Dear MTEA Members:

Seasoned teachers: remember how we all couldn’t wait until we were tenured? New teachers: aren’t you all looking forward to the day you are tenured? Tenure gives us some breathing room. It lets us do our jobs the way we need to do them. Education is not a business where the customer is always right, and no matter what, ‘make the customer happy’. We deal with children, not customers. Sometimes we must make the hard decisions to ensure we give each and every child the best education we can; the education every student deserves. Anything less would not be acceptable. Tenure helps us do this. Tenure allows us make the unpopular decisions, the decisions that are best for each student and students as a collective whole. Tenure protects us from political pressures and outside influences that have nothing to do with the classroom. Tenure is a right that was fought for and won a hundred years ago, and is just as needed today as it was back then.

I am writing to you because that very right is threatened, and it is a very real threat. The law passed this past June 28th is proof of just how real this threat is. Those of us with 19 years know. What happened to us shows those of us who already have tenure not to expect to be ‘grandfathered’ in should tenure be abolished or changed so drastically, it wouldn’t look like tenure at all. By the time you read this, you will have had the chance of reading a one page paper comparing and contrasting one of the tenure bills with NJEA’s recommended tenure changes. The bill’s first hearing is scheduled for Monday, March 5th, so as of this publishing, there has already been discussion about it in the Senate and Assembly. If you have not read the comparison already, please do. Oh, and by the way, tenure is only one of the issues this bill is set out to ‘revise’. Sick time buyout is another. They want to do away with it altogether, including those of us who already have lots of sick time banked. Educate yourselves. Take a stand. If you don’t, no one will. We will not win this fight without numbers. The Senate and Assembly must see we mean business. If we are not a force to be reckoned with, they will ignore us. Don’t let them!

The MTEA will soon have up a Facebook page where you can go for the latest and most up to date in-formation. Please friend us and keep informed. We will let you know what you can do to fight the pas-sage of the Tenure Bill. EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU NEED TO GET INVOLVED. If you don’t, you will have no one to blame but yourself. This quote by Martin Neimoller might put things in perspective:

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a communist;

Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a socialist;

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a trade unionist;

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out - because I was not a Jew;

Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Please, speak out and be heard. Your very livelihood and the futures of your students depend on it.