So many of the comments and diaries I have read on this site have totally trashed this movie for it's anti union stance etc. I believe in unions but as the parent of a child with special needs, my real life experience in NY gives me a totally different perspective on this movie.
I am not intending to start a war here on teacher pay and unions. I am only trying to explain why I went to see this movie this weekend and why I enjoyed it.
I went to see this movie with a group of my friends. We all have special needs children who have gotten the shaft in public schools in NY.
The opening scene where a child with dyslexia is humiliated by being forced to read out loud in class and has her classmates call her stupid was not fiction to us. It actually happened to my girlfriend's daughter.
All of our kids have had, during their public education, one or two horrible special education teachers and regular education teachers, some of whom bullied our children. And don't underestimate the scarring and damage just one bad teacher can do to such a child. And in NY, if they are tenured, there is no way to prevent them from continuing to harm, yes harm, our children.
We have had teachers report us to child protection services when we complained they were not following our children's IEP(Individualized Education Program). We have had teachers threaten to duct tape our children's mouths closed. We have had teachers drag our children by the feet and place them in padded rooms without our consent. My ADHD child was punished by one of her high school English teachers because she fidgeted in her seat in class. Those teachers should not have been in a classroom but they were tenured and in NY, they are untouchable.
We have had teachers get up and leave in the middle of CSE(Committee on Special Education) meetings where our childrens' goals and needs were being discussed because it was 3 PM and the union contract said they had to leave. If the excuse for a teacher denying a child a free and appropriate education by leaving a vital meeting because the clock strikes 3 PM is the union contract, then there is, IMHO, something wrong with that union contract.
I cant tell you how many times we have wondered why these individuals have become special education teachers. In this part of NY, part of the reason is money and benefits.
In my district on eastern LI, we had a poorly regarded speech teacher retire at age 55 with a pension of over $170,000/yr. My daughter's gym teacher,the one who made her keep time on the soccer team rather than play because she was ADHD, makes over $100,000 a year and the special education teacher who called her stupid(my daughter has an IQ of 126) and berated her in front of the class made over $100,000 yr. Some elementary school teachers make over $140,000/yr. Starting salaries for non-tenured teachers run around $40,000/yr.
I am in no way denigrating