OEA President: "They need to live in our economic world"

Before an Ohio Education Association (OEA) staffer wiped the content from the official Professional Staff Union (PSU) blog, emails from OEA leadership played a starring role on its “Hall of Shame” pages. Apparently OEA decided the public shouldn’t see what union bosses think of their own employees.

OEA President Patricia Frost-Brooks, paid $190,000 in 2010, crosses her employees' picket line

Here’s part of an email from OEA President Patricia Frost-Brooks:

I can say that in my opinion PSU is excessively aggressive in its rhetoric, almost outlandish in its rendering of the OEA positions, and very close to the vest about what their members make relative to what contract raises they’ve negotiated for US in the past two years.

Surely Ohioans aren’t expected to treat OEA employee talking points as gospel except when they disagree with OEA bosses – right?

Also–note that some PSU people are more vocal and adamant than others–of course they have a strategy–they’re the folks who teach us how to negotiate.

Here, the OEA president sounds like the OEA vice president: Frost-Brooks accuses OEA staff of putting on a show, while affirming that OEA does the same thing to taxpayers. “Of course they have a strategy” – berate the evils of management until management caves.

but [sic] they’re also the same folks who’ve gotten our locals 0-2% contracts for the past year. They need to live in our economic world, in my opinion.

In OEA President Patricia Frost-Brooks’s economic world, you’re paid $190,000 a year to pat yourself on the back for demanding unsustainable compensation while demonizing reforms that would reward the best educators. Speaking of excessively aggressive rhetoric:

In a message to her members, Ohio Education Association President Patricia Frost-Brooks called the bill’s passage a “final stamp of approval on an attempt to silence your voice as an advocate for Ohio’s children.”

She said SB5 was “a clear attempt to gut the ability of educators, nurses, firefighters, police and all public employees to have a voice on the job,” adding that it “does nothing to create jobs and instead gives politicians free reign to cut public education in Ohio.”

“An attempt to silence your voice” – like, for instance, by deleting an official staff blog. Is this sort of transparent class warfare what Ohio teachers have in mind when they fork over hundreds each year in OEA dues?

As a graduate of an Ohio public school, I can say without a doubt that handsomely-paid, wildly hypocritical OEA bosses do not speak for all Ohio teachers. On November 8, vote for sensible reforms that will empower taxpayers instead of professional agitators: Vote Yes on Issue 2!

Follow me on Twitter: @jasonahart
Cross-posted at that hero.