Zephyr Teachout: Angry New York Teachers Can Get Get More Formal Political Power By Running For Office
Cuomo is known and respected up to now as a take-no-prisoners tough guy, but his political antennae seem corrupted. His picking on the teachers in New York state is dumber than dumb. It appears that he fell in with a crowd of rich potential funders who are always yelling about “educational reform.” Maybe he wanted their money and he became a fierce charter school advocate and then adopted positions which then threatened the hell out of the teachers who are underpaid and overworked. Their tenure is one of the few things they do have going for them, and however Cuomo meant it, the teachers saw him as looking to evaluate them with an eye toward firing them. These are usually people who want nothing to do with Albany politics, but they sure got a wakeup call. I talk to them all the time and they are angrier than I have ever seen them.
Zephyr Teachout has an excellent idea how teachers can take that anger and do something productive with it:
Liberal activist Zephyr Teachout is touring New York starting tonight in Syracuse to try to recruit teachers and women to run for public office in New York.
Teachout, the Fordham Law School professor who ran against Gov. Andrew Cuomo in a Democratic primary last year, said the education policy battles at the state Capitol should spur teachers and parents to run for political office so their voice can be better heard.
“The focus is getting more people into the political process, and the focus here is on teachers and women,” Teachout said in an interview with Gannett’s Albany Bureau. “If there’s a central thrust, it’s educators and parents.”
Teachout, who lives in Manhattan, is partnering with the union-backed Working Families Party and the New York State United Teachers union on the effort.
She said the massive testing opt-out movement in New York in April, as well as protests to new teacher evaluations show that Perdido Street School: Zephyr Teachout: Angry New York Teachers Can Get Get More Formal Political Power By Running For Office: