Dori: Does Issaquah school staff going on strike support Trump’s shutdown?
Jan 17, 2019, 6:15 AM | Updated: 12:27 pm
Issaquah High School. (Nicole Jennings/MyNorthwest)
(Nicole Jennings/MyNorthwest)
Issaquah School District staff members are going to strike if their salary demands are not met.
I told you last week, the chickens are coming home to roost in terms of what the teachers union has done to the taxpayers. The Vancouver School District in Vancouver, Wash. announced last week that it is anticipating a $14 million budget deficit because of unsustainable raises that it just gave the teachers.
Most school districts in the state that gave the teachers huge raises knew that they could only sustain these raises for a year or two before falling into deficits. They overreached. But the teachers union doesn’t care. They knew that they could just ax more classrooms programs, or, better yet, establish an income tax and take even more of our money.
RELATED: The truth about teacher pay in Washington
The Issaquah School District is up next. On Tuesday evening, 98 percent of the Issaquah Chapter of Public School Employees of Washington SEIU Local 1948 voted to authorize a strike. The district is hoping that an agreement can be reached before any strikes occur.
I just find it amazing that here we are, in January, after all of these school districts last August and September threatened to carry out strikes. We’re already starting to see that the money is not there. The solution is going to be a capital gains tax — which we know is an income tax — on us. And now Issaquah is threatening a strike.
In Los Angeles, 30,000 teachers and school employees are on strike. The teachers union members are taking lists of the substitute teachers who fill in for them, and posting the names of the subs on social media so that they can be threatened and bullied.
As they hold Los Angeles students’ education hostage, I wonder how many of those teachers are against the government shutdown. “You can’t shut down the government because you want a wall, Trump. Oh, but if you don’t give us more money, we’ll shut down the schools.”
The hypocrisy of this is ludicrous. Can I assume that every one of the public school teachers in the Puget Sound area who goes on strike or supports teacher strikes also supports Trump’s shutdown? You’re willing to shut down schools so you can get what you want — I’m sure you are all very consistent.
