Last week, the Alabama Education Association (AEA) teachers’ union lost a pivotal case at the Alabama Supreme Court. Specifically, the court dismissed the AEA’s challenge of interim State Education Superintendent Dr. Ed Richardson’s authority to close and sell the Montgomery Public School (MPS) system’s underutilized property.
To recap, elements of the MPS system have been under intervention by the State Board of Education since last year because of the system’s “low performing” grade. That included struggling finances, lackluster standardized test scores, poor attendance and student transportation safety concerns.
Under Richardson and his predecessor, former State Education Superintendent Michael Sentance, the state school board sought to implement a series of reforms to the Montgomery system, including staff reductions, the closure of underutilized schools and the sale of properties, including the Georgia Washington Middle School to the nearby Pike Road school system.
The AEA intervened with a lawsuit challenging Richardson’s authority to close the schools but ultimately lost when Alabama’s high court ordered the suit’s dismissal.
What was the AEA doing getting involved in the first place? Out of the 173 school systems in Alabama, many of which are facing similar struggles, why did the teachers’ union feel it was in its best interests to meddle in the affairs of this particular school district?
Perhaps it was more cosmetic than anything, and the AEA did not want to have to watch this happen on its home turf of Montgomery County.
But it lost. With all the resources it dedicated to this lawsuit throughout the 2017 calendar year, the AEA could not stop the state from proceeding with reforms that run ideologically counter to its interests in one lone school district.
That is symbolic of how far the AEA has fallen as a relevant institution in Alabama politics.
Gone are the days of Paul Hubbert sitting in the balconies of the state legislature and pointing to his eye for a yes vote and nose for a no vote.
No longer can the AEA get what it wants by holding the legislature hostage with threats to halt the entire business of the state by flexing its muscle alone.
Before 2011, the AEA could make a campaign contribution here or there, and that would be enough to keep loyalists in the legislature. It ended when the Republicans took control of both chambers of the legislature for the first time in 136 years after the 2010 elections.
Later in 2011, Hubbert retired, and the AEA has struggled since.
In 2013, the AEA was dealt a devastating blow when the Legislature passed the Alabama Accountability Act, a law that made school choice, private or another public school, possible for the family of a student, if he or she is attending a failing school.
Although the law has weaknesses with regards to its funding, it has the AEA playing defense. Instead of being a driving force behind new legislation, the AEA now leans heavily on having its few remaining loyalists in the Legislature use parliamentary tactics to prevent anything else that threatens the status quo.
And now, eight years after the end of Hubbert era the AEA is attempting to wield influence through longshot lawsuits in the judicial system, like its involvement in the MPS intervention.
Some advice for the AEA (not that the AEA is expected to take advice from Yellowhammer News): Alabama is a Republican-controlled state now. All those years seedy Democratic Party politics in Montgomery and Paul Hubbert acting shadow governor didn’t do any favors for your image. K-12 education policy was dictated by the AEA for decades, and how has that work out?
It will be uncomfortable, but the AEA should get with times and realize it has to play ball with this power structure. The rules aren’t the same as they were in 1990. The time for making ideological arguments against school choice and charter schools has passed.
The people of Alabama elected leadership to Montgomery that have differing views on education. If the AEA is really interested in serving the schoolteachers it represents, and by extension the students they teach, then it would operate within these parameters.
Otherwise, the only thing of value the AEA will have to offer is the high-priced piece of real estate it occupies on Dexter Avenue near the steps of the Alabama State Capitol.
@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University and is the editor of Breitbart TV.
Don’t miss out! Subscribe today to have Alabama’s leading headlines delivered to your inbox.