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November 08, 2017 03:30 PM UTC

Who's Afraid of Big Bad Teacher's Unions?

  • 17 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols
Evidently Kyle Clark didn’t like his school teachers very much.

9NEWS’ Kyle Clark, that’s who!

School board candidates backed and financed by teachers unions [Pols emphasis] are in positions for convincing wins in Jefferson County and Douglas County, with strong leads on Wednesday morning.

In Douglas County, where eight candidates are running for four seats, the union-backed slate [Pols emphasis] needs to flip only one race to gain control of the school board. If that happens, the new school board majority would likely abandon its defense of a controversial voucher program instituted by conservative school reformers. A legal challenge to that program is working its way toward the Supreme Court…

The union-backed [Pols emphasis] candidates for the DougCo school board maintained double-digit leads over the so-called education reform slate into Wednesday.

…In Jefferson County, three of five Board of Education seats were up for grabs. Two of the races were contested by conservative candidates looking to unseat union-supported [Pols emphasis] board members.

Kyle Clark’s full story on the school board elections in Douglas County and Jefferson County is eleven sentences long. Four of those eleven sentences–in addition to the title of the story–contain the words “unions,” “union-backed,” or “union-supported.” Now, we’re not disputing that the Colorado Education Association and their subsidiary organizations in Jefferson and Douglas Counties played a role in these elections–certainly they did, just as they did in the historic recall elections two years ago that swept a controversial far-right school board majority in Jefferson County from power.

But here’s the thing: over 120,000 Jefferson County voters participated in the school board elections that concluded yesterday. No doubt the teacher’s union’s support was helpful to the candidates who prevailed, but it’s Jefferson County voters who made the final decision–not the teacher’s union–and the winning candidates won by a landslide. And that means to obsess over the role of the union to the absolutely ridiculous extent Kyle Clark did in this story makes what he did here something other than journalism. This is a story written by someone so steeped in the demonization pushed by conservatives of organized labor that he completely lost sight of the larger reality–which is not “the unions,” but the fact that 120,000 voters who threw far-right radicals out of power in Jefferson County two years ago reaffirmed their choice by a similarly overwhelming margin.

Much like the Denver Post’s just-plain-sad endorsements that the voters ignored, this is a local TV newsman demonstrating only one thing: that he listens to the wrong people.

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17 thoughts on “Who’s Afraid of Big Bad Teacher’s Unions?”

  3. We are pretty much monsters in human guise.wink Seriously, teacher's unions have been at the forefront of every progressive movement or advance in democracy since there were teacher's unions. Before there were teacher's unions, teachers were still leading progressive movements.

    And the public sector unions tend to be the only big-money counterbalance to the corporate right donors.

  4. This isn't the first time for Kyle either. Click on the "two years ago" link, Pols refers to some weird "corrections" he did right before the election trying to undo another reporter's work. He was a snake last time too, not sure what his gripe is.

      3. Two comments ?! on the same subject?

        Hey- I'd like to interview you. Serious.
        We pay scale (if you got a card) you're only gonna get 8-10,000 views and 1/2 that could be my mom just watching it over and over.

        But it's fun -we have great coffee and solid ale if you prefer.
        It takes about an hour – and you get all the questions in advance, if you want.

    3. And guess what.  The anti-voucher candidates all won by an average of 58% to 42%.  An average margin of 16% (surely you went to school and calculate what a blow out loss this is for the Christian Madrasas).  The Evangelicals and Flat Earth believers aren't going to get any free cash to teach Creationism.  Oh dear, Douglas County children are going to be exposed to Climate Change information and transformative science cirriculums.  Free thinking instead of mind control.  Damn those parents who want their children to be competitive in a complicated world.

  6. Unions? Yes, they mattered in JeffCo and Thompson in 15, and they mattered again in DougCo this year because DougCo could learn from those earlier victories. Does their money help fight corporate takeovers of public schools? Yes to that, too. But the real lesson is that when teachers get out of their classrooms and connect with their school communities, not just parents, schools and communities win. Unions help there, too.

  7. James O'Keefe hates teacher's unions. They're his latest target. I don't know if OafKeefvfe is afraid of teacher's unions, but his Koch funders are.

    Project Veritas (OafKeefve's propaganda arm) has some ugly stories which imply that all teacher unions cover up for child molesters and abusers. Nasty stuff.

    The reality is that schools err on the side of protecting kids, immediately putting anyone accused of improper contact with a child on administrative leave pending investigation. Unions make sure the accused gets due process.  But kids' safety comes first.

    That's the process I'd like our legislature to have. Baumgardner would have missed a lot of votes. Lebsock, too.

     

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