By Victor Skinner
EAGnews.org

CLEVELAND, Ohio – The teachers union in Cleveland’s Breckville-Broadview Heights School District is putting on quite a production.

Unionized drama teachers are no doubt gleaming.

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Officials with the Breckville-Broadview Heights Education Association and the district’s support staff union held a press conference yesterday to make a grand gesture to the district school board: Give up your right to implement a contract and we’ll give up our right to strike.

Union officials want the school board to sign a legally binding contract to seal the deal, the Breckville Patch reports.

“This pledge removes the private political agendas, which have no place in public education. This pledge puts the focus back on getting our rooms ready for kids, on putting student names on books and lockers, on preparing for football games, volleyball matches and cross country matches. This is a pledge to do what is best for the community,” union spokesman Joe Zenir declared in a prepared speech, according to the news site.

He said both unions are prepared to call a strike, but of course they don’t want to unless they have to.

Bravo, Mr. Zenir, bravo. You deserve a standing ovation for your masterful disguise of hypocrisy. You’ve managed to reframe your union’s wants into “what’s best for the community.”

Not.

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Many in the community will see the union’s self-serving gesture for the thinly veiled threat that it is. Students should never be used as a bargaining chip in the never-ending union power struggle. The antics in Breckville are only the latest adaptation of the same union song and dance: We will walk out on your students and tear the community in half if we don’t get what we want.

The union told the media the Breckville school board has a political agenda to force a strike by implementing a contract the union doesn’t want, and is challenging the board to prove otherwise by signing their ridiculous pledge, the Patch reports.

We believe the school board’s agenda is to provide the best education for the district’s students as possible.

But the union also has a political agenda, and it has nothing to do with educating students. If the union cared about students and the community, it wouldn’t be threatening to walk out. Period.

The pledge is just another attempt to gain more control and influence in the district, and to leverage that influence to enrich its members. That what unions do.

After a speech about the proposal, teachers union president Bonnie Montelone taped a copy of the pledge to the doors of the district’s Education Center, and members headed out like an angry mob to track down board members to deliver copies of the pledge in person.

We hope the board recognizes the silly stunt for what it is, and refuses to sign away its ability to impose a contract for its employees. Giving up that right would mean giving up the right to put the education of the community’s students and the fiscal stability of the district ahead of the union’s desires.

If the unions decide to “exercise their rights” and walk out on students, we believe their actions will speak for themselves.