Linda Lyon was president of the Arizona School Boards Association for the past year of tumultuous action in the state. Her office required neutrality. Now that she has “passed the gavel,” she is again free to speak out and she blasts a legislator who has proposed a bill to silence teachers and strip away their First Amendment Rights.
“I just read Arizona Capitol Times reporting that AZ Representative Mark Finchem isn’t waiting for the start of the legislative session to exact retribution on educators who stood up for themselves and their students this year. To the teachers in his district (LD 11) who marched on the Capitol this year and saw him in action, this will not come as a surprise. After all, one teacher who visited him during the #RedForEd walkout told me that when they went to see him, he told them to “get their asses back to work”. I cannot verify this charge, but in my experience with Finchem, can say that I have found him to: 1) say what he thinks, 2) not be subtle and 3) not be supportive of public education.
“His new bill, H2002 (educators; ethics professional responsibility), would require the State Board of Education to adopt uniform rules for all certified teachers in “taxpayer supported schools” to bar them from political activities. Funny thing is, Arizona Revised Statue (ARS) 15.511 already forbids the use of public school resources to influence elections and, levies a fine of $5,000 per violation. And, as Chris Kotterman, ASBA’s legislative Liaison said, “everyone who works in public schools is keenly aware that they’re under a microscope in regard to political activity.”
“True to form though, Finchem wants to not only drive the point home (just in case educators are too stupid to understand it), but also lock them in a box and throw away the key. According to AZ Capitol Times, he proposes a prohibition on “the endorsement or opposition of any candidate or elected or appointed official; any pending or enacted legislation, rule or regulation; pending, proposed or decided court case; or pending, proposed or executed executive action.”
So, this is the response to #RedForEd: punish teachers who dare to speak.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I believe, if history serves me correctly, this is exactly what Hitler did in the 1920’s & 30’s. Shut them up, put them in jail, throw away the key. Better check to see if Finchem has a Nazi flag in his front yard.
Everyone should read ed reformers.
This charter school founder believes that he invented this:
“Campbell said the “thesis” of the school is that “on day one of your ninth grade, literally hour one … we start talking about what you want to do with your life.” Speakers have included a health care CEO, professional dancers and a speech pathologist. Academy students mapped out various careers they might pursue, and spent their first semester doing a research project on their chosen path. ”
Speakers who come in and talk about their careers! Career planning! Why, no one has ever considered that before!
The public school in this town has literally been doing that for 25 years. Of course, no one in ed reform would ever find that out because they don’t cover public schools.
It’s like grade inflation. They do these absolutely ordinary things, things that public schools have been doing without fanfare or recognition for years, and the whole echo chamber treats them like they cured cancer.
This guy couldn’t just bring speakers into public schools. Instead he has to bash the local public schools while naming himself CEO of his own school. The ego and arrogance are just off the charts. The town is, of course, horribly divided because he waltzed in in 2015, announced he knew everything, and started partitioning off their public school system into two warring camps.
God forbid one of them should actually contribute to an existing public school, and work with other people. No, everyone has to start their own company and name themselves CEO. They’re far, far too smart to lower themselves to work with actual locals. Instead they have to bulldoze the locals, knock them out of the way, and destroy the existing school system.
https://hechingerreport.org/a-rural-charter-school-splits-an-oklahoma-town/
The charter school is under-enrolled and hasn’t achieved any of the promises it made, but in true ed reform fashion they plan to vastly expand all over the country:
“Despite the community’s concerns, Campbell is pressing forward on plans for expansion, with hopes of adding pre-K to fifth grade next fall, along with additional high school grades. He has also formed a nonprofit, Advance Rural Education, to raise money for rural schools of all sorts and help establish more charters in other rural towns like Seminole: “I would like to have these schools all over rural America.”
Because why listen to “community concerns”? What do those dopes know?
This hard-charging CEO will jam his charter chain into your town whether you like it or not, with absolutely no concern for the vast majority of students and families who attend the public schools he has utter contempt for.
Is there any difference between the GOP of the 21st century with Trump as the party’s leader and the country’s first totally, nut-case, corrupt, traitorous, serial-lying president and the Nazi Party under Hitler?
The only difference I see is Trump doesn’t have a postage-stamp sized mustache under his nose and above his upper lip, and he hasn’t started wearing arm bands yet … but wait, are the MAGA hats the same thing as the Nazi armbands?
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
What a coward!
This is “jawboning,” the AX legislator growling and snarling to intimidate the teachers with angry harsh threatening words and promises of severe punishment. Most authorities try “jawboning,” “saber-rattling,” and “reading the riot act first b/c language is the least expensive and least political risky weapon to use against adversaries in getting them to back off and back down. If rhetoric does the job, cheap way out of a confrontation. But, such tools really can’t work if the teachers go out en masse on a wildcat general strike like last time, b/c no state, no society, no authority can function unless its many, many teachers supervise its even more numerous k-12 minors all day every day. When teachers withdraw their labor and shut down schools, this society will be paralyzed district by district with an enormous mass of kids whose parents don’t want them home or wandering the streets and whose town authorities lack enough police power to supervise the streets, and whose working parents will not be able to go to work. Let’s hope our teachers finally get just how much power is already in their hands and how quickly they can reverse the demolition of public education if they choose.
Yeh, we dont need no stinkin teecherz tellin us politishuns wut to do. Thay shud just shut the hell up an let us git on with privatizin them publik skools like mistr Trump and miss DeVos wunt.
…a prohibition on
“the endorsement or opposition of any candidate or elected or appointed official;
any pending or enacted legislation, rule or regulation;
pending, proposed or decided court case; or
pending, proposed or executed executive action.”
This could be added to the legislative agenda and acted upon to make it a hardwired limitation on political speech. Do not underestimate the vindictivness in this ungrammatical language.
Clearly an unconstitutional restriction on the Right of Free Speech. Hopefully, such attacks on constitutional rights will expose even to Finchem supporters that he is a danger to everyone’s constitutional rights, including theirs.
Not surprising. Utah’s legislators blamed Utah teachers for the no-vote on vouchers in 2006, and has spent the last 12 years punishing Utah teachers for it, with lack of funding, and a million new requirements to teachers in classrooms. Legislators, particularly Repubicans, are a nasty, retaliatory bunch.
Funny to blame teachers are the overwhelming loss of vouchers in Utah in 2007.
Voters were defeated by 62-38%.
If teachers had that much power, a teacher should be governor, and teachers should dominate the legislature.
and that nasty retaliation streak makes them hugely useful to the ALEC/KOCH game
It’s not just Utah. For instance, every public school teacher in the country is punished through Social Security.
If a teacher worked in the private sector long enough to qualify for Social Security and then went into teaching, when it comes time to collect Social Security, the amount they qualified for from the years they paid into SS will be cut as much as 50 percent and maybe even more.
I worked outside of teaching and paid into SS for fifteen years before I went into teaching and stopped paying into SS but paid into CalSTR’s teacher retirement program instead.
When I applied for SS, I was eligible for $600 a month based on what I had paid into SS for those 15 years, but only received $300 a month because I had been a public school teacher for thirty years from the age of 30 to 60. Decades ago, probably soon after the war against public education and professional teachers was launched by the ALEC and the Walton family, Congress passed legislation that said teachers could not double dip.
But, 90-percent of the public’s money that paid for public education in California came from state taxes and only 10-percent or less came from federal sources.
Then I suppose this should apply to senators, reps in the house, post office workers -all tax payer supported employees. Right?
It only applies to teachers, many other laws and rules that have been created.