“Few Floridians know that like most school employees, the percentage of taxes they pay is four times more than the state's wealthiest residents. Taxpayers who earn $1 million per year pay 3 percent in taxes, while those earning less than $15,000 pay over 12 percent. Before the legislative session ends with more cuts to schools, we need to tell our state's leaders that the responsibility for educating students must be fairly shared. It's time to invest in education.”

-- Pat Santeramo, president of the Broward Teachers Union, in a commentary in The South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

 

“As president of the Okeechobee County Education Association my phone has been ringing off the hook this past weekend. The district principals are starting their end of the year teacher evaluations and ‘it ain’t pretty.’  Annual teachers with ‘Exemplary’ and ‘Highly Effective’ evaluations are being told they are not re-hired for next year.  When receiving that shock and asking why, they are being told, ‘thank you for your services’ and nothing more. The phone calls I have received so far are from annual contract teachers who are from out of state and single. I would like these unfortunate, non-renewed, annual contract teachers to know that they have not been lacking in their teaching.  Unfortunately, districts can non-renew teachers at the end of each of the three years the teacher is on annual contract, and there is no recourse.”

-- Candice Black Walker, in a commentary in The Okeechobee News. 

 

“Hope springs eternal. As Floridians get a better sense of the inadequate budget proposals and the damage that will be done to education, social services and health care, perhaps the governor and the Legislature will see the light. There are still three weeks left in the legislative session -- plenty of time to close some sales tax exemptions, broaden the base to tax some services and make it easier to collect taxes on Internet sales. But if it takes this much effort to raise the tobacco tax to pay for health care for the poor, the chance to turn a crisis into an opportunity is going up in smoke.”

-- St. Petersburg Times editorial.

"In short, the Florida Legislature, with its back against the wall, has not risen to the occasion with either cleverness or courage. Scrambling for short-term solutions, its members seem ready to settle for just getting by and going home.”

-- Tallahassee Democrat editorial.

"The Legislature is saying it will hold schools harmless by giving them the same per-student allocation next year that they had this year. Given the cuts schools suffered this year, that's like a bully who just beat up a victim saying he isn't about to hit the kid again.”

-- Palm Beach Post editorial.

"Floridians have themselves to blame, in many ways, for not demanding a more sensible tax structure. In some ways, the great crisis now is how do you recreate a Florida dream? I mean, Florida was founded upon the idea of a dream. It’s a combination of the American dream at the larger level and the Florida dream, that you can come to Florida, you’ll have a better life, at least better Februarys. In retirement, you can have dignity in old age. And Florida was cheap. Florida is no longer cheap. We have lots of environmental, economic problems. And I think one of the great challenges -- I think it could be a creative one -- is how do we refashion a new dream? What will the new Florida dream be like? And I think America, in general, is also facing many of those challenges.”

-- University of South Florida Professor Gary Mormino, who describes the state’s economy as a giant Ponzi scheme.

 

"On April 4, 41 years ago last evening, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis. He was in town to help the strikers gain recognition of their union, and his epic ‘I've been to the mountaintop’ speech was a labor rally. Dr. King is remembered as America's greatest civil rights leader, but the man was a towering labor leader as well. He clearly connected the dots between the immorality of racial inequality and the economic injustices inflicted on working men and women of all colors. It was the same struggle: to demand through collective action one's individual worth and dignity. One of the great labor speeches in American history is King's 1961 address to the AFL-CIO. In it King reflected on the grand work of the labor movement. He said that in response to the ‘organized misery’ of sweatshops and the notion that capital may ‘act without restraints and without conscience,’ the worker unionized and by doing so had ‘constructed the means by which a fairer sharing of the fruits of his toil had to be given to him.’ How sad that in the intervening years King's message to workers has been lost. Worker solidarity has given way to an every-man-for-himself ethic that has helped to strip labor of the influence it once had. No surprise then that America's prosperity over the last 30 years has not been shared with the workers who created it, with essentially all of its rewards flowing to those at the top. Workers are no longer at the table when the pie gets divided, so they get the crumbs.”

-- St. Petersburg Times columnist Robyn Blumner.

"Unified or not, the most daunting task the unions face is passing the Employee Free Choice Act -- a challenge that's grown steeper since Sens. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Arkansas' Blanche Lincoln (D-Wal-Mart) announced that they wouldn't support the legislation in its current form. Labor must calculate how much it can compromise on a bill that is essential to rebuilding private-sector unions in America, and whether it can renew the fight if the Democrats pick up more senators in next year's midterm elections -- a campaign to which a newly unified labor movement would bring greater numbers, more coordination and a desperate ferocity.”

-- Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson.