Big blunder cost New Jersey teachers years of goodwill By Kevin Manahan May 27, 2010, 5:05AM Ed Murray/The Star-LedgerKevin Stinson, a high school social studies teacher in Leonia, protested Gov. Chris Christie's budget cuts during Saturday's protest in Trenton.My father spent nearly his entire career in public relations at AT&T, so he was always dispensing advice on how to handle personal crises, big and small. And when I would come home from my high school job of stocking shelves at King’s Supermarket, complaining about some ungracious customer, he would remind me:
“AT&T spends millions of dollars trying to shape the public’s opinion of us, but it takes only one rude telephone operator to flush all that money and ruin all of my hard work. The same thing could happen at King’s.”
His lesson was clear: One bad decision, one stupid miscalculation, can wreck years of good will.
Which brings us to the New Jersey Education Association.
In an astonishing fall from grace that has taken only months, teachers have gone from respected and beloved members of the community to some of the most reviled. In a blink, they have trashed years of good will.
Once the patient darlings who nurtured our kids, teachers now look like insensitive, out-of-touch, can’t-think-for-themselves union robots who, when forced to face economic realities, clung to an insulting sense of entitlement, heartlessly sacrificed the jobs of colleagues, called the governor naughty names and used students as political pawns.
All while blaming everyone else.
At Saturday’s rally in Trenton, teachers wondered when the Earth started spinning in the other direction.
“It’s like we woke up one morning and the world had changed,” said Linda Mirabelli, a music teacher in Livingston. “We were liked and respected, and now, overnight, people have turned against us.”
How did it happen? That’s easy: One bad decision, one stupid miscalculation: An overwhelming majority of teachers refused to accept a pay freeze. They could have won taxpayers’ eternal gratitude, but instead demanded their negotiated raises and fought against contributing a dime toward budget-breaking health insurance benefits. Teachers could have pitched in, but they dug in.
They thumbed their noses at taxpayers, who have lost their jobs, had their pay cut, gone bankrupt and fallen into foreclosure. As taxpayers made less, teachers demanded more. You do that, you become a villain. Fast. It doesn’t matter how many stars Junior gets on his book report.
Teachers listened to their overpaid brain trust, the architects of this disastrous public relations strategy. Together, NJEA president Barbara Keshishian, executive director Vincent Giordano and spokesman Steve Wollmer earn more than a million dollars. Keshishian, who has been outmaneuvered by the governor at every turn, earns $256,450 annually. Giordano, with salary and deferred compensation, earned $550,203 in 2009, and Wollmer makes $300,000.
Who says you get what you pay for? Union members are shelling out a lot of money for lousy representation. They should stage a coup. Instead they joined hands at Saturday’s You-And-Me-Against-The-World rally and tried to convince each other they’re doing the right thing.
To compound the troubles, the NJEA does something stupid almost every day. They insult the governor; teachers (and administrators) let kids walk out of class to protest cuts in aid; union members refuse to give up their seats to private-school students at a hearing in Trenton.
And now the NJEA is now running TV commercials, attacking Christie (again), this time using cops and firemen for cover, hoping the public still likes those guys. The firefighters union, realizing the teachers union is now toxic, says it never would have approved the commercial, but the NJEA never asked.
NJEA leadership should have seen the backlash coming. Tenure, raises, pensions, health care benefits and an aversion toward merit pay have irked taxpayers for years. The recession ignited that anger, and no last-gasp advertising blitz will change the perception of insensitive teachers who told taxpayers to eat chalk.
So, the question is: Was it worth it?
The average public school teacher makes $63,000, and the average raise this year was roughly 4 percent, so teachers traded $2,520 for these scars, which never will heal. And because Christie and taxpayers asked only for a one-year pay freeze, it’s money teachers could have recovered next year.
Imagine how differently teachers would be perceived today if they had agreed to a pay freeze and willingly offered a few bucks toward their health policies. They’d be heroes.
Heck, we would have staged a rally for them.
Kevin Manahan is a member of the Star-Ledger editorial board
