Sometimes you really wish, with all due respect, that teachers-union boss Randi Weingarten would give it a rest.
As when she groused last weekend about teachers supposedly heading for the exit doors in droves.
It’s a technique that’s not at all unique to the teachers union: The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association announced last week that 45 of the NYPD’s 37,000 officers had decamped to a suburban police force, and apparently expected all Gotham to fall into a swoon.
Forget about it.
Now Weingarten says that new United Federation of Teachers data suggest that “a record high” number of teachers, some 4,600, left city schools last year – an 81 percent jump since 2001.
City officials dispute the claim – arguing that, in fact, resignation trends are headed in the opposite direction.
No matter. The real question is: What exactly does Weingarten want?
Her members are enjoying a whopping 43 percent boost in pay since Bloomberg & Co. took office. She’s still not happy?
“When veterans leave for reasons other than retirement – despite being paid higher salaries – then you know something is wrong with the system,” she said.
Weingarten says teachers want smaller classes, more support and broader discretion. But if all that extra dough isn’t enough to keep them here, as she claims, then maybe the pay hikes (from the city’s perspective, anyway) were a mistake.
Were the city to grant Weingarten & Co. their every wish – smaller classes, greater say, an apple on every teacher’s desk – no doubt they’d find something else about which to complain.
But remember: Weingarten, above all, is a politician within her union – measured by how loudly she squawks for better pay and working conditions, regardless of how good they already are.
When Chancellor Joel Klein recently announced that a one-time prosecutor would be heading up a peer-review process to identify failing teachers, Weingarten went into melodrama overdrive – calling the idea “a stake in the heart of every teacher.”
Maybe her latest gripes are in response to that, too.
In any event, it’s getting a bit tiring.
True, the squeaky wheel may get the oil – but if it keeps on squeaking even after it’s been greased, it gets on people’s nerves.
Weingarten’s gripes are at that point.
Time to give it a rest.