OPINION PIECE REGARDING PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS

In last Friday's Waterloo Region Record Luisa D'Amato has another excellent Opinion piece. This one concerns our public school teachers and their inability to let it go. The title is "Teachers should be careful what they wish for". While the high school teachers generally seem to be getting back to extracurriculars, the public school teachers are not. Apparently a number of recent decisions are being credited to the teachers unions including the election last fall in which Catherine Fife (NDP) easily defeated the liberal candidate. Also Premier McGuinty's decision to resign, repeal of Bill 115 as well as former education minister Laurel Broten's decision not to run for the leadership of the provincial Liberal party all bear the hallmarks of teachers solidarity. Still not enough apparently for the public school teachers. This by the way is the normal route of these things.

Luisa and other commentators have suggested that the teachers are their own worst enemies. I was amazed sixteen years ago when my family had a major runin with the public teachers' union as to how much power and support they had both within and without the educational system. They weren't remotely reluctant to use their money and political muscle for self serving ends. Ditto with the local school board. In hindsight it shows the hypocrisy of their anti bullying campaigns at school. The board and the unions are the biggest bullies around, by far. Their money and political influence also guaranteed them ready access and sympathetic ears within the judicial system. Shame on the pack of them. Long story short one of the few areas where I can't criticize the Ontario Conservative Party is their stand on the teachers. Or as Luisa states in her Opinion piece "For each day they wait, the teachers and their unions take a bigger risk that, after election day, it will be the anti-union Conservative Party waiting for them.".