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The
Middletown Press tells us, “In
late March, at a meeting of the Education Committee, Sen. Doug McCrory,
D-Hartford, delivered what may have been the most rousing defense of charter
schools ever heard in Connecticut’s legislature.
“McCrory, a Hartford
Democrat, spoke for 31 uninterrupted minutes, quoting Martin Luther King Jr.,
invoking civil rights touchstones such as the killing of George Floyd and
arguing that poor families in Connecticut cities need school choice for a shot
at a good education.
“’It is time to give
our parents a choice and give our students a chance,’ he concluded, drawing
applause from some in the hearing room, where clapping is strongly
discouraged.”
One can only imagine
what McCrory’s reception in the General Assembly would have been if he had been
supporting Milton Friedman’s proposal to allow tax dollars spent in Connecticut
on education to “follow the student.” Once we put students and their parents in
charge of financing education – still, after all these years, a municipal
project, though both the state and federal government have made inroads into
what once was a municipal political preserve – the whole educational
environment would be bathed in free choice and restorative competition. Good
public and private schools, including charter schools would thrive, and the
pedagogical wheat, for once, would be separated from the pedagogical chaff.
Under a
non-discriminatory free market regimen, Connecticut’s inadequate schools –
public, private or charter -- would either improve or disappear and
Connecticut’s quality schools would prosper because students and parents in
charge of financing would freely choose not to finance failing enterprises.
McCrory no doubt has
noticed that state union troops have for some time been manning the urban
education status quo barricades.
Democrat legislators, many dependent on state employee unions for re-election
to office, certainly have taken note. State politicians have been inclined for
decades to work hand and glove with public education union chiefs to hold at
bay even the slightest attempt to reform the public education behemoth. “Reform” in the mouth of unions all across
the state means little more than – give us more money, more benefits, and allow
us to shape union contracts to our liking. Then, if you please, bug off.
Why should taxpayers
in Connecticut finance employment contracts covering salaries and benefits that
have been shaped through negotiations between SEBAC, the union conglomerate charged with
negotiating contracts and the governor of Connecticut? Such contracts nearly
always benefit public employee workers at the expense of taxpayers. Why
shouldn’t state worker salaries and benefits be set unilaterally -- during a tallied vote in the General
Assembly, so that constituents would know what legislators are caught in the
cat’s paw of powerful teacher unions -- by elected legislators charged
constitutionally with getting and spending in Connecticut? The General
Assembly’s constitutional mandate should never be farmed out to unelected
groups and boards pledged to represent the interests of favored parties. In the
American political structure, the legislative branch is considered predominant
because legislators collect and dispose of tax funds, occasionally to the
benefit of taxpayers.
What sparked
McCrory’s “rousing defense of charter schools” was Senate Bill 1096.
“Under a 2015 law,
opening a new charter school in Connecticut requires two tiers of approval: one
from the state Board of Education and one from the legislature, which must
grant the school’s funding,” the Middletown Press noted. “SB 1096 would remove
the second tier of approval, meaning the Board of Education alone would be able
to authorize charter programs.
“This would likely
result in the creation of at least several new charter schools, including in
Danbury and Norwalk, where proposals approved by the board have stalled in the
legislature.
“Proponents of the
bill say green-lighting those schools, and others like them, would mean more
options for families in those cities.”
Not on our watch
said two of the state’s most powerful teachers unions, both of which urged the
Education Committee to oppose the bill.
“The night before
the committee was set to vote on SB 1096,” the Middletown Press reported, “Connecticut’s
two largest teachers unions emailed lawmakers urging them to oppose the bill,
while noting that one of the groups, the Connecticut Education Association,
would consider the upcoming vote as part of its legislative scorecard.
“The letter rankled
some members of the committee, including McCrory, who said moments before the
vote that the unions’ position ‘has placed a bulls-eye on each and every one of
our backs,’ as well as fellow co-chair, Rep. Jeff Currey, D-East Hartford, who
accused CEA and AFT of ‘veiled threats.’”
In addition to
veiled political threats, teacher unions have insuperable financing advantages
over charter schools in Connecticut. The per-pupil expenditure for state funded
charter
schools is approximately
$11,525. According to 2018 data
from the U.S. Census Bureau,
Connecticut spent $20,635 per public school student.
With a financing
deferential of such magnitude, one would think public teachers unions would
have no need of “veiled threats.”
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