Rick Muir, president of the Anderson Federation of Teachers, and Tony Bennett, Indiana’s superintendent of public instruction, got into a war of words recently. When the dust cleared, it was obvious that Bennett had rushed to judgment and is making enemies where he should be seeking allies.

It all started when Bennett told The Herald Bulletin that because of Anderson Community Schools’ budget woes, the teachers’ contract might be voided. Bennett said the AFT is more interested in the well-being of teachers than that of students. Then he said, “Let’s walk around Anderson and see how many people are getting a 2.5 percent raise or a 4 percent raise as part of the master contract. The teachers are.”

Muir claimed that Bennett’s statement was false, and it was, in the sense that Bennett had painted the picture with a clumsy and overly broad stroke. ACS Business Manager Kevin Brown said the contract between the union and the schools dictated that some ACS teachers would get raises in the range suggested by Bennett. Brown said that at least half the ACS staff would indeed receive raises in 2010 as the staffers moved up the salary scale.

It’s not off base to argue that public employees’ raises should be tied to the ability of the public to support such increases. At the same time, teachers, including many at ACS, are generally under-compensated for the level of their training and the difficulty of their jobs.

The root problem is that the economy isn’t doing well enough to support raises in the private business arena. And if more local workers were supported by strong unions like the AFT, such raises wouldn’t be so rare.

Statements alienate teachers

Bennett also said that the AFT has been inflexible and should be making more concessions to help ACS out of its deep financial problems. Despite the closing of several buildings and other austerity measures, school system officials say ACS faces a $22 million deficit in coming years.

Muir, however, pointed out that the union has already made concessions and suggested at a March 9 ACS board meeting that it would be making more soon to help bridge the budget abyss.

Bennett claims to be motivated by the mandate to improve public education across the board in Indiana. That’s a goal we can all agree to. A main thrust of his strategies is to better evaluate the performance of classroom teachers. That, too, is a sound goal.

But Bennett’s statements and tactics have alienated a lot of important players in the process, including union leaders, teachers and school administrators. Some see in the actions of Bennett and Gov. Mitch Daniels an agenda to destroy public education in favor of charter schools and private schools.

Certainly, Bennett has established himself as an enemy of teacher unions. While these unions are not above reproach for their long history of shielding the jobs of ineffective teachers, they also offer protection for good teachers from the whims of administrators and have fought for better wages and benefits. Without unions to negotiate for fair compensation, the pool of teachers would be shallow and stagnant.

Bennett looking for bad guys

If Bennett is truly concerned about schoolchildren, he should think twice before relegating teachers to a system that has no respect for the rights of local professionals to argue for fair wages and benefits. Bennett appears to be looking for bad guys to prop up his ideology rather than working in the spirit of cooperation to improve public education.

In the final analysis, these problems are going to remain as long as the state insists on stripping funding from public education. Daniels’ unilateral decision to take $300 million away from schools left them desperate and with no recourse but to lay off teachers. Tell us again how this is good for education.

Bennett says that the AFT is inflexible. While the union, without question, is designed to promote the interests of teachers, the greater good for all involved is to promote high quality education in Anderson and across the state.

Bennett should recognize that the real enemy is lack of school funding and that teachers unions should be turned into allies — rather than marked as enemies — in the quest to improve public education in Indiana.