I want to thank you personally for hearing the call of so many thousands of us in Wisconsin who were outraged by the hubris and audacity of the future former governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, in daring to speak in "support" of education on your "The State of Education: The Governors' Perspective" panel yesterday.
Thank you, especially, for opening up the forum by reading from the letter I wrote to you and calling out Walker on his divisive policies. The look on Walker's face was priceless as you shared what so many Wisconsinites know to be true: Walker's education "reforms" (TM) are nothing more than devastating and avoidable cuts that will have long-term affects on our students and our schools. The fact that he looked so surprised as you read the letter is further confirmation that he truly does not take seriously, or even acknowledge, the dissent of his constituents, no matter how carefully thought-out or reasonably supported by evidence. As you'll recall, he was cc'd on the original message. Too bad he doesn't check his email.
By opening your program with this challenge to Walker, you sent the message loud and clear, and I think set exactly the right tone for your event: Walker's constituents do not support his education agenda, and whatever slick and slimy talking points he might have up his sleeve to sugar-coat the impact of his massive cuts, we are not falling for it.
In my original letter, I said I was shocked that Walker would be included on a panel on education because he's so shamefully unqualified to speak on the topic, which is true, but in retrospect I am glad he was on this panel. I think having him on made a perfect example of what will go wrong if you try to balance the budget on the backs of our children. Walker, as always, was a shameful disappointment, and I was not surprised to see he said exactly what I predicted he would about how his "tools" and "reforms are working" - his delusional lies about teachers coming up to thank him for gutting the education budget and taking away their rights were a bit beyond the pale, but we're used to that in Wisconsin by now. His inclusion on this panel was a painful reminder of the many valid reasons we have for seeing him recalled from office, and the enthusiasm around the campaign to make our voices heard on this issue only helps build momentum as we move into recall season here in Wisconsin.
The letter I sent you resonated with so many people because I was just saying what needed to be said, and what so many people are thinking. I wouldn't have had the nerve to say it if I didn't know I was speaking on behalf of so many other regular people in Wisconsin and elsewhere who are just sick and tired of the arrogance, lies and deceit that have become the norm in political affairs. I was really humbled by all the attention it received and did my best trying to represent all of us who are so fully engaged in this struggle to take back our democracy, our economy and our social programs from the same bullies who have bought our children out from under us. While those willing to vote against their own self-interests like to frame this as a struggle that's just about unions, or workers' rights, or pensions and benefits, this is in fact a struggle that should really unite all Americans. It's about the citizens of this country ensuring that we have a seat at the negotiating table of our own future, and the future of our children. It's about holding our elected officials accountable to the people rather than those who fund their campaigns. The people of Wisconsin made clear this year that we will not take these abuses of power sitting down, but when you follow the money, you'll see all of these issues are connected. We are all Wisconsin. We are all Wall Street. We are all in this together and the time to stand up say "enough!" is now. So we are standing. And we are saying it.
So I thank you, Mr. Williams, for listening and making our voices heard yesterday. I very much look forward to the day very soon when you'll slow-jam the news that Scott Walker has been recalled.
Yours sincerely,
Heather DuBois Bourenane
Wisconsin parent, educator, PTO member, state employee and public education advocate
continued coverage of Walker's abuses of power in Wisconsin.
And thanks most of all to everyone who stood up with me to send the message
that we do not support Scott Walker or his toxic education policies. Solidarity!
My son started the new school year yesterday, and it turns out I didn't need the few dozen photos I took that morning to remember the day, because I'll never forget the look of pure joy on his face when he RAN into the house when he got off the bus with a huge smile on his face: "Second grade is AWESOME! We had so much fun, and [my teacher] is hilarious! We even had an assembly - and they played 'I can tell that we are gonna be friends! I can't wait for tomorrow!"
Seeing him so excited, so engaged and ready to learn, so committed to his own education, makes me feel so proud. Proud of him, yes, for being such an amazing child. And proud of myself a little, I admit, for raising someone who loves learning. But mostly, proud of the educators who managed to transform - in just over three hours - all the fears and anxieties associated with giving up the freedoms of summer and being put in a new and unfamiliar environment into passion and excitement for what's to come. My son is 6 years old. He was equally excited and apprehensive about starting school because he doesn't know his new teacher well and most the kids in his class are new to him. He went to bed early, but stayed awake for hours - worrying and fretting and fantasizing about what the day had in store. By morning, he was a conflicted mess of high hopes and preparations for the worst possible scenario. But something happened in those 3 hours that convinced him he was going to have a great year. I didn't do that. His teachers did.
