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Dallas School District Education Association President Mike Cherinka didn’t like what he heard at the latest Dallas School Board meeting, so he left. In a huff.
After hearing the board’s decision to deny a union grievance in response to its June decision to deduct seven unworked days from teachers’ salaries, Cherinka decided he had had enough. So, he abruptly left the room and dropped a copy of the meeting’s agenda on a table.
Cherinka told Times Leader/Dallas Poster reporter Eileen Godin the next day, he was “frustrated.”
How do you think the taxpayers in the Dallas School District feel, Mike? Do you think there’s any frustration on their part?
All they want for their kids is a good education from good teachers. There are plenty of good teachers in the Dallas teachers’ union, but we can’t help but wonder who’s driving the bus out there.
Is it Cherinka, the man who takes his ball and goes home when he doesn’t like the way the game is being played? Or is it John Holland, the man from the Pennsylvania State Education Association who allegedly browbeats teachers into doing things his way?
Look at Holland’s record. It seems whenever there are heated contract negotiations between teachers and a school board, Holland is right there in the mix. Perhaps he doesn’t want to be the guy in charge when a teachers’ union is forced to pay a portion of health care premiums.
Either way, it’s a lose-lose situation for everyone involved – teachers, students, administrators, parents, taxpayers. No one wins in situations like this.
What kind of message is Cherinka sending to the students he is charged with bringing along in this world when he storms out of a meeting because things aren’t going his way? Guess what, Mike, most people in this world don’t get paid if they don’t work. That isn’t a new concept.
And, when taxpayers hear you complain because the school board wants your union members to pay a portion of their health care premiums, they don’t have a whole lot of sympathy for you. Why? Because all of them are paying toward their health care premiums – that’s not a new concept, either.
Education is sometimes a cloistered environment. The participants forget what the real world is like. In the real world, workers pay a portion of their health care premiums, and they either take benefit time when they want time off or they don’t get paid. That’s the reality of the working folk of today.
We refuse to believe that every member of the Dallas teachers’ union is on board with the way Cherinka and Holland think. We’d like to believe there’s a lot more common sense and understanding among the members of that union. But, how much longer are they going to follow these two men like sheep? Isn’t it time the members of the Dallas teachers’ union start to think for themselves?
— Times Leader