Another Teacher Molester in ILL

Reports the Chicago Tribune today, Plainfield North High School gym teacher Ashley Blumenshine was arrested after police approached a Kohl's store where she and a student were having sex Tuesday night.

Bizarrely, although she has admitted to the sexual acts, she will plead not guilty.

As many of the commentators of the Tribune have already pointed out, the fact that she faces a mere three-to-seven years imprisonment seems utterly absurd. Nearby the U of ILL in Urbana, Jon A. White has received forty-eight (an additional twelve for students abused in normal). Granted, Blumenshine ostensibly only stands charged for one count whereas White was found guilty of eight. Nevertheless, we share the posters expectation that "three-to-seven years" will be more to the tune of "three-to-seven months."

Unsurprisingly, there is no comment from the IFT, nor the IEA. A search made by we Hounds can find her in no listing for either affiliation.

[[Update 1-6-11]] The Tribune now states that Blumenshine has posted $75,000 bond. After the recent strings of exposes on the blight of the supposedly-underpaid educator, one must wonder where she retrieved such an amount (easily above the average ILL citizen salary (before taxes) so quickly?

Posted by Hound No 4

In today's News-Gazette the IEA is growling once again, and Pat Quinn is de-clawed and in a corner with his tail between his legs on his pension plan that would include cutting down pension amounts for new state workers. Naturally, any plan that puts the well-being of the public before the well-being of the teacher unions has made their hair stand up.

As has been previously posted on this dog blog, the unions were more than happy to put us all in the current mess by contributing unmatched quantities to the Blago boys club. This is particularly ironic when Ed Geppart rhetorically asked the crowd if Quinn was "an improvement?" (This was the same man that Blago personally appointed to the IL Board of Education in 2005).


With thousands of dollars to spare for indicted felons, why do the IFT and IEA insist that we must pay the penalty (and the bill)?

In other union-sponsored teacher statutory rape news, the L.A. Times reports that in addition to wasting away taxpayer-squeezed legal monies, the unions are paying teachers to sit on all fours and do nothing while waiting for misconduct trials and hearings to be resolved.

Posted by Hound No. 4

It's our MONEY, not our FAULT

In a brazen Letter to the editor from this week's News-Gazette, Ed Geppert, president of the Illinois Federation of Teachers, was proselytizing to the good people of the state bemoaning the extremely over-dramatic woes of the state's "public servants"-as he calls them. Anyone who has followed the actions of the IFT will find this laughable. "Teachers and public employees," he writes, "did not cause this problem." (the problem being the enormous debt that has been generated by state pension problems). Geppert in his audacious claim seems clear to forget (more likely to ignore) the role of perhaps the ultimate public employee:

It is ironic that Geppert should write this on the eve that his most esteemed receiver of patronage, that is disgraced, impeached, and indicted ex-governor Rod Blagojevich enters his plea on accusations of (among other things) attempting to sell U.S. Senate seats. So we wondered greatly why Geppert does seem so virulently upset about no money to the teacher pensions when his own organization has donated nearly $2 million to BLAHgojevich's campaigns for the governorship? Not to mention the parent AFT's donation in addition. How about the Illinois Education Association's of over half a million dollars. (source for these contributions here)

Perhaps the IFT would do better for their teachers to cough up their own funds instead of funding criminal state officials. Teachers and public servants may not be at fault, but Geppert and his own certainly are.

Posted by Hound No. 4