The Oregonian story, "Teacher tenure law packs weak punch," Thursday, Feb. 26, 1998, was misplaced on page one. It belonged on the editorial page.

In the article, Steven Carter reports that during the 1998 school year very few teachers across Oregon are being sanctioned or directly threatened with dismissal under the new law created by the passage of SB 880 by the 1997 Legislature. The article's interpretation of the causes of the law's muted effect includes the idea that that an even harsher law may be needed.

The Oregonian's bias against unions, public employees, and teachers is reflected in the Carter story's failure to even mention the important fact that hundreds of teachers are retiring from the state's public schools this year. Most school districts are scrambling to hire replacements. That they cannot afford to fire at will this year is no indication that the new law is weak, as suggested in the Carter aricle. The retirement factor is so obvious and relevant that it's omission alone shows that the story is a piece of teacher-bashing propaganda.

In story after story about the so-called "teacher tenure" law,The Oregonian has ignored the fact that one of the main reasons for the passage of SB-880 was that conservatives in the Republican-dominated 1997 Legislature were angry at the Oregon Education Association (the teacher's union) for having contributed almost exclusively to Democratic candidates' campaigns during the past election. The Republicans won control of the legislature anyway, and SB 880 was revenge on the teachers.

Governor Kitzhaber went along and signed SB 880 into law as part of a deal to get the legislature to increase overall spending on schools. Much the same thing happened with the "Coalition to Fund Oregon Education Now," which campaigned for increased school spending statewide, with the active support of teachers, school boards, and businesses. But when the time came to throw a bone to the hardline opponents of public education, the teachers were sacrificed and betrayed by the Coalition as well as by Governor Kitzhaber and some of the very Democrats the union had supported.

The invention of the name, "Fair Dismissal Law" in regard to SB 880 is another piece of The Oregonian's propaganda. SB 880 gutted the Fair Dismissal Law and replaced it with the, "Accountability for schools for the 21st Century Law," ORS,Chap.342.805.

Still another falsehood is the article's statement that the issue of union contracts is contentious. In fact, no one disputes that employees are still protected under contracts which were signed prior to passage of SB 880 and which remain in force. One of the administrators interviewed by Carter for the article says that because of the labor contracts still in force, we won't see the results of the new law for another year or two.

The OEA, meanwhile, is in denial and pretends the passage of SB 880 was not a devastating loss of job security for its teacher members. What else are they going to say to their members whose jobs the campaign contributions ended up jeapordizing? Even some Democratic candidates who were helped by OEA and won, failed to rally strongly in the teachers' defense. These politicians also say the teachers' loss was not so bad after all.

These pitiful circumstances won't make our schools' urgent out-of-state recruiting task any easier. Teachers from states with strong unions will be informed and will not look forward to working in Oregon, without seniority or fair dismissal protections.