East Baton Rouge teachers sick-out and then get big raises

[Chomskyite]

About three hours after I wrote this in my blog, the East Baton Rouge Parish school system voted to raise their base-pay for teachers with B.A.s by $2,900:

The public school teachers' "sickout" day today was a resounding success. They have virtually monopolized local media coverage. Even the otherwise Bush-loving, union-busing Ed Buggs gave them hours today of sympathetic coverage. He's worked in the classroom a few times, he's said.

Meanwhile the moron Bill Profita whose page is at http://www.wjbo.com/billprofita.html, who makes most of his living as a PR man for the airport here, is on the air using the "tactic' of the sickout and how inconvenienced parents might have been by it to say that "professionals" should never be in unions. I thought his most unintentionally hilarious moment came (after I called him to point out his union-bashing) when he said, "Teachers shouldn't be doing this stuff. They're looking like coal miners!" Then in a later exchange with a rather ungrammatical caller, he said, "What if all surgeons were to say one day they weren't gonna do any surgeries!?!"

Yep, your kid's teacher is letting people die, in order to ask for a pay raise.

You really couldn't write this stuff yourself. If you did, you'd be lambasted for being unrealistic.

Update: I have emailed Mr Profita a link to the blog-entry I wrote on this. You can tell him what you think at [email protected]