District tears down teachers again

Well, golly. Just when we thought it was safe to walk the streets of Marysville again, Judy Parker, the school district’s spokesperson, has spoken her strange brand of spin once more. In an article detailing expenditures for the recent strike (“School strike costs hit $400,000,” Nov. 21), Parker noted that part of the money went to the beefed-up security that was needed to protect the district’s school buildings, presumably from teachers gone wild!

I don’t know what Ms. Parker and her district cronies thought we’d do. Perhaps we might have stormed the schools en masse, furiously planning lessons. I will admit that the security guard at the gate of Marysville-Pilchuck High School was certainly beefed up. We fed the guy whenever he’d leave his car and join us on the picket line.

The Herald article also stated that according to the district, part of the 400 grand was spent on printing and mailings. These mailings were district propaganda mailed out seemingly weekly that painted teachers as greedy for having the temerity to demand that our pay not be cut. The majority of those mailings found their way to the bottoms of bird cages all over town, but that’s not the point. Charging those mailings off to teachers is like charging the victim of a firing squad for the bullets used to execute him.

You’d think that Ms. Parker would have better uses for her public-relations skills, such as they are. She might try figuring out how to spin the story of a superintendent, who almost nobody wants, getting an additional $130,000. Maybe Judy will charge that off to the teachers, too, as yet another strike-related expense.

Marysville

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