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In the last week or so the Globe has written twice about the AFT’s last-minute support of Marty Walsh and what, if anything, the BTU knew about it. Here’s a letter the Globe published from BTU President Richard Stutman on January 3:BTU supported Martin Walsh because of his agenda “ON THE matter of whether the Boston Teachers Union did or did not know about the American Federation of Teachers’ $480,000 expenditure, all we can state is that the BTU and its leadership had no prior knowledge of the AFT’s donation towards ads that highlighted the positive aspects of the Martin Walsh campaign. While we appreciate the AFT’s support, no one in BTU leadership knew about the expenditure until the day before the Globe reported it. That said, the real point of concern ought to be that while the AFT spent $480,000 on Walsh, Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), which promotes a corporate “reform” agenda, spent almost three times as much, $1.3 million, on behalf of John Connolly, Walsh’s opponent. “The BTU supported Walsh for the same reasons that a late October UMass poll showed that people who actually use the schools favored Walsh by a margin of 60 percent to 34. The BTU leadership uses our schools as well. We have 12 full or part-time staff at the BTU representing our 10,000 members and 3,000 retired members. Eight of our staff have 21 children who attend or have attended the Boston Public Schools. We are proud of that, we are proud of the education the BPS offers, and to a person our leadership felt that Walsh’s agenda — not Connolly’s proposed business model of educational reform — offered a better, broader vision for the BPS. Richard Stutman |