TEACHERS' ORGANIZATION FAILS TO FIND SOLUTIONS

Missouri education faces a broad spectrum of questions in these challenging fiscal times. The Missouri branch of the National Education Association, which is of late sending feelers into the Cape Girardeau area, believes it has some answers. We applaud interest in the dialogue. We've also seen no evidence the organization offers anything in the way of solutions.

The executive director of the Missouri NEA visited Cape Girardeau last week for a meeting with local teachers. This followed by a couple of weeks a meeting organized by the regional NEA representative. Why the sudden interest in Cape Girardeau? Most of the organization's 23,000 members in Missouri can be found in the state's metropolitan areas. As an educational hub for Southeast Missouri, Cape Girardeau would obviously be an attractive property for the NEA fold. In addition, with budgets tight in education and teachers growing concerned, the organization might be finding a buyer's market for their themes.

The problem is, the NEA themes in Missouri are inconsistent in thought and deed. And before local teachers buy the NEA line, they should ask some fundamental questions.

In the February edition of the NEA's state magazine, the organization spelled out its directions to the Missouri General Assembly in these words: "Funding Missouri schools should be a state priority." So far, so good. How you go about this is another matter. The executive director last week said key issues are: increasing school funding, making collective bargaining a choice for teachers, improving retirement benefits, instituting statewide health insurance, reducing class size and establishing an education standards board.

Some of these ideas are sturdier than others. In concept, a standards board seems a solid plan, since most professions have some type of formal peer review process; ultimately, we could balk at the cost of such a venture or the added bureaucracy it might ordain. As for collective bargaining and the continued unionization of the teaching profession, we see no benefits for the education of children in Cape Girardeau. Any working relationship teachers have now in constructing salary guidelines with public school administrators will be severed if this NEA-backed initiative advances.

The Missouri NEA supports a constitutional amendment to increase state education's portion of general revenue to 33.3 percent. On the surface, the point is sound. In 1980, this portion was 34.5 percent; now, it is 26 percent. However, the intervening years brought with them a court-ordered school desegregation program for St. Louis and Kansas City. This program will draw $336 million from the state budget this year alone. (Put that money back into the school budget and the education portion again rises to 34.5 percent.) The dese~gre~gation program is the single biggest drain on education in this state. Outstate education has been the most severely hampered. What position do you think the Missouri NEA, with most of its members in the state's largest cities, has taken on the desegregation plans? We hear silence.

The Missouri NEA wants to reduce class size. One would hope a teachers' organization would. However, when Proposition B listed as one of its goals the reduction of class size, the Missouri NEA, while endorsing the measure, wasn't beating the bushes in Southeast Missouri campaigning for the plan ... it's only now that we notice a presence.

On the day after Missouri legislators approved a gasoline tax increase to upgrade the state's infrastructure, the Missouri NEA issued a press release quoting its president, Martha Karlovetz, as saying, "While improved highways will carry our kids safely to school, we're concerned about the quality of programs awaiting kids once they reach the school door." This makes for a clever expression, but it misses the point. If improved highways generate economic development, if they put people to work, schools will benefit. Casually dismissing long-term benefits for the state because of short-term funding setbacks is narrowminded, though that's what the Missouri NEA has done.

The Missouri NEA has outlined a few good goals to reach for. The organization has shown little regard for thinking through these views. Local teachers interested in the NEA should demand a more complete thought process by the association.