NE Ohio teachers rally at Cuyahoga Falls High School in opposition to SB 5

http://www.recordpub.com/news/article/4987850

Hundreds rally against S.B. 5 in Falls

February 25, 2011
By ELLIN WALSH | Falls News Press

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“Kill the bill,” chanted nearly a thousand people who attended a rally Thursday in protest of Senate Bill 5 in the auditorium at Cuyahoga Falls High School.

The rally, sponsored by Ohio Education Association affiliates, drew young and old alike, including Jenny Hoholski, a new teacher in Stow, and Sue Bell, a veteran teacher in Cuyahoga Falls.

“I’m a very scared first-year teacher trying to put one more voice out there,” Hoholski said.

“I’m really close to retirement and this bill would do me in,” Bell said. “It may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.”

While proponents of S.B. 5, including Gov. John Kasich, maintain it would provide badly needed tools for the state, counties, cities and school districts to reduce their costs, provide more fairness to taxpayers and create a jobs-friendly climate in Ohio, opponents protest the elimination of collective bargaining rights for state workers.

“Union schools mean higher test scores,” read one of the handmade posters waving above the crowd at the auditorium. “Stop King Kasich” read another. “Senate Bill 5 means death to the middle class,” was another popular sentiment on signs peppering the audience.

Speakers included OEA President Patricia Frost-Brooks; U.S. Rep. Betty Sutton; State Sen.Tom Sawyer; State Rep. Kathleen Clyde of Kent; Tracy Laux, president of the Kent State University chapter of the American Association of University Professors; and North Eastern OEA President Rebecca L. Higgins, a teacher in the Copley-Fairlawn City Schools.

Higgins drew roars of approval when she addressed the governor, saying, “You woke a sleeping giant and we will not be moved.”

Clyde said she is “totally opposed” to Senate Bill 5 as drafted, calling it “ A concerted effort by those with money and power to bring all American workers down.” She described the measure as the latest in a series of movements to “dis-empower American workers.”

Sutton said she would do her best to see that “this backward thinking attack on Ohio’s public employees doesn’t prevail.” She suggested the fight against Senate Bill 5 has become a fight about whether the middle class will prevail.

“In challenging economic times like this ... we all understand that we have a role to play, but this is a power grab to destroy collective bargaining and to silence and dis-empower our workers and it shall not stand because we will stand together against it,” Sutton said.

Surveying the crowd, Frost-Brooks inquired when the middle class had became “public enemy No. 1?”

“They cannot balance this budget — $8 billion — on our backs,” Frost-Brooks said, adding, “...We have done our fair share and they are not going to silence our voice.”

Becky Miller, a teacher for Tallmadge City Schools, said she attended the rally to voice opposition to the bill and to show her support for fellow union workers.

“I think that educator conditions affect teaching conditions,” Miller said, “and if collective bargaining gets taken away, that would be detrimental to all of us.”