Top Ten Reasons Why Teachers Should Quit the Vermont-NEA
Pass on to your friends in the teaching profession:
Top Ten Reasons Why Teachers Should Quit the Vermont-NEA (Written by a teacher and former VTNEA member)
10. They want an unlimited, uncapped right to set agency fees.
9. They pay several of their employees six-figure salaries. They pay even their clerical assistants more than the
highest paid teacher in Vermont.
8. They greedily encourage the proliferation of unqualified classroom aides and other paraprofessionals to
enhance their dues revenue -- but at the expense of higher teacher salaries.
7. They suck money from your local with very little in return. For instance, they’ll say you can’t win an issue in
arbitration – because they don’t want to pay their share of it.
6. They never poll teachers on any of the political stances they take.
5. They are unelected representatives who actually write legislation coming out of Montpelier.
4. They oppose statewide contracts without ever polling their members on this important issue.
3. They’re willing to negotiate away your right to strike.
2. They’re a bunch of hypocrites. They’ll talk about how important it is to support our public schools. But then
their president, Angelo Dorta, sends his kids to private schools.
1. They don't really have to represent you in a legal matter.
No comment on this particular posting as only a spaceman could figure out how to comment. But, hey guys, why no comment section on Curt's post related to the Rutland School Board member's comment about voting on the school budget. I might even agree with Curt on that one - well maybe??
Posted by: George Cross | October 26, 2007 at 01:11 PM
George, feel free to comment here on the other post (especially if you're going to agree with me!).
Spaceman, huh? The post got kind of jumbled, which happens when I try to cut and paste from something I've written in a Word document. Still, I think it's readable.
Are there any of them you don't understand? The overall theme is that teachers really don't get much bang for their buck.
I don't know how many teachers or former teachers there are reading this blog, but I'd be interested in hearing any stories where VTNEA really fought the good fight or where they backed down from a good fight.
Perhaps it was our particular Uniserv director, but they always seemed to discourage arbitrations. In the last contract period, we sent them over $80,000 and didn't seem to get much in return. When I attempted the decertification vote, though, Joel and Angelo gave our local all kinds of personal attention.
Where VTNEA is really strong is with lobbying. (Although I mostly don't agree with what they lobby for.) But they have this reputation for protecting bad teachers. I think they're actually weak at protecting teachers, and unfortunately some of them are good teachers being treated unfairly by administrators.
Posted by: Curtis Hier | October 26, 2007 at 02:29 PM
1. They don't really have to represent you in a legal matter.
Posted by: Joleene | February 27, 2009 at 04:43 PM