By Rob Holbert Managing Editor

Here’s a short quiz. Guess which of the following positions are supported by the leadership of the Alabama Education Association.

1. A Talladega high school basketball coach is fired after being charged with raping a student, yet he is still being paid his full salary, even though he hasn’t taught in two years, while he awaits a criminal rape trial and arbitration over his firing. Oh, and he’s received two raises while waiting to go to trial.

2. Employees of the state’s public schools and two-year college programs should be allowed to continue serving as state Legislators, even though doing so causes them to miss an inordinate amount of work and effectively puts them in the position of overseeing matters than have direct financial consequence for them.

3. Writing a letter to the new chancellor of two-year schools and comparing him to Adolph Hitler because he won’t give outgoing Bishop State President Yvonne Kennedy an office and clerical help writing a book after she ignored direct orders to fire David Thomas.

OK, you’re a smart crowd, I’m sure you got it right – all of the above. That’s right, these are positions voiced by AEA leadership in recent days. It all kind of makes you wonder if the people running the state’s most powerful union are sniffing modeling glue.

The AEA silliness making the most noise over the past week or so is Associate Executive Secretary Joe Reed’s letter to two-year Chancellor Bradley Byrne last week in which Reed tells Byrne, “You are the Chancellor, not the Fuhrer!”

I’m pretty sure that’s one of Miss Manner’s no-nos of letter writing – do not compare the recipient of your letter to the architect of the Holocaust. Apparently Reed’s got his shorts in a twist because Byrne dared to rescind his earlier poor decision to allow Yvonne Kennedy to have a post-retirement office on campus, after she refused to follow his directive to can David Thomas.

Reed’s anger at Byrne has apparently even rendered him delusional, as he also wrote that Bishop State, an institution enjoying the triple crown of criminal investigation, plummeting enrollment and academic probation, is “in tip-top shape.” Geez, I’d hate to have Reed as my doctor, he’d probably declare his patients in “tip-top shape” if their brain tumors were smaller than a cantaloupe and their arteries were only 80-percent clogged.

Reed seems to think Kennedy should be allowed to mismanage the school in any way she sees fit, without any oversight, simply because she helped build it from scratch. I’m sure he’s also going to bat for her because Kennedy is a member of the Legislature and as such can be of help to the union.

And if you thought such ridiculous, insulting name-calling by the AEA’s second banana might bring a public apology from its top banana, think again. As usual, AEA Executive Secretary Paul Hubbert seems to care only about furthering his agenda and the union’s power. Doing what’s right doesn’t appear to be a consideration.

Naturally Hubbert is fighting efforts to stop the “double-dipping” troubles in the Alabama Legislature. I’m sure he’d love to have the Legislature absolutely filled to the rafters with dues-paying AEA members, because chances are, they would continue to vote themselves bigger raises and pass more legislation that makes it impossible to get rid of lousy teachers.

Hubbert’s running around saying banning teachers from serving in the Legislature is taking away their civil rights, but his real fear seems to be losing the massive political clout that comes with having his union members making law. From the looks of it, though, the state might be a lot better off with a lot less AEA influence in the legal process.

If you’re not convinced, consider the situation with Alvin Taylor. Taylor, a former Talladega County teacher and coach, will go to trial next week on charges he raped a student. He was fired in March 2005 after being accused of inappropriately touching one student and engaging in sexual activity with another. But Taylor has never missed a paycheck since his firing, thanks to a new law pushed by the AEA and passed in 2004.

The 2004 law was ostensibly passed to help streamline the process of dealing with teacher discipline, but the opposite seems to be the result. Prior to the law’s passage, someone like Taylor would have been fired and stopped receiving checks if the tenure review board upheld the firing. If he were successful in his appeal, he would have received reimbursement with interest.

Now he’s just getting paid to hang around and prepare for his criminal trial. On top of that, if Taylor is ultimately found guilty criminally and the appeals board upholds his firing, there’s nothing the schools can do to get their money back. And that’s totally cool with Hubbert and the AEA. They say it’s all about being innocent until proven guilty. But a group of presumably reasonable human beings have already found enough reason to fire Taylor.

If Taylor were in the private sector and got fired for raping a secretary or groping the cleaning lady, he wouldn’t continue to get a salary while he sued for wrongful firing. It doesn’t really make sense why teachers who’ve been fired should lounge around for two-years on the public dole waiting for some kind of resolution. And it really makes no sense that Hubbert, Reed and the AEA support that kind of outrage.

It’s become pretty obvious that right and wrong don’t matter to the AEA chiefs. In fact, Reed’s ridiculously shrill response to the Kennedy situation perfectly illustrates how out-of-touch the union’s leadership is with what most of us would consider reasonable expectations for Alabama’s education system.

Not wishing to follow Reed’s lead into the morass of invoking Adolph Hitler, I still must say if anyone is coming off dictatorial in their demands and behavior these days, it’s the AEA leadership.

Rob Holbert is Lagniappe managing editor. Contact him at rholbert@lagniappemobile.com.

Archives