I mean, who else could loge personal threats at a “Rally for Respect” (of all things!) against the chancellor of DC Public Schools, Michelle Rhee, right in the heart of the city, and get away with it?

Needless to say, the baseless threats continue from the country’s second largest teachers’ union.

Now comes another letter from October 21, in which the union has apparently dropped its demand for us to stop using the acronym ‘AFT.’  They’re also no longer calling for us to turn over the domain registration to them.  Hopefully the General Counsel of the union, David Strom, saw how absurd and downright pathetic his demand was.

But, they do want an AFT-drafted disclaimer on the site.  We currently have:

Welcome to AFTexposed.com, a website exposing the agenda, finances, and tactics of the American Federation of Teachers.  As a result of a threatened lawsuit by the AFT, let us be patently clear: the American Federation of Teachers does not like this site.

If that isn’t clear enough, I don’t know what is.  And as our excellent attorney from the Institute for Justice, Clark Neily, said in response: “…the [Education Action Group] Foundation declines your invitation to reword it.”

Neily finished the October 22 response letter by saying:

Finally, it appears that we have much different understandings of the law in this area.  I would therefore appreciate it if you would provide citations to relevant case law in future correspondence, as I did in my October 16 letter to you.  Otherwise, this begins to look less and less like a good-faith dispute over the contours and limits of federal trademark law and more like a naked attempt to intimidate and punish an ideological rival for exercising its constitutionally protected right to free speech.

In my personal view, it is time for the AFT to put up or shut up.  Sue us or leave us alone.

The Institute for Justice has been spot-on throughout this goonish ordeal.  I liken it to the nerd has not only just beat up the bully, but he’s also said, “Oh, and by the way, I’ll take your lunch money now.”

We do look at this harassment as a good thing.  Every minute the union is pestering us over our website that apparently is embarrassing to them (ie. 2009 funding to ACORN), it’s one less minute it is strong-arming school boards, stifling parental choice or putting employees’ needs first.

What more is it going to take to convince the public of the pressing need to transform our schools into student-based institutions, instead of the labor-based cesspools they’ve become in recent years.

In case you haven’t heard, the state of Hawaii, facing the same type of budget crunch as other state governments, has to cut more than $400 million from its education budget over the next two years. Logically, that would lead to some teacher layoffs in a number of school districts.

But the Hawaii State Teachers Association has a better idea. It wants to adopt a four-day school week, with unpaid “furlough Fridays,” to avoid any layoffs. In other words, the teachers are willing to sacrifice one-fifth of their students’ education to keep the paychecks rolling in.

The idea is apparently catching on in other states, as well.

The union’s perogative of “no lay-offs” is clearly self-serving.  Our organization, Education Action Group Foundation, which is based in Michigan, has estimated that 2,500 school layoffs in Michigan equals about a $1 million hit to the Michigan Education Association in terms of dues.  When a state is talking about significantly more than that, one can see why the union doesn’t want layoffs.

In one way, the plan is sort of a breath of fresh air. In many states, union teachers are notorious for throwing their younger colleagues under the bus at layoff time, instead of accepting adjustments to their salaries and benefits so teachers with less seniority can stick around.

But this is not an acceptable alternative. As reported on FoxNews.com, the Obama administration has been pushing for longer school years, to help American kids catch up with their peers overseas. Our children clearly need more class time, not less. If schools have budget problems, cuts will have to occur, but those cuts should never be aimed at children, particularly when it comes to instructional time.

This is hard evidence that the teachers unions put their needs before the needs of the students. That’s a major, fundamental flaw in our public education system, and it has to be addressed in short order. Teachers that are willing to walk away from their students one day per week, just to keep everyone employed, are not really teachers at all. They lack dedication to their profession and they don’t belong in the presence of our children.