Schoolmarms Gone Wild!

If you like tales of rapacious villainy, it's hard to beat the chronicles of the so-called "public sector" unions in the USA. That's because their leftoid leaders know that they have a monopoly and that the benighted taxpayers can always be tapped for more loot. Prime specimens are the teachers' unions and a case in point is the Spring Break pow wow of the Washington (State) Educators Association. When the "educators" took time out from the fleshpots of Spokane, they decided to let everything hang out:

Teachers' union votes to sue state to force more education funding

Washington Education Association delegates voted unanimously Thursday night to approve the filing of a lawsuit to try and force the Legislature to spend more money on public schools.

The board of the 76,000-member teachers' union asked about 1,100 delegates, meeting here at the annual Representative Assembly, to approve the lawsuit.

The vote was unanimous, union spokesman Rich Wood said.

There was "a lot of discussion in support of it, and very little or none opposed," he said.

The next step is to form a coalition of parents, school boards and other friends of public education in support of the lawsuit, Wood said. The actual court filing could be a year away, he said.

Union members could be asked to vote to approve a special assessment of $1 a month to regular dues to raise $1 million for legal and technical research on the lawsuit. A discussion of that issue will come later in the meeting, Wood said.

"Despite the good efforts of many individuals," the teachers' union has reached the conclusion that state lawmakers "have not been able to find the political will to meet their responsibilities" to education, WEA President Charles Hasse said earlier Thursday.

It's for the tykes, I'm sure. And the lawsuit ploy sort of worked in North Carolina. The only problem is that the "educators" have long since ceased teaching elementary skills like reading, writing, and arithmetic in favor of bizarre socialization experiments. That's why they truly hate standardized testing of such skills. And that's why they also truly hate "charter schools" which emphasize them - Teachers union plans charter-school challenge

The state's largest teachers union yesterday voted to challenge a charter-school law passed so recently that Gov. Gary Locke's signature barely has had time to dry.

The 1,100 delegates at the Washington Education Association's annual meeting in Spokane voted overwhelmingly to file a referendum asking voters to overturn the law, passed by the Legislature on March 11 and signed by Locke last week.
...
The legislation cleared the way for a new breed of public schools in Washington state — privately run but publicly funded schools that now exist in nearly 40 other states across the country.

The legislation allows just 45 new charters over six years, with the majority reserved for those that serve students from disadvantaged backgrounds. School boards also could convert existing schools into charters if they're falling short of the test-score goals set out in the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

Ruh Oh! There's a red flag to bulls! No more hangovers in the teachers' lounge.

The sad part, of course, is the real teachers submerged in the sea of time servers and their union bureaucrat enablers.