EagleTribune.com : Blogs : The Soapbox

If there were any doubts about Andover teachers having a sense of entitlement on the scale of some of the McMansions in town, science teacher Tim Van Wey has removed them. Read his letter to the editor here.
Van Wey objects to a news story here that said the teachers blocked traffic off of Main Street as they slowly marched from Old Town Hall to Superintendent Claudia Bach’s office to protest their lack of a contract. This, he contends, meant the teachers had been “willfully misunderstood.” They weren’t blocking traffic, he insists. They simply “use(d) the crosswalks which grant them the right of way in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”
Ahh, yes, of course. A crowd of 300 teachers is just like any other pedestrian “using” the crosswalk. Van Wey neglects to mention that two cops had to be called to help alleviate the traffic jam that the teachers caused. He also neglects to mention that the teachers didn’t have to use Main Street - they could easily have walked from Old Town Hall to Bartlet Street a block away, which parallels Main Street and where they could have done their little march without snarling nearly as much traffic. But then, not as many people would have been paying attention to them. And, as you know, it’s all about them, even though they keep reciting like a mantra that it’s all about the children.
Union president Tom Meyers has hauled out the same old line he uses every time the union demands more money - that if they don’t get it, then Andover will lose teachers to the three or four other districts in the state that pay even more. If I were an Andover parent, I’d be begging any teacher who thinks abusing a crosswalk is just “using” a crosswalk to go elsewhere. Please, go teach in Brookline or Newton if they’ll have you. Anywhere but here.