>The NEA has sent Robert “Jersey Shores” Bonazzi to South Carolina to politicize teachers for out-of-state union bosses.
https://www.voiceforschoolchoice.com/2010/05/28/nj-union-thug-moves-south-to-scea/
What is the political agenda sought by public teachers in South Carolina?
Do they seek a pay scheme that rewards them based on their classroom success?
Do they want a reduction of the administrative bureaucracy that siphons their time and money away from the classroom?
Or do they aspire to achieve broader policy aims, such as the elimination of far-reaching inequalities in student access to great classrooms?
If schools exist (and are funded) to provide children with appropriate and effective instruction, then it stands to reason that teachers’ unions ought to support policies proven to promote those goals.
But that is not always the case. More often, union bosses exploit the political naivete of well-meaning teachers by using so-called “education associations” to promote an agenda strikingly at odds with the public interest.
These political hacks, far-removed from the classroom, leech resources away from the classrooms, defend persistent school failures and mislead the teachers they claim to serve. Their ultimate political objective is a massive and perpetual growth in government spending on schools – the lions share of which goes to politically connected contractors, consultants and career bureaucrats.
Now, the National Education Association (NEA), America’s largest and most controversial teachers’ union, has sent one of its henchmen here to South Carolina to do just that.
Robert A. Bonazzi has been “appointed” by the DC-based NEA to take over the South Carolina Education Association (SCEA). The SCEA has, despite its role in the stimulus debate, experienced a major decline in membership and political clout in recent years. All the while the ultra-political administrators’ union (SCASA) and the school boards’ union (SCSBA) have rushed in to fill the controversial “advocacy role” once envisioned for the SCEA.
Bonazzi’s most recent post for the NEA was in New Jersey, where he served a leader of the New Jersey Education Association – nationally recognized as one of the most politically noxious and anti-parent NEA affiliates in the country.
In New Jeresy, Robert Bonazzi fought hard against home-rule and even homeowners who wanted to limit the growth of property taxes – bizarrely calling property taxpayers “different from other folks.” Bonazzi threatened moderate Republican Governor Christina Todd Whitman with “electoral consequences” when she proposed a plan to halt public subsidies for teachers’ pensions.
He was also part of a NEA plan to setup a “social welfare” front group that channeled teachers’ dues and NEA political contributions into a shell organization with greater scope, fewer legal restrictions, and fewer critics, than the beleaguered NEA.
The group took in over $4 million from the NEA to run attack ads during the 2004 election cycle.
Bonazzi’s “total war” approach to political organizing of public school teachers remains legendary in the Garden State.
“The [NJ] teachers union makes the Teamsters look like pussycats,” said Alan R. Geisenheimer, one-time president of the Bergen County School Boards Legislative Committee. “The question I would ask, is there any legislation the NJEA has asked for that they haven’t gotten? I don’t know of any.”
And it worked well for the union:
“To some of my colleagues in the Senate, the [NJ] teachers union is tangible and the general public is not,” said Sen. Gerald Cardinale, R-Demarest. “The teachers union is a monolithic force; the public is not.”
Things did not work out so well for the students though – but that is not how NEA quantifies success.
https://www.voiceforschoolchoice.com/2010/05/28/nj-union-thug-moves-south-to-scea/
