In a video clip appearing on Montgomery County Media, incoming president of the Montgomery County Education Association (teachers’ union) David Stein delineated his responsibilities.
I need to be the public face of the union…I need to be the person who is talking to MCPS, overseeing our bargaining processes, talking to our members, supervising the staff here at MCEA, so there are a lot of hats that a union president has.
That interview appeared on August 21. Fifteen days later, on September 5, The Sentinel reported the union’s opposition to a referendum further limiting the number of terms the county executive can serve. At Stein’s direction, the teachers’ union will probably contribute 20,000 votes towards the referendum’s defeat.
Here’s where I’m losing the line of reasoning. What is it in Stein’s responsibilities, which he himself enumerated, that sanctions his interference in local elections? Nothing in that desperately needed referendum has anything to do with the teachers or the students. Apparently, it has something to do with Stein, and we’d all like to know what that is.
The school system’s decline is now in the mainstream media, as the courageous reporters at the Bethesda Magazine put on their front cover (see lead image, above). Why is it in decline? It’s not the money. There has not been a budget cut for at least the past five years, only budget increases. The county didn’t fund the school district’s request by $30 million due to loss of the federal COVID assistance, so presumably we should be able to return MCPS to its performance during the year 2018/19 with this year’s budget.
My contention is that MCPS, as with many other public school systems, is in decline in large part due to the unions and management. Monifa McKnight left a teaching staff demoralized by protecting a sexual predator and then being handsomely rewarded for doing so; the school district spent millions on junky electric buses instead of classroom education; we have to wonder if former union boss Jennifer Martin knows which union rep was negligent in reporting the sexual harassment.
Are the county’s non-unionized schools in decline, such as the many Catholic schools, Georgetown Prep, Holton Arms, Bullis, or Green Acres? If not, we need to get our students into those private schools, or ones like them, with school vouchers. Go ahead, Mr. Stein, accept the 1% voucher challenge we proposed in April 2024. Let’s see if 1% of the parents would happily exit a school district that Martin and McKnight have dismantled. After that, we’ll see how many teachers will happily leave exist MCPS and MCEA.
Most importantly, Mr. Stein, be like the rest of us: do your day job, and do politics on your own time. The teachers you represent deserve better than what you’ve already given them.
Related posts:
Rabid Partisan David Stein, Longtime MCEA Rep, (Now MCEA President) Wants You to Know He’s “Setting Partisan Politics Aside” in Anti-Term Limits Advocacy
Parents, it’s time to declare our independence from union control of schools
Christy Handy and Jennifer Martin’s opinion piece suffers from ethical bias and reversible short-term dementia