Michigan Votes Forum

The March/April 2009 Michigan Capitol Confidential has a story about the Michigan Education Association launching recalls against local school board members who seek to save money by hiring private contractors to do non-instructional work like prepare meals, drive buses and clean the schools. What do you think?

The "Michigan Capitol Confidential" is a tool of the Mackinac Center, used to further their position. Is Michigan Votes so desperate they must resort to inciting Michiganders to comment with stories from their own publication? Isn't presenting the bills with a biased description working out for them?

The MEA has no power or authority to recall public officials, including “local school board members who seek to save money by hiring private contractors to do non-instructional work like prepare meals, drive buses and clean the schools.”

The power to recall school board members lies solely in the hands of a district’s voters.  Period. 

Yes, MEA and its minions may push for, and even organize recall efforts.  But let’s not forget that any school board member ousted in a recall election is ousted by the district’s voting public.  That is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

What do I think about this?

Well, it is important for communities to be well informed about what is going on in their midst.  That’s what I think.  Well-informed communities are poised to make quality decisions on matters like recall and other elections. 

Propaganda of the sort dispensed by organizations like the MEA, the Mackinac Center and any and all of a jillion other special interest organizations often contains kernels of factual truth.  But because of its bias that propaganda seldom, if ever, is accurately informative.  Trouble is, few local news organizations will dig for the truth either, preferring, instead, to “stand neutral” by quoting the special interest mouthpieces on various sides of any given question.  So from those media all you really get is a synopsis or sampling of propaganda being dispensed. 

Voters are advised in all cases to tune up their BS detection gear (brains) in considering issues of importance to their communities, counties, state or nation.  And from there, they should make their own, independent decisions.  

Good thought on the basis of the recall, freespeaker. Your characterization is indeed how it appears in the printed version of the story -- and now in the corrected version of this thread. In both cases it now says "launch recalls against." In my haste to post this discussion thread, I misquoted. Thanks for the note.

There is no disputed propoganda regarding the strategy being deployed. The fact of the MEA's hostility toward these private contracting decisions and the local officials who agree to them is evidenced by the MEA's own spokesperson who told the MIRS Capitol Capsule newsletter in December that the union sends "directors and consultants" and all the resources we can possibly provide to fight the battle" against districts wishing to privatize.

As you note, more information is needed in all of these discussions. These fights over privatization often happen out of sight of the community because very few people attend school board meetings or follow the actions of same (and the same holds much of the news media.) And, obviously, virtually nobody -- other than the outside combatants from the vested interest groups -- attends meetings in OTHER communities to see what disputes may be coming to their community one day. One important purpose of Michigan Capitol Confidential is to help fill in these cracks in coverage and give its audience stories that they probably are not seeing elsewhere.

As to the propoganda allegation: It's a fee service and voluntarily subscribed to. Anybody who wants on the list is added, anybody who wants off is immediately removed. The only agenda is to give MORE information than is commonly available elsewhere to people who want to read it -- hardly akin to mass force-feeding of a half-truth upon an unwitting population.

I should also note that it is an objective fact that the MEA is involved in these recall efforts.

Note this article from a newspaper in Escanaba, which has an MEA spokesperson fielding questions for a committee that is organizing a recall effort.

I don't see where the problem related to hiring private contractors to do the non instructional services in schols is. I have an office cleaning service and I would be delighted to expand my business by also working with schools. Since they save money by hiring private contractors, it's a win win situation.

Right, @archieotto ... i dont see the problem too. I working in a translation agency (Übersetzung Deutsch Englisch) - and i can agree you thats only a win win situation!