This Just In! B4K Is Linked To The NJEA!!

Last night I took on Laura Waters and her endless attempts to discredit Save Our Schools NJ by connecting them, no matter how tenuously, to the NJEA.  She was pretty tickled with herself last May when she played the Kevin Bacon six degrees of separation game and connected the two groups.   


She did it again in August, this time without the cheeky game, merely presenting it as a fact that Save Our Schools NJ is not only connected to the NJEA, but that we are united in our "vested interest in quashing NJ's charter school movement."  


I couldn't resist turning the tables on Ms. Waters (see comment section of link above) and played the Kevin Bacon game with her in an attempt to point out how ludicrous her connection was:

Wait, wait, this is a fun game! Let me try!! Laura Waters writes an anti-union EdReformer blog. She has garnered enough attention to write opinion pieces for NJ Spotlight. One of those opinion pieces was highlighted by the ed reform blog redefinEd (stay with us here) which is run by venture capital entrepreneur John F. Kirtley. So, Laura Waters is being paid by ed reformer venture capitalists to attack teachers unions! I knew it! No big surprise there.

And then apparently Ms. Waters received an email from Kathy Mone about last weeks charter school panel discussion in Highland Park, and she saw her golden opportunity!  NJEA "top brass" at an event sponsored by Save Our Schools NJ!  FINALLY!  She could prove the connection!!


So I got a hearty chuckle today when I saw this on the B4K Facebook page:

B4K and the NJEA co-sponsoring a panel discussion!?!  I'll be waiting for Ms. Waters to blog indignantly about the connections between the NJEA and B4K as a way to discredit B4K.  And since the audience will likely be "composed completely of NJEA top brass", as she so nefariously described the audience of the Highland Park panel, the credibility of the entire Grading The Teachers panel will have to be brought into question as well!  I bet VINCE might even be there! 


Wait... what's that you say dear reader?  Maybe it's GOOD for the likes of B4K and the NJEA to come together in a room, and actually TALK to each other?  Huh, maybe you're right...


Ms. Waters, I beg you.  Quit it.  


It IS good for people on different sides of this debate to come together and hash things out.  Your attempt to discredit Save Our Schools NJ as an NJEA plant merely because you can connect them by playing the Kevin Bacon game (for the record, I can connect myself to Kevin Bacon in four degrees) or members of the two groups are in the same room, is a slap in the face to over 7,000 parents and concerned citizens across the state, like myself, who joined because they want to see public schools work for ALL kids, not just THEIR kids.


And like it or not Ms. Waters, we're not going away...