Let MTI Protest on its Own Time

Hardly a week goes by when the Madison school district doesn’t demonstrate its contempt for its own taxpayers.

Shortly after those taxpayers voted to pony up a record $607 million in school spending increases, the district blew $100,000 on a new marketing campaign including a new MMSD logo — to add insult to injury that money was paid to an outstate consulting firm. Then the school board voted themselves a massive 88% pay increase, going from $8,000 to $15,000 a year plus bonuses for being the board president or sitting on committees. They also proposed that the district pick up their health insurance. That one didn’t pass, but wait until next year.

Now the district is giving their teachers an extra paid day off. That’s right, the schools will be closed this Friday, May 1st, so that teachers can march to the Capitol to demand more school funding and to also (and I’m not sure how these two things go together) demand that we all but stop enforcing immigration laws.

Essentially, the local teachers union, MTI, told the district their members weren’t going to show up on Friday to do their jobs, so they might as well give everybody the day off. The district was happy to comply because it supports these causes, especially more unrestricted funding for itself.

But this isn’t Arbor Day, folks. There’s nothing politically neutral about it. This is an amped up May Day rally and a call for a general strike. Implicit in giving students the day off is that they will be welcome and probably encouraged to show up at a May Day event that is built around the international workers movement. Nothing wrong with that, but students aren’t likely to absorb much Milton Friedman as they take in the day’s activities. This is essentially a school day given over to hard-left propaganda that students will not be invited to challenge once they return to class.

So, now parents will have to scramble to find alternative arrangements for their kids, those kids (who are already falling behind) will miss a day of instruction, and teachers who are required by contract to work a certain number of hours just got another day’s paid vacation simply by demanding it in the name of the right causes. It’s not so much that I blame MTI. Unions are in the business of demanding stuff for their members. But the district got nothing in return. It didn’t even require that the day be made up later on. Brilliant bargaining. I can’t wait to see what happens when Act 10 is overturned.

And here’s the kicker to it all. The protest is planned for Friday. The next day is Saturday. Why on earth couldn’t they simply have scheduled their protest for 24 hours later? The answer, I suppose, is that this is part of a national day of protest which is designed to disrupt everything. A person could ask if a day when everything gets disrupted is actually persuasive for average Americans just trying to go about their day, but that’s another issue.

But what about those of us who do, in fact, oppose the bullying tactics of Trump’s ICE and who do think school funding should be moved from the regressive property tax to more progressive state sources, but think those protests could just as well take place on a weekend? Those of us who do not support International Workers Day because we saw how socialism and communism turned out and we didn’t like it. Those of us who are paying, on average, about $800 more for schools that will be closed when they should be open.

And here’s my final question. Is there any point at which Madison taxpayers have just had enough and they launch their own protest by turning out some of these school board members — none of whom has raised an objection to this madness — at the polls?