The teachers at my son's school, like teachers all over the state, returned from summer break with the weight of so many worries on their shoulders. Many experienced teachers in our district were forced into early retirement so that we could balance our budget using your "tools" (ie: cuts), so other teachers are forced to pick up the slack and work without the guidance and support those teachers provide. And the school year starts the very same week that teachers, like all other state employees, are seeing massive cuts to their take home pay and increases to their insurance contributions - something especially painful to teachers on shoe-string budgets already who spend an average of over $350 on out-of-pocket expenses for their classrooms - a figure which undoubtedly went up this year with the application of your helpful "tools." Teachers are still reeling from the tumult of last spring, when they were put - unfairly and unjustifiably - on the defensive by you as you attempted to scapegoat them, and other public workers, as the root of all fiscal evils, even as you granted tax cuts to your friends who don't need them. Thus began your marvelous assault on the intelligence of the people of Wisconsin (which continues, I might add, to this day), in which you continue to imply that state workers don't pay taxes and do not deserve to earn a wage commensurate with their education and experience or receive the benefits that they have historically and lawfully negotiated into their compensation packages.
"Walker supporters" celebrate their right to publicly denounce educators.
Worse, they're starting the school year with the echoes of hateful jeers in their ears, as just this week their colleagues in the New Berlin school district were mocked, insulted and shouted down at a public hearing on Monday. These teachers were providing public testimony, trying to share the facts about how the vindictive restrictions of the new Employee Handbook (no microwaves, no coffeepot, no jeans or sweatshirts - not to mention the outrageously uninformed restrictions to their daily schedules and demands that they work more hours for less pay) - will hurt students in the district, as well as teachers. "Walker supporters" from New Berlin and other parts of the state, who were strongly encouraged by right-wing talk show hosts to attend the hearing, took every opportunity to interrupt and disrespect the educators, and reportedly handed these teachers pacifiers as they entered the school. Implementation of the handbook was unanimously approved by the board. But the credit for this one is yours, partly for granting the school board authority to write such a ridiculously counterproductive and untenable set of rules, but moreso for granting them - and those who came to cheer them on - the confidence to publicly demean educators with a visible contempt for both their profession and their work.
Teacher morale seems to be at an all-time low. With the cost of living and unemployment up, paychecks down, and Wisconsin's majority legislators proud as peacocks over their unprecedented cuts to the education budget, it's no wonder. And as someone who is not only well aware of this, but has been trying since February, sometimes seemingly in vain, to counter it with support for educators and public schools, I worried about how that would translate into depression, apathy, anger and dejection, all of which are hard to hide in the classroom. And, quite frankly, as a public employee feeling all those emotions myself, I wouldn't have blamed them. But at least in our district the school board stepped up to speak in defense of teachers' rights by issuing a resolution opposing your budget bill, instead of capitalizing on all the ways to disrespect them once they were kicked down like other boards have done in other parts of the state.
But I forgot the most important thing about teachers: as much as "Walker supporters" might want them to shut up and pretend they're just easily replaced cogs in the education factory, being a teacher isn't a McJob that anyone can do (you know, like the ones you're trying to bring to our state to choke out local businesses and the possibility of earning a living wage - there's a good example of those "jobs" in our town). Educators, who earn significantly less and work more hours than people in professions requiring similar training and education, are equally professional and equally (if not moreso) dedicated to their craft, and my children. They are doing the best they can to fight this fight outside of the classroom while still providing our kids with the best education they can given the disgustingly punitive circumstances into which you've forced them. But they're human. And you can't sustain an environment of hate forever, as much as "Walker supporters" might like to. Your "tools" are tearing our education system apart. And, as a parent, I'm standing up with teachers to hold the roof up in spite of you.
This week, in your typical weasel style, you met with educators and others to discussion education - at an event coordinated by American Institutes for Research, an organization that apparently profits from testing and privatization (and I have it from good sources that we can expect more on this soon). For most of this meeting, you stared blankly, open-mouthed and unlistening as others spoke and your head bobbed up and down at words you recognized, undoubtedly flashing back to the reasons you dropped out of college in the first place (it's so boring! who cares? when do I get to talk?!). But at one point you said, "What we should begin with is what is right about education in Wisconsin and how do we replicate that." Seriously. You said that. And it's funny, because we already knew exactly what's right with Wisconsin education, and we already know exactly how your "tools" will hurt the schools that need help most as you work to repay your privatization funders and destroy public education as we know it in Wisconsin.
