Red For Ed
February 17, 2020 at 5:30 p.m.
By -
It was both useful and educational to read the Times-Union’s report on the recent Legislative Review Session, in the February 15/16 issue.
But it was also disheartening to read my representative Dave Wolkins’s further promulgation of an ultra-right-wing conspiracy about the “Red for Ed” teacher (and other tax-payers) protests.
Wolkins stated that the movement was founded by the Democratic Socialists of America, an organization that he claims have purely political motives (it is a political organization) and that, therefore, the teachers were being used by a political group that he finds distasteful. This theory has been debunked any number of times, so thoroughly, in fact, that if you do what Rep. Wolkins suggests – search online for “Red for Ed” and “Democratic Socialists of America” – you can hardly find any “hits” at all and none that are not strongly right-wing.
“Red for Ed” was a national movement among teachers, in some cases unionized teachers, who argued for better support for public education. It began with the strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma and elsewhere. In some cases, some persons who are socialist in political orientation joined and/or supported the strikes. Even if it were true that the “Red for Ed” movement had its origins in a socialist organization, this would hardly invalidate the point of the protests or justify belief that Indiana teachers “were used,” as Wolkins claims. To claim this is akin to saying that our current president is a racist because David Duke of the KKK thinks the president is great. Or, to claim that everything David Wolkins says should be discounted because he has bought into some ultra-right-wing information sources. This line of argument is fallacious.
That our representative appears to be getting his information on this issue from ultra-right or simply false sources is disturbing. I hope he never repeats this bit of falsehood; our teachers are smarter than Wolkins thinks they are.
The rest of Rep. Wolkins’s comments had to do directly with teacher pay, and here he repeats the general Republican talking points, in that it’s the local school district’s choices that affect teacher pay. That’s both true and not true: in 2009, as the Indiana Business Review reported in the Nov. 23, 2019, issue, Gov. Mitch Daniels “pushed a plan for capping local property taxes and having the state largely take over funding school operating budgets. That plan relied, in part, on increasing the state sales tax by one percentage point to its current 7% level.” As I understand it, the capping of property taxes meant that local school districts were hamstrung in terms of their ability to raise sufficient taxes to increase teacher salaries. This was a state action. (Whether property taxes are the best way to fund public education is another matter entirely.)
I wish we had better support of our public schools in Indiana.
Jim Eisenbraun
Warsaw, via email
It was both useful and educational to read the Times-Union’s report on the recent Legislative Review Session, in the February 15/16 issue.
But it was also disheartening to read my representative Dave Wolkins’s further promulgation of an ultra-right-wing conspiracy about the “Red for Ed” teacher (and other tax-payers) protests.
Wolkins stated that the movement was founded by the Democratic Socialists of America, an organization that he claims have purely political motives (it is a political organization) and that, therefore, the teachers were being used by a political group that he finds distasteful. This theory has been debunked any number of times, so thoroughly, in fact, that if you do what Rep. Wolkins suggests – search online for “Red for Ed” and “Democratic Socialists of America” – you can hardly find any “hits” at all and none that are not strongly right-wing.
“Red for Ed” was a national movement among teachers, in some cases unionized teachers, who argued for better support for public education. It began with the strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma and elsewhere. In some cases, some persons who are socialist in political orientation joined and/or supported the strikes. Even if it were true that the “Red for Ed” movement had its origins in a socialist organization, this would hardly invalidate the point of the protests or justify belief that Indiana teachers “were used,” as Wolkins claims. To claim this is akin to saying that our current president is a racist because David Duke of the KKK thinks the president is great. Or, to claim that everything David Wolkins says should be discounted because he has bought into some ultra-right-wing information sources. This line of argument is fallacious.
That our representative appears to be getting his information on this issue from ultra-right or simply false sources is disturbing. I hope he never repeats this bit of falsehood; our teachers are smarter than Wolkins thinks they are.
The rest of Rep. Wolkins’s comments had to do directly with teacher pay, and here he repeats the general Republican talking points, in that it’s the local school district’s choices that affect teacher pay. That’s both true and not true: in 2009, as the Indiana Business Review reported in the Nov. 23, 2019, issue, Gov. Mitch Daniels “pushed a plan for capping local property taxes and having the state largely take over funding school operating budgets. That plan relied, in part, on increasing the state sales tax by one percentage point to its current 7% level.” As I understand it, the capping of property taxes meant that local school districts were hamstrung in terms of their ability to raise sufficient taxes to increase teacher salaries. This was a state action. (Whether property taxes are the best way to fund public education is another matter entirely.)
I wish we had better support of our public schools in Indiana.
Jim Eisenbraun
Warsaw, via email
Have a news tip? Email [email protected] or Call/Text 360-922-3092