Imagine you’re a parent invested in your child’s education, and you’re headed to a board meeting for your school district on a normal September evening. You arrive expecting to discuss academic business, but instead you encounter the teachers’ union president — who slurs her words and reeks of alcohol.
Then to top it off, despite being noticeably inebriated in front of students, parents and an entire school board association, that teacher is allowed back to work a mere 15 days later.
The teacher in question is Danielle Scrase, 54, president of the Sycamore (Ohio) Education Association (SEA). According to a Mar. 3 article from The Enquirer, Scrase is a science teacher who brazenly waltzed into a school board meeting on Sept. 18 acting “odd, erratic and unprofessional.”
Her behavior prompted an investigation that produced enough evidence and firsthand accounts to find that Scrase indeed acted inappropriately. But due to the dramatic fallout of a single, offhanded, “racially charged” comment, the school district eventually agreed to “remove records referencing Scrase’s inappropriate behavior from her personnel file and reduce her 45-day unpaid suspension to 15 days.”
Today, Scrase continues to work as a teacher and SEA president.
Though enraging, Scrase’s conduct just one example. There are dozens of stories like hers to illustrate that many symptoms can be attributed to one central problem — teacher unions protecting teachers who act inappropriately.
When teacher unions sit down to bargain with school districts, they demand language regarding disciplinary measures that give inadequate teachers second, third, fourth and even fifth chances before being dismissed from their position.
Last month, The Detroit News published an article detailing the lengths to which the Michigan Education Association has gone to infiltrate the Michigan Legislature and get its ludicrous demands passed.
The article is also mentioned in this succinct Instagram video from Reason Magazine, but main highlights include:
- teachers caught using drugs or alcohol on campus could not be fired until their fifth documented offense, and only after the second offense would disciplinary action include a multi-day suspension from work;
- teachers caught using illegal drugs could not be fired until their third documented offense; and,
- teachers caught selling drugs on campus could not be fired until their second documented offense.
To put it in perspective, if Danielle Scrase had happened to live in Michigan instead of Ohio, there would not have been an investigation into her behavior at all, even though both parents and district administrators bore witness to her actions. In Michigan, a teacher like Scrase would have gotten a single written warning and been sent on her way.
These severe gaps in judgement demonstrated by teacher unions are leading indicators to the suffering of America’s education. If unions insist on protecting drug and drinking habits of inappropriate teachers until the fifth degree, what else do they believe is defensible?
