Mark Belling talked about it yesterday. Charlie Sykes talked about it today.
Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner appeared on Belling's show to react to it.
This isn't exactly an obscure matter.
Once again, talk radio and bloggers (Patrick at Badger Blogger covered it yesterday afternoon) highlight how incredibly selective the Old Media are in terms of which issues they address.
If this story involved a public school teacher WORKING for the Republican Party as part of a summer externship program, I think the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel would be in full drool mode.
An Arrowhead teacher, Shannan Hechimovich, did a summer externship with the Waukesha County Democrats, a clear violation of federal law according to Sensenbrenner.
From Arrowhead's newsletter:
Arrowhead social studies teacher Hechimovich "externing" for the Dems
What do teachers know about work in the real world? More than you would think.
Nearly 100 Arrowhead teachers have had an opportunity to take part in summer externships over the years. Externships allow teachers to experience work in outside environments and apply these to their changing curriculum and classroom, Jennifer Passler, School to Work coordinator, said.
The teachers find a place to work 30 hours. The information learned and the skills developed are brought back into the classroom and aid in changing the curriculum according to the real world, she said. David Richman, Shanna Hechimovich, and Carol Peronto were three of the teachers who took part in the externship program this past
summer. On average, eight to ten teachers take part in externships, but due to a lack of funding, only three were given the opportunity last summer, Passler said.
...The externship program allows teachers to incorporate new learning methods into the classroom and aids in preparing students for life in the real world.
With funding so tight for the externship program, I guess it was important to get the most bang for the buck.
Hechimovich spent her time entering data, updating the Waukesha Dems' data base.
Wow. Imagine how tremendously Arrowhead students will benefit from Hechimovich's experience doing that sort of mindless busy work. What a joke!
Actually, it wasn't the tasks she did during her externship that Arrowhead and Hechimovich see as the plus for students.
This allowed her to obtain contact information for future class speakers on politics and broadened her knowledge on what goes on behind the scenes. “I can utilize the things I learned to teach students how to become more informed and get more involved in the political arena,” Hechimovich said. “A greater knowledge of the workings of a political party is obviously going to be beneficial to a social studies teacher such as myself.”
A PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHER WORKED FOR THE WAUKESHA DEMOCRATS AS PART OF A TAXPAYER FUNDED EXTERNSHIP PROGRAM!
No one at Arrowhead understood that this was a violation of federal law.
There is clueless and then there is utterly clueless.
Patrick writes that after Belling talked about the story on his show, Belling "was contacted by the head of the Hartland Arrowhead district, and the tune has changed. They now realize that what they did was clearly wrong and have stated that they will not be paying this teacher for the work she did with the Waukesha Democratic Party. At this time, no money have been paid, and he made it clear that they will not."
I doubt that district officials would have had that epiphany without Sensenbrenner's involvement.
It's my opinion that Hechimovich's externship would not have been questioned had alternative media not exposed it as illegal.
I would be interested in knowing the details of the past externships of those 100 Arrowhead teacher participants.
Where did they work?
Perhaps a teacher worked for Planned Parenthood. Who knows?
Has a teacher worked for a political party before? If so, was the teacher paid?
It's possible.
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