights.” For the uninitiated, this is union speak for their unyielding position to protect the failed status quo that rewarded them greatly with non-performance based, luxurious compensation and retirement plans, 2002 contract terms and language no other Pennsylvania teachers possess and finally a job for life. They have all this and continuously deliver mediocre results.

NFT officials have led these willing teachers in attacks on board members’ personal lives, shouting down public speakers, unauthorized calls to parents’ homes, and damaging education with unaffordable demands. However, the real devastation to education is due to their unwavering support of the national teachers’ unions’ monolithic opposition to education reforms and implementing an accountability based, non-tenure merit system.

This is a real loss, since educators certainly possess the intelligence and institutional knowledge to help fix our system. The effort requires full involvement of the teachers who intellectually recognize needed reforms. However, they apparently prefer an insular world, hiding behind union leaders who obstruct and obfuscate. This path is dedicated to an unyielding focus on monetary and power oriented goals, at the expense of all else. By “going along to get along” teachers are part of the problem hurting our children, not the solutions for better education.

When these teachers say “we want a fair equitable contract,” in my opinion that is union speak for “teachers get our last contract plus all new demands, everyone else gets less.” It has worked that way forever and consequently NSD teachers are the highest compensated in Pennsylvania. They priced themselves out of our market, over reached with unreasonable demands, and are the mortal enemy of reforms. Sadly, by participating in the union’s four-year misguided crusade, they have unnecessarily squandered away the real currency of all educators — reputation, personal respect and professional dignity.

On the other side, if you ever wondered why the NFT is facing overwhelming community opposition, you only need read their last contract, under which they still work, with all luxury benefits except raises, and their outlandish demands for a significantly more expensive new contract. Then read the board’s latest offer that had parent and taxpayer input and you will invariably support our board’s fair, reform minded proposal.

Our board and community are now inseparably bound together, united in protecting and improving education and never again allowing Neshaminy’s educational welfare and limited tax dollars to be sacrificed on the altar of union self interest! I wish we never had to oppose the NFT; however we did not start this fight; 675 union teachers did. Thankfully, our community is fully engaged, united and armed with knowledge we never had before. We need to finish the job to build a better district for our children. I sincerely hope individual teachers will someday choose to be part of the solution.