In January of this year, we had an item published in The MaineWire arguing that “Everyone has a champion in the school bureaucracy – except the children.” You can read it here.
It opened with this favorite quote of ours:
“When school children start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of school children.”
— Albert Shanker, President of the United Federation of Teachers [1964-1984] and the American Federation of Teachers [1974-1997]
We mentioned Brunswick Community United in the article, and described them thusly:
Organized citizen groups: Here in Brunswick, we have Brunswick Community United, a formalized group of unknowing school budget boosters. They are aided and abetted by the leadership of Bowdoin College “academics,” well known for their inability to discern reality. They have added structure to the worship of saintly “educators,” and consider any questioning of school policy and spending to be heresy, perpetrated by demons from the dark side. Fond of posting non-campaign budget campaign signs around town, using trigger words like “imagine” and “invest.” Card-carrying enablers of the first order. And we mustn’t forget those parental support groups who serve hot breakfasts to the teachers on a regular basis, and ironically, foster teacher beliefs that they are “undervalued” by the system.
Funny thing about the organization; in the ‘about’ section of their web site, they don’t identify who leads it.
We’ve recently come to understand that it’s a husband & wife team: Sarah Singer, and John Kosinski.
You should find reading about Ms. Singer here very interesting. What you’ll note is that the majority of her ‘professional political organizing’ experience is related to the interests of public sector unions and Hollywood unions. You might even think of her as a ‘community organizer,’ which makes her a member of a very select group, if you get our drift.
As for Mr. Kosinski, he has an interesting resume as well. Turns out he’s the head lobbyist for the Maine Teachers Union (The MEA), or as they call him, their Government Relations Director. You can follow up to your heart’s content starting at this page.
So it may well be that we grossly underestimated BCU in our earlier musings. Given our new understanding, it’s not too much of a logical leap to surmise that this earnest group could, in fact, be a front for teachers union interests, whether local, state level, or even higher.
Which could explain why they had such lovely, high end ‘non-campaign’ campaign signs spread all over town last year in the budget season. The MEA, which makes big money as a middle-man on teacher insurance benefits, not to mention member dues, can more than afford to seed local efforts with funds to prevail against unorganized “un-special” interests. That would be the general public.
We’ll close with this offering, which we hope Ms. Singer and Mr. Kosinski appreciate. We' think of ourselves as a writer, though we’ve never belonged to the Writers Guild Sarah once organized for.
It’s a paraphrase of the quote at the top of this post, which we submit to Brunswick Community United as a candidate for the message they place on their signs this year:
“When school children start paying union dues, that’s when BCU will start representing the interests of school children.”
If they don’t like that one, they can have this one:
“Imagine future pay scales; invest in our teachers.”
Geez; we better stop here; if we keep this up, we’ll have to get someone to lobby for us and organize our supporters. And unless our advertising revenue spikes, we simply can’t afford it.
“Gladys! Take a note; remind us to be more suspicious, cynical, and untrusting in the future. Thanks, Dearie.”
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