You can defund the schools, it's true. You can stand by idly as teachers are insulted and harassed. You can sit around pretending to listen to people who actually finishedcollege all day long. You can ignore me, and parents like me, until you're not governor anymore. But you can't stop teachers from loving to teach. And you can't stop kids from loving to learn. You cannot stop every district from supporting its teachers, like they did in Oshkosh and Fall Creek this week. And, perhaps above all, you cannot manipulate the smart people of Wisconsin into thinking you support public education. You cannot take any credit for the good in our schools, try as you might. Our schools and our teachers will succeed in spite of you and your shameful efforts to disrespect them, and your glaring silence of approval when your "supporters" do the same. You can try all you want to "reform" the public education system out of existence.
But you cannot stop my son from coming home from school with a smile on his face.
You can try, Scott Walker, but you cannot ruin my kids' school. We will not let you ruin our kids' teachers. We will not let you sell our future.
Here's what we will let you do: resign. And go back to school. Get your degree. Learn something about how the world works by listening, laughing, and - most of all - making friends. Because you clearly never learned that lesson, and your impulse to rule by pushing people out and ignoring voices of dissent isn't really working out for any of us, is it? My son's wonderful teachers taught him that lesson in a couple of hours. How sad it truly is that you never learned how to listen, in or outside of the classroom, yourself.
Here's to an excellent school year, in spite of you and your "tools," and to an even better one next fall, under our new governor. Or sooner, if you resign. Although then I'd have to start writing to Kleefisch (remember her? She's Rick Perry-crazy!), and I don't think any of us want that to happen. Maybe we'll just hold out for the recall. I trust the dedicated teachers of Wisconsin to make do with the shameful scraps you've left them for that long. But I promise them I'll keep fighting to make it better. And I call on all other parents to do the same. What happened in New Berlin is a sobering lesson on the absurd authority school boards have to dictate policy without regard for the well-being of our children. I think we all have some work to do in terms of looking at our own school boards and thinking about who in our communities might better serve public education in the future. We might not get any help from you, Walker, but we can still help save our schools. We'll just have to work a little harder, until you're gone.
Your shamefully ignored constituent,
Heather DuBois Bourenane
Wisconsin parent, taxpayer and proud supporter of educators and public education
This video captures the heart of the tragedy in Wisconsin: math teacher Dale Destache shares his carefully prepared testimony before the New Berlin School Board, outlining all the ways teachers and students will be impacted by the new policies. While he's explaining how the new guidelines of their abusive Handbook will prevent him from tutoring students before school, someone shouts out "Get a new job!" while others boo and shout him down.The members of the school board made no effort to silence the interruptions.
Dear everyone, and especially friends and others who've been following my rantings on what's happening,
I couldn't write to Scott Walker yesterday. Couldn't find the right tone, for one thing. Because sometimes it's hard to be funny when you're too mad, and I'm trying to keep my letters at least partly funny, so that people will read them and maybe feel a tiny bit better to know that someone out there is being honest, and frank, and a little mean, to someone who deserves it. But also because I was having a hard time getting started without swearing, and I'm trying to keep a veneer of civility on my correspondence so that I'm not outright rejected or dismissed, considering the validity and moral rectitude of my arguments against the governor and his proposed legislation. But sometimes it's hard to be honest and civil at the same time.
I was disappointed not to get a letter out. I really wanted to write to him about how frustrated I am with how he continues to lie in the face of evidence from experts about how disastrous his bill will be to education and the economy. I'm sick of his buzzwords - "jobs" and "tools" (even as I love their tea-baggy lack of ironic awareness. Job. Tool. Sigh). And I wanted to write to him about how frustrated I am with how stubborn he is, and how one of his main lies (that "negotiations have been going on for weeks") is just so painfully offensive to all of us he is actively ignoring, and contradicts the promise he made to us at the start that he's yet to break: "I will not negotiate...because there's nothing to negotiate." I'm tired of hearing him publicly disrespect public schools and educators, and education in general. I'm tired of hearing him lie about how Wisconsin is "broke" and the only solution is to make life easier for the rich and harder for the poor. But mostly I'm tired of him not listening. I'm tired of writing letters that I know he'll never read, or that maybe one of his staff will snicker over before deleting it or doing whatever other trick they do to pretend the great majority of their feedback is positive. And I worry that the people who ARE reading these letters are people with whom I already agree, which makes them seem pretty useless, even if they satisfy my own need to shout into the void.
