This is an installment in our new series on our diverse high school experiences. Read the intro here.
At the root of the unfolding controversy in Wisconsin, and at the core of public life, is the issue of choice. On one hand, the ability of teachers to unionize allows them to make priorities and back them with the strength of a unified group. However, members of a union must stand by union choices that don’t necessarily reflect their values as an individual. Even the choice to join the union in the first place isn’t really a choice, because the alternative is social ostracization and intimidation.
If public school teachers in Wisconsin lose many of their collective bargaining rights they lose the degree of choice that the union does accord them—the ability to shape their professional destiny. Un-empowered teachers are at the whim of the public, just as public schools themselves are at the whim of whatever current political agenda.
No Child Left Behind? We gotz it. Campaign against America’s obesity rate? Coca- Cola leaves our vending machines faster than you can say Hostess. The President has a Sputnik moment, and suddenly we find ourselves on the bus to a statewide science fair.
Public high school is not like the Bowdoin bubble: there is no climbing ivy on a public school, only the bars of a guinea pig cage.
According to The General Laws of Massachusetts 150-9A(a) “No public employee or employee organization shall engage in a strike, and no public employee or organization shall induce, encourage or condone any strike…”
In other words, in Massachusetts—as in the state of Wisconsin—it is illegal for teachers to strike.
However, in my senior year at King Philip Regional High School I learned the ways in which teachers can circumvent this law in order to assert their dissatisfaction with the workplace.
Although teachers can’t strike, there are a lot of roles that teachers play that aren’t codified in their contracts. These voluntary roles, which the public takes for granted, can become a great void upon a teacher’s refusal to do anything that is not officially required of them.
This is what the teachers at my high school did to supplement the collective bargaining mechanisms they were using to secure desirable pay and benefit amounts. The process of renewing their contract with the district and school committee had steadily devolved into an embarrassingly spiteful and vindictive clash of human wills which polluted the whole school environment.
As a class leader I had insight into the effect that the bargaining process was having on student life. The week of AP Exams was a particularly miserable moment for me— and improbably, last minute cramming was the least of my concerns.
In the course of a few days, every teacher—except one– who had previously committed to chaperone the Senior Prom backed out. To ask other teachers was not an option. For them to agree would violate union solidarity, and it was futile to put them in a position in which they would have to say “No.”
Also off limits to pursue—cafeteria workers, janitorial staff, teachers at the middle school, anyone who needed to maintain a relationship with the teachers union.
Thus, amid a haze of flashcards and practice tests I would pop into my advisor’s room for updates on wooing coaching staff and other prospective chaperones. Like a lobbyist securing support for a bill she would exclaim “We got such-and-such!” and add another name to our much tossed out and crossed out chaperone list.
As stressed out as I was by the whole thing, I knew even then that the prom wasn’t really in jeopardy. What was in jeopardy was a little bit harder to put my finger on. I think it would best be encapsulated by a remark I another student made to justify the actions of the teachers union. “Students come and students go, they will need to have these jobs long after we’ve graduated.”
It was hard to wrap my head around this survivalist attitude. I didn’t understand how the same adults who emphasized taking responsibility for our actions could say, “I’m sorry I can’t come to your graduation, I don’t have a choice.” Of course they had a choice!
But is the choice between working within narrow limits of protest for a cause you believe in and attending student events really a fair choice? The teachers involved dealt with a certain amount of guilt, but to simplify the issue to union interests and student interests is just plain wrong. Much of what is in the interest of teachers is in the interest of students as well!
For a while I kept track of the acidic pool of comments that gathered beneath coverage of the situation on the local paper’s website. I remember going to a friend’s graduation party and defending the teachers union to her parents. As I started at Bowdoin I would hear things about it from the teachers I was still in touch with, but at that point I was just relieved I had gotten out before they began refusing to write college recommendation letters.
At a private school it is inconceivable that a child in good standing would not be able to find a teacher willing to write a college recommendation letter. Think about the amount of power that alumni and parents are able to wield, especially in terms of an endowment. If Johnny Jr. doesn’t get into Yale there is a sense that the prep school has failed him. It is likely that a teacher refusing to write a college recommendation letter would be fired, whereas you can’t fire a Massachusetts public school teacher on those grounds.
If all the teachers refuse to write recommendations at a public school there is nothing you can do to fix that. Wall Street doesn’t implode. Graduates aren’t calling from Washington D.C. to find out “what the hell is going on up there.” I would imagine it requires late- night brain storming sessions in the kitchen with your parents and desperate calls to college admissions offices. “Hey Williams, I know that there is already a minimal chance I will be accepted to your school…how much do my chances decrease if I don’t have any teacher recommendations?”
Public institutions do not have the same sense of tradition as many public schools. Like a scrappy stray dog focused on its next meal a public school is more concerned with funding year to year than standing as a lasting testament to any sort of value system, and the public school teacher is very concerned with the permutations their pay and benefits will undergo with the economy and—if they aren’t tenured—their job security.
If Wisconsin governor Scott Walker gets his way, teachers’ unions would only be able to bargain over their wages (not fringe benefits such as retirement plans) and receive raises based on inflation. Additionally, they would have to hold an annual vote to recertify.
Knowing that the actions of the teacher’s at my school were undertaken with the right to full collective bargaining, one can only imagine what Wisconsin teachers would then try in order to gain leverage and control over the circumstances of their employment.
Still, my eyes welled up when I saw the procession of professors at my first Bowdoin convocation. This never- ending line of the older generation paving the way for the younger, those funny hats they give you at Oxford, the sense of tradition—this is what I had been craving.
At my graduation, I felt the conspicuous absence of a body of people I saw as inseparable from all of the success I had achieved. There were so many feelings overwhelming those final moments of my high school career: the bittersweet ending of a chapter in my life, the euphoria of having been accepted to my dream school, the overwhelming recognition of my whole unwritten life ahead of me, and beneath it all…a sense of betrayal.
Now, as the situation in Wisconsin unfolds, I can’t help but wonder—who betrayed who?