Union decision highlights what wrong with Massachusetts leadership

Editor, Townsman:

As I sit on election eve contemplating the morning vote, I am challenged as an unenrolled voter of ways to connect to my democratic roots drummed into me through generations of hard working, determined, patriotic and religious forefathers of my youth. John F. Kennedy culminated and embodied that ancestoral and democratic movement proving much the same as President Barack Obama has, that every American has an opportunity and a inalienable right to rise to the highest office in the land.

But somehow, somewhere the Democratic Party has changed, particularly here in Massachusetts. It reminds me of how once proud member Ronald Reagan said,"I didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party has left me."

And still I search ... until I find it written in black and white on the front page of last week's Andover Townsman: Union blocks bid for federal money. The Andover teachers union (Andover Education Association), much the same as its statewide counterpart at the Massachusetts Teachers Association, refused to adhere to federal application standards for the granting of federal "Race to the Top" funds that would require teachers "to be evaluated and to tie the evaluation to their compensation and to tie the evaluation to student performance." I had to read that a few time. Here is what I concluded: in bad economic times with municipal cuts looming, our school system has an opportunity to receive federal funding by playing by the rules, working hard, evaluating the outcomes as measured against a control group and then compensating those teachers who perform the aforementioned better, with better pay. And the union said no?

The Andover teachers union has highlighted clearly for hundreds of thousands of this Commonwealth's once proud Democratic Party members what is inherently wrong with the leadership in this state. This opposition is quintessentially unAmerican and an insult to generations who built and worked and lived and died in these communities. Win or lose come Tuesday, the political and union establishment is going to hear a collective "enough!" When I hear political attack ads sponsored by muncipal government and teachers unions, as a taxpayer ... you don't speak for me! Under your ideology, go back and read your history book and tell me what political party President Kennedy would be a member of today.

Kevin M. Cuff

265 Beacon St.