Why Was He There?

There's a famous quote we're thinking of this morning. It goes like this: "You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."

It's often wrongly attributed to President Abraham Lincoln, but it certainly applies to the political career of State Senator Michael Roberson (R-Henderson). In 2011, he was "Mr. TEA Party". He eagerly pushed to slash state funding in public education. Even though the final 2011 budget deal included millions in brutal budget cuts, Senator Roberson voted against it because he wanted more budget cuts.

Senator Michael Roberson was the premiere anti-worker, pro-austerity G-O-TEA "rising star" in 2011. So why is he boasting of receiving a "NEA award" in 2014? (NEA refers to the National Education Association, the national teachers' union.)





First off, let's clarify where this award came from. It was from the NEA Pacific Region Republican Educators' Caucus. At Clark County Education Association (CCEA) Headquarters yesterday, CCEA President Vikki Courtney made it clear that even though Senator Roberson and the Republican teachers were doing a press event at CCEA HQ, Roberson was not being awarded or endorsed by CCEA or NSEA (the Nevada State Education Association, the state teachers' union).



So why was Senator Roberson at the CCEA office yesterday? He has a rather long history of attacking their members and slashing school funding in Carson City. Who are these Republican educators behind this award he received?

The Senator had no interest in answering these questions as he dashed inside the building, even as CCEA leaders and a couple of the Republican teachers came outside to speak with teachers and community activists protesting outside.



It wasn't until 2012 when "Mr. TEA Party" suddenly morphed into "Moderate Mike". Out of personal conflicts and political expediency, he flip-flopped. And even then, he only pledged to stand with Governor Brian Sandoval (R) in maintaining the status quo.

So why was he at CCEA HQ yesterday to receive an award from the "NEA Pacific Region Republican Educators' Caucus"? During last year's legislative session, Senator Roberson fought hard against The Education Initiative (TEI). Senator Michael Roberson even introduced a competing initiative two months after the deadline for the Legislature to consider TEI. Remember this. He waited until the final weeks of the 2013 session to introduce his "Education Priorities Initiative", did so without receiving the support of Governor Sandoval and most other Republicans, and did so even though the deadline had already passed for the Legislature to propose an alternative to TEI.







So why was Senator Roberson at CCEA HQ yesterday? Everyone outside was wondering. And there may have been teachers inside the building who were asking the same question.



He fought against teachers. He fought against restoring budget cuts for Nevada schools. He fought against TEI. So why was Senator Roberson at the CCEA office yesterday, especially when CCEA wasn't endorsing him?

Wherein CCSD Uses NPRI to Attack Teachers

There's something seriously wrong here. Do you notice it?

On Friday, NPRI sent an email bulletin to 12,000 teachers through the district’s email system, Interact. The unsolicited email blast drew the ire of several teachers, who accused the district of providing their work email addresses to NPRI.

“It’s another in a long line of attempts by the district to intimidate union members to drop their membership,” said Daniel Barber, a social studies teacher at Durango High School who received NPRI’s email on Friday. “This is an example of divide and conquer.”

However, the School District did not disseminate a list of teacher emails, said spokeswoman Amanda Fulkerson. District officials do not know how NPRI was able to gain access to teachers’ work email addresses, she added.

There are more than 40,000 employee email addresses in the district’s Interact communication system. Although the district’s four unions representing administrators, police, support staff and teachers are able to use the email system to contact their constituents, outside groups — such as vendors and non-union political groups — are not privy to this email database, Fulkerson said.

So an NPRI email asking CCSD teachers to drop their union (CCEA) was sent through CCSD's OFFICIAL, CLOSED email system... And CCSD's official Baghdad Bob spokesperson can not say how this happened? Are you f**king kidding me??!!

Maybe it's too difficult for The Sun to figure out, but hopefully it's not for you. And if you need a refresher on what's happening, here you go.

If the arbitrator had found evidence demonstrating that CCSD couldn't fill contractual obligations, he probably would have cut them some slack. However, the real evidence proved otherwise. Was he just supposed to ignore the facts and play Dwight Jones' game of make believe, where the district supposedly can't afford to pay teachers the salary step and education benefits long promised but (until now) never fulfilled, yet it can somehow afford to dump money into tons of iPads and "administrative support staff"? Give me a break!

Oh, and did I mention that teachers had to pay out of their own pockets for college courses that CCSD deemed necessary to qualify for the long promised education benefits? And that CCSD not only wanted to deny teachers future raises, but they even wanted to raid their bank accounts and take away past salary increases? So we were talking about a potential triple whammy where CCSD teachers would have had money taken out of their pockets, future salary increases denied, and all this debt left over from college courses that meant nothing? And media pundits like Coolican wonder why those "greedy teachers" were demanding justice?

Again, the arbitrator found that CCSD could indeed afford to pay teachers what they had earned. And yes, local teachers have had to work overtime and pay out of their own pockets to do their job. So why were they somehow required to roll over and accept the kind of torture that Dwight Jones wanted to subject them to?

This is what's really happening. The Nevada View broke this story last week, but apparently the facts were too hard for most of the local media to understand. Simply put, CCSD Administration has declared war on the teachers and their union. Las Vegas, welcome to Wisconsin.

It's no secret that CCSD Administration has been fighting the teachers' union rather than negotiating in good faith. So should we really be surprised that it is now allowing the rabidly anti-union NPRI to use its email system to spam teachers with anti-union infomercials? This is truly a bridge too far!

This is disgusting. This is outrageous. And seriously, this needs to end ASAP.

The irony here isn't lost on me. NPRI always claims to be interested in "private solutions for the public good". But now, it's using CCSD (as in public!) resources to spread its "tea party" message and bully teachers into dropping their union? How Scott Walker of them.

And when did Dwight Jones declare his allegiance to teabaggers? Doesn't he know that they want to defund and destroy public education? Doesn't he realize that NPRI won't be satisfied until CCSD is dead and replaced by voucher supported private schools? Is he so blinded by his desire to bust the union and break the contracts with teachers that CCSD had agreed to that he's willing to declare "the enemy of his enemy" as his new BFF?

This is just plain disgusting on so many levels.