Earlier in the year, we kept you up to date on the repugnant harassment and intimidation tactics employed by the Strongsville Education Association against the substitute teachers who did the jobs they refused to do.
They screamed insults and profanities in their faces, requiring police to protect the substitutes. They posted their pictures in a “scab gallery” on Facebook. They blocked buses and parents from entering the school driveways. They blanketed the substitutes’ neighborhoods with flyers containing all of their personal information.
And all along, they insisted it was for the kids.
The strike finally ended in April. But the Cleveland Teachers Union is still trying to harass the substitute teachers who stepped up to teach the children. The CTU doesn’t even represent the teachers who went on strike in Strongsville, a Cleveland suburb. But no matter. They want the Strongsville Schools to hand over the names, addresses, home and cell phone numbers and other personal information of every one of the substitute teachers, and they’re suing in court to get it.
CLEVELAND- The president of the Cleveland Teachers Union is suing the Strongsville school board for not disclosing names and personal information of substitute teachers hired during the eight-week teachers strike this spring.
But the school board says releasing the names “poses a threat of violence to such employees and their property.”
David Quolke alleges in a suit filed April 3 the school board is “improperly withholding requested public records” and violating Ohio Revised Code by not releasing the name, home addresses, home and cell phone numbers, any employee identification numbers and all payroll information identifying days worked, rates of compensation and any and all salary benefits for “all persons employed as teachers or substitute teachers” in the district hired after the strike began March 4.
I have a lot of respect for teachers. But teachers’ unions make me absolutely sick, and this is just another example of why. (Most Northeast Ohioans were also disgusted by the Strongsville strike.)
The CTU clearly wants to continue the harassment of the substitutes. I’m guessing that they want to put them onto some sort of “blackball” list if these substitutes ever find or try to obtain permanent teaching jobs in Cleveland or elsewhere in the region.
Shame on them.
This is also just one more reason we need workplace freedom in Ohio.