So I was forced to do a little meta-epistolary thinking, about why I'm writing these letters at all, and to whom, and why they matter. Obviously, I want Scott Walker to read them. He's what we call my Primary Audience. He is the literal recipient of every single letter - I am really sending these to his office, and most of them to the Fitzes, too. What you see is what they get. But the secondary, and actual, audience is much more abstract for me. Am I just preaching to the choir, trying to get a laugh out of a few of my friends, or am I really trying to persuade the people who need persuading most? Or both? Or am I just writing out of a need to hear the sound of my own voice, and convince myself that this isn't a total waste of time? What kind of "action" is this? How, if at all, is it effective?
The rallies are effective: the world cannot ignore a screaming mob. The recall efforts are effective: we have a legal right to depose unfit officials. The boycotts are effective. The local efforts are effective: when we talk to parents, talk to teachers, talk to neighbors, talk to local administrators, we spread the word and our solidarity grows, and the movement grows stronger as people realize that we ARE the majority, and they cannot dupe us into silence by claiming we "don't represent the majority of taxpayers of Wisconsin" (another of Walker's favorite lies...insinuating that anyone opposed to him doesn't pay taxes and claiming we're a minority in one swoop. Clever). But how much difference can writing an letter - even an open letter - make?
I don't know. But I know there's a Snail Mail the Governor movement that's encouraging people to let their voices be heard by flooding the Capitol with letters. And I know that the Attorney General's office has stated that it only takes seriously complaints in writing, indicating that they care little to nothing about public protests. And I know that writing a letter forces you to make choices about what issues are most important to you, and to educate yourself, and present a defensible argument. And it allows you to tell your story in a way no one else can. One of the most poignant examples of this is in a blog by Dorinne Green, in which she presents an open letter to anyone who will listen about the direct - and potentially fatal - effects of Scott Walker's budget bill on her own life. I have links to other powerful open letters on the right column of my blog, and am happy to post any that are sent my way.
Writing open letters is both an expression of solidarity and an attempt to make sure that every voice is heard. Letters to public officials are open records, and they tell not only your officials but the larger community that you have taken a stance. Governor Walker settled a lawsuit this week before he could be found guilty of withholding these records from the public, after making a highly suspect public claim that the "majority" of some 8000 emails they received at the start of the Cheddar Revolution were "in favor" of the budget bill. The media now has access to those emails, as it should, and can begin the process of sifting through to see what voices do emerge, what stories are being shared, whose lives and families and jobs and futures are being directly effected by these decisions.
My "toolbox" isn't full of money. It's not full of much else, either. So letter writing is one way I can take action. Because I believe our voices matter, every voice matters. But our voices are most powerful when they come together.
Together, we can force a recall, or - who knows - maybe even a resignation (one stays hopeful). I think we can create a forum here for open letters of dissent that might make a difference. Because my voice does matter, and so does yours, even if Scott Walker never reads a word of this. But not everyone might think being a little mean, and phrases like "moral rectitude" are funny, so my voice is not enough. I invite you to send me your letters, other open letters you've read, or links to your own blog or page, and I'll share them with my own. By putting our letters together, we can make a statement: we are not the minority, and we will not be silenced. We can rally together, we can write together, we can work together and make a difference. Either way, let's not stop raising our voices - together. Please don't be shy about sharing your voice, and pass on this invitation to others who might like to join us.
Update (18 May 2011): Check out this new website - more open letters to Scott Walker!
There's another new venue for posting open letters to Scott Walker and I can't recommend highly enough that you check it out: Dear Governor Walker,. This page contains letters from people of all walks of life and covers a range of perspectives, tones and issues. A very worthwhile way to spend some time getting informed of the issues about which Wisconsin citizens are most passionate.
I want to thank you personally for hearing the call of so many thousands of us in Wisconsin who were outraged by the hubris and audacity of the future former governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, in daring to speak in "support" of education on your "The State of Education: The Governors' Perspective" panel yesterday.
