Not all teachers are communist loving despots’ intent on traditional American destruction. Second grade teacher Stephen Round, fed up with being forced to teach students values he does not share resigned from his $70,000 job with benefits to keep his integrity intact. The teacher tried to read his resignation during a recent committee meeting but was denied the opportunity, so he took his message to YouTube. Have a listen.
Here is more on the teacher and his motives:
His arguments are largely my arguments and I have been expressing them for several years now at my home district of Lakota where the same kind of progressive parasites have been hard at work in perpetuating far left-winged political viewpoints. The teachers of my community behind the mask of a crazed teacher union have proven intent on the destruction of private property through excessive taxation no matter what the voters of my district have declared. For three elections over two years more than 18,000 voters have turned down the radical tax increases attempted by that public school that is trying to maintain teacher wages averaging over $63K per year. Progressive politics have infected the administrators and they have ignored the wishes of the voters by committing $40K of tax payer money to push a progressive Saul Alinsky type program called “Community Conversations” trying to twist the arm of voters into supporting a future school levy as the new 2014 teachers contact expires in June of that same year.
When Barack Obama recently won the election with 51% of the vote compared to the 49% that voted for Mitt Romney, progressives saw that election as a mandate dictating that everyone in the country should suddenly follow the will of the majority and surrender their conservative ideas in favor of the far-left radicals and their high tax grabs intent on re-distribution programs. But when progressives are asked to show the same respect they do like Lakota did and completely ignored the vote tallies of the previous three levy failures where residents said no to further taxes by a margin of 53% to 47%–a much larger margin of victory than Obama won the White House with. This is standard practice for progressives, who are extremely destructive, and short-sighted in their public conduct. Lakota not only ignored the election, they spent nearly a quarter million dollars on public relations over a two-year period to twist the arm of the community into accepting a tax increase with a program called Community Conversations, CLICK HERE TO READ ALL ABOUT IT.
I am fully aware of the intent of the Community Conversations campaign being performed in the Lakota school district which a series a meetings that district officials have with members of the community to find out what they want the school district to do with the money spent on education through taxes. Some of my fellow tax fighters have actually hosted some of these meetings so I know for a fact that on more than one occasion it has been suggested that employees at Lakota take a 5% pay cut so they can fit into the budget that the community is supplying without tax increases. However, when Superintendent Karen Mantia, or as the Pulse Journal spelled her name (Karen Mantian) reported to the community what she had accomplished in an entire business quarter from September to December of 2012 with $40,000 tax payer dollars paid to progressive activist Jeffery Stec, she made no reference to such suggestions. Instead she reported essentially the same information that she had stated during the levy attempt of 2011. Ignoring completely the suggestions that many have made to her personally to cut their employee wages to avoid tax increases, Mantia instead stated in her pre-Christmas report to the Pulse Journal in the A4 section published on December 13th 2012 that the community is demanding 5 five major themes:
- That residents want Lakota to offer a well-rounded education, one that includes life skills, character education, citizenship and a spirit of giving back. (Altruism)
- People understand the need for assessments and accountability but they want schools to go beyond the test, and teach communication skills, problem-solving, critical thinking and collaboration. (collectivism)
- There’s a recognition that every child is different and schools need to be innovative to provide an education that isn’t one-size-fits-all.
- That children need a real-world education and a way that lets them experiment and sometimes fail.
- Also, that the roles of schools, parents and the community should be better defined so that they can all become better partners in education. (collectivism again.)
Mantia went on to discuss how citizens involved in these Community Conversations are critical to helping craft a 21st-century education and went on to preach how important listening is. Ironic that she would make such a statement as she still has not listened to what 18,000 voters told her in the last election. They have chosen to ignore what voters have said and instead regurgitated the campaign points from the last school levy attempt using the same progressive social engineering talking points. What Lakota did with all the money they have spent on Jeffery Stec and his progressive Community Conversations is to create a lot of hype, in order to disguise their intention to continue advancing a political agenda that is at the core of all public schools—out of control budgets that are sold on the backs of children and their busy parents.
Virtually every public school in America is dealing with the same kind of arrogance, and blind foolishness that Lakota in Southern Ohio is facing, and it is good to see that some teachers like Stephen Round are refusing to participate. It takes a lot of guts to give up an inflated job like Stephen’s teaching job was in order to stand for something—instead of being a pawn like Mantia from Lakota is in advocating the reckless spending of thousands upon thousands of tax dollars in order to advance the same tired progressive diatribes that education under the control of organized labor and socialist advocates have been spewing for decades. There is something to be admired when teachers stand up for themselves as all those around them continue as spineless cogs in a machine that is more sinister than most people are willing to consider, and functions at best as a dualistic entity that preaches to do as they say, not as they do. What’s good for the goose, is not good for the gander if the goose is a progressive and all public schools are full of them. The only way to gain independence from them is to leave—as Stephen Round boldly declared. Good for him!
Rich Hoffman
The Overmanwarrior 