CTA has unleashed a barrage of television and radio ads that feature classroom teachers taking the governor to task for an education agenda that amounts to nothing more than broken promises to public schools.
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On the screen, Charles Watkins from Compton is speaking out for public education |
"Keeping your word: It's a cherished principle we teach our students," a teacher in the TV ad begins. "So how can Governor Schwarzenegger break his promise, borrowing $2 billion from the education budget he now says he won't pay back?"
CTA produced the ads because "California teachers feel betrayed by the governor and want the public to know just how devastating his budget and education proposals will be on our students and schools," says CTA President Barbara E. Kerr. "His broken funding promise and his attacks on the voter-approved law that guarantees minimum school funding will mean larger class sizes, fewer textbooks and more teacher layoffs. That's not reform."
In both the TV and radio spots, teachers end with a plea to voters: "So, when you hear the governor talk about 'reform,' ask yourself if that really means breaking his word to our schools and kids."
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CTA officers — (from left) Secretary-Treasurer Dean Vogel, President Barbara E. Kerr and Vice President David A. Sanchez — give the media an advance look at the television and radio spots that are designed to educate the public about what the governor's proposals mean for schools |
CTA has also joined forces with the California Nurses Association to produce a statewide radio ad that exposes the governor's hypocrisy in attacking dedicated classroom educators and nurses as "special interests" as he rakes in millions of dollars in political donations from big business.
"I'm a first-grade teacher and my only agenda is fighting to improve the conditions in my classroom so my kids get every opportunity they deserve," a teacher says in the spot. A nurse adds: "Imagine, our governor called nurses special interests' after he stopped the new nurse's staffing law that would have improved patient care. But Schwarzenegger doesn't say a word about his own donations from the big drug and insurance companies, the real special interests that run Sacramento."
The ad reminds the governor that teachers and nurses, who are at the hearts of their communities, aren't the special interests he needs to be resisting.
CTA's 335,000 members and CNA's 60,000 members are outraged at the way in which they're being depicted by Schwarzenegger, says Kerr. "We are proud to stand with nurses in this new radio campaign to say to the governor that our only special interests are the students and patients we dedicate our lives to helping."
