I’ve Met My B.S. Quota For The Month

Gah. Meh. Feh.

I’m just annoyed and disgusted and ready for the weekend after dealing with such nonsense over the past two days. I don’t know if anyone else will find this interesting or not, but these stories are so stupid that I have to vent. And yes, they both deal with the OEA.

#1- Back in March, Becky Felts was elected OEA Vice President. She’s a classroom teacher who was also on the Oklahoma Commission for Teacher Preparation. Since OEA receives money for mentoring and other programs from OCTP, it’s a pretty clear conflict of interest for Ms. Felts to serve on the commission (in my opinion).

Rep. Thad Balkman (R-Norman) found out that Ms. Felts was still a commissioner earlier this week. He put out a press release calling for her resignation. He was then informed by a reporter that Ms. Felts had resigned on July 6th, the day she took office.

Non story, right? Nope. Turns out her letter of resignation wasn’t received by the person who appointed her (Speaker of the House Larry Adair) until August 26th… the day Rep. Balkman called on her to resign. The letter of resignation, received August 26th, is undated and says she resigns her position as of July 6th.

In my opinion, this is just an example of pettiness. It looks to me like someone didn’t want a conservative representative to get credit for Ms. Felts resigning, so they tried to make it seem like she had resigned weeks before. Meanwhile, the OCTP was left in the dark, wasting time and money on printing materials for Ms. Felts that were never used.

#2- Staples, the office supply company, has a program donating money to the NEA Foundation and charities designated by state NEA affiliates when someone recycles ink cartridges.

The program began in Oklahoma, with the OEA and Staples involved. The money here in Oklahoma will supposedly go the General Education Fund. Now here’s where it gets weird.

Back in July, the APOE (Association of Professional Oklahoma Educators… arch-enemy of the OEA) says they were invited by Staples to be a part of this program. An APOE sign was placed by the recycling bin, along with an OEA sign.

At some point this month, the APOE was informed or noticed their sign was down. I talked with an OEA staff member today who told me that the OEA “strongly suggested” to Staples that they take the sign down.

Now, why would you do this? Isn’t this money supposed to be about the kids? Aren’t you supposed to be role models for our children? How the heck can you teach kids to play well with others when you can’t even do that yourself? So the APOE was a johnny-come-lately with this program. You’ve now alienated hundreds, if not thousands of people who would have gladly taken part in this program, simply because you couldn’t stand to have another organization take part in something that’s good for this state.

Here’s my message to the OEA: if you want me to stop picking on you, quit doing stupid things. If you can’t keep your philanthropy seperate from your union activity, then give up one of those things. You might have tried to hurt the APOE with your actions, but in reality, you just hurt my kids.

Thanks.