Michigan Bill Would Restrict Teachers from Using School Resources to Lobby

My local teacher union is pretty good at making sure that school resources are not used to lobby legislators- we are frequently reminded by our local union president that we are not to use school computers for union business and are not to in any way use school resources to lobby legislators.

But many other locals are run differently and our state organization seems to encourage us to act differently, and so it is quite common in the education world that teachers use their work time, their students, and their taxpayer-provided resources to engage in lobbying government officials. This is wrong and needs to be stopped, and I'm happy to say that there is a legislator trying to do just this.

Via MLive:

Facing an onslaught of emails, faxes, letters student-signed petitions and phone calls during a recent school funding debate, a state lawmaker hopes to restrict school districts that use taxpayers dollars to lobby legislators.

Rep. Kenneth B. Horn, R-Frankenmuth, introduced the bill last week that would prevent school districts or their employees from using tax-funded school supplies, equipment, vehicles or school time to lobby or become involved in political activities. He said he wants the same restrictions nonprofits face imposed on school districts and their employees.

One of the biggest signs of our corrupt our modern day government is that government employees frequently use government resources to encourage government officials to give said employees more personal benefits. Teachers are as guilty of doing this as other groups (although the SEIU is probably the most guilty)- they use resources that are given to them for the purposes of being a better teacher- computers, pencils, pens, paper, students, time, copiers, etc- in order to put pressure on government decision makers to give them more money, better benefits, a bigger pension, shorter working hours, less supervision, more job security, etc.

Teachers and union members can still lobby on their own personal time using their own resources- this bill does nothing to restrict that kind of speech. It just reinforces that employees of school districts are public servants and should follow the same sort of rules that other nonprofits face when involved in lobbying. This is exactly the sort of bill that the MEA should be backing and supporting, if it were honest about caring about children and using resources properly and not being unethical with the use of resources.