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12/16/2008
Burri: She fought back!!
Ready for another election? Um…no. We’re still exhausted from November. The Most Important Election In Our Lifetimes. And that was so recent, Barack “The One” Obama hasn’t had time to solve all our problems yet. We can’t have another election now!
Well, we’re going to. I’m not happy about it, either, but there it is. Right in the state Constitution. We’ve gotta elect a new Superintendent of Public Instruction.
Yeah, I know. Yawn. Still. The current Supe, Liz Burmaster, is stepping down, so in April, we’ll elect a new Superintendent.
In one corner, current Deputy Supe Tony Evers, a lifelong member of the educracy. Evers is likely to be the status quo standard bearer: the insider bureaucrat guy. The teacher’s union guy. The Spend-More-Now-Or-The-Sky-Falls-Tomorrow guy.
Or so I assume, which isn’t really fair. I don’t know anything about Evers, other than he’s been entrenched in the bureaucracy his entire career.
So let’s move on to this corner: Rose Fernandez.
I first became aware of Fernandez four years ago, when WEAC – the teacher’s union – filed a lawsuit against the Wisconsin Virtual Academy (WIVA), an online charter school which had students all across the state.
The lawsuit claimed, and I am not making this up, that parents – unqualified, unlicensed, incompetent parents – were teaching their own children.
Good God! What are they thinking!
This was unacceptable, and had to stop, and the teachers’ union took WIVA to court to make sure that it did. The suit also named DPI as a defendant. DPI, naturally, took WEAC’s side, even though they’d previously approved WIVA’s charter. If you remember only one thing about the education bureaucracy in Wisconsin, remember that.
Just as naturally, WIVA – led by Rose Fernandez – fought back. Legally, they lost: an appeals court ruled in WEAC’s favor. But in the end, they won: the Legislature passed and Governor Doyle signed 2007 Wisconsin Act 222, which made all the legal changes they needed.
As a parent, I was offended by WEAC’s suit and by DPI’s flip-flop. As a taxpayer, I was outraged: this whole episode proved, once and for all, that WEAC is holding the educracy’s leash.
As both a parent and a taxpayer, I appreciated Fernandez’ willingness to stand up, fight back, expose herself personally to the power of the union machine. Thus, when I heard about her impending run, I said: not just yes, but hell yes.
Here’s the thing: that’s all I know about Rose Fernandez. Just the WIVA thing. Nothing else.
For all I know, she’s as liberal as the day is long. For all I know, she’s just as Sky-Is-Falling as Evers. For all I know, she’s a hemp-wearing tree-hugging peace monger who thinks Karl Marx had the right idea and wishes Ed Garvey would just be honest and join the Republican Party, already.
In other words, the race might cast Evers and Fernandez as the Democrat and Republican candidates, respectively. The liberal and the conservative. But she might not be. At this point, I don’t know.
And I don’t care.
She took on the educracy. She sided with the kids against the status quo; with the parents against an entrenched bureaucracy and its union overlords. She insisted on letting something new grow up, instead of letting the old smother it in the cradle. She stood up, and she won.
We can have the same old, same old; we can continue the status quo with another life-long educrat. Or we can shake things up with someone who’s proven she’s got the spine to do it.
Of the two, I’ll take the latter.
Lance Burri is a contributor to the Badger Blog Alliance and occasionally blogs at his own site as well.
COMMENTS
If the public education system truly were educating kids in reading, writing, and arithmetic, they wouldn't feel so threatened by those of us who choose to homeschool. My kids may not have had all the public school indoctrination, but they still are eminently employable: none has ever had difficulty finding a job.
Come to think of it, maybe that's the point.
emily matthews (Wed Dec 17 08:12:20 2008)
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