It's time we stop making education mandatory. Public education has morphed into a means for teachers unions to grab all they can without caring how our children are being educated. School committees serve as vessels to help promote the agendas of teachers unions rather than what's best for our children. Let's face it, where can you get a job today that pays the salary and benefits that teachers get for working 180 day a year?
We always hear how we have money for bombs but not for education. Wrong! What teachers are saying here is that we have money for everything else but their raises. When teacher unions are confronted with the choice of a raise, or saving jobs, unions will always opt for the raise. So when teachers and their unions say that they're about saving jobs - don't believe it. The choice has and will always be, a raise over saving a person's job. I know all this having been a teacher and the president of the teachers union for 8 years in Massachusetts.
When we remove "Mandatory" from public education, we remove the distraction of unions, unfunded mandates and bring back people that will respect the value of a good education. It's time that decisions on the education of our children be made by the people we elect and hire to administrate rather then some union, whose only care is to further their own agenda.
The time to privatize and make education a choice rather then mandatory is long overdue.
