Now get your shine box!

My journalism alma mater, The Capital Times, flatters itself that it speaks truth to power, that hoary old cliché. We’ll believe it when they stop kowtowing (beautiful word) to  the all-powerful teachers union, Madison Teachers Inc.

The Emerald City’s public schools remain shuttered for classroom learning late this February 2021 even as the area’s private schools have taught children in person and in living color for most of the school year. And No One Died! MTI subscribes to the precept of never allowing a crisis to go to waste. Accordingly, MTI has a list of hostage demands the envy of Hans Gruber before returning to the classroom, including combat pay. So much for “follow the science.” More like Follow The Money. The Centers for Disease Control:

‘Opening schools for in-person learning as safely and quickly as possible, and keeping them open, is important given the many known and established benefits of in-person learning.’

But not in Madison! Consider the craven supplication in The Capital Times’ editorial headline, then swish with Listerine. Better yet, make it Maker’s Mark.

MTI does community a service by standing up for safe schools.

Oh, thank you, wondrous teachers union! Madison Metropolitan School District is trying to kill your dues-paying members and All The Little Children! but you got wise to their treachery!

But wait, there’s more! 

Wisconsin’s Democrat governor, blunt tool of the teachers union going back at least to his 10 years as the state’s superintendent of public instruction, wants to pull the rug out from under Kaleem Caire and his One City Schools, (Noble Wray, chairman of the board.)

Evers would eliminate the Office of Educational Opportunity (OEO), which authorizes independent charter schools  under the aegis of the University of Wisconsin. Former governor Scott Walker and a Republican legislature created the Office after the Madison public school district routinely put the kibosh on charters. Which it did in 2011 for Mr. Caire’s proposed Madison Prep high school.

Without the OEO, Caire would have to reapply to the Madison school board, which uses its government monopoly to discourage competition.

Blaska’s Bottom Line: We trust the Republican legislature will demur but should the OEO somehow be “disappeared,” count on The Capital Times to thank the teachers union for another “community service.”

Bonus Bottom Line for platinum subscribers only: The Capital Times, please recall, joined Freedom Inc. and MTI to expel school resource police officers from our troubled high schools. So maybe returning to the classroom isn’t safe, after all. But not because of COVID-19.

Is there any hope at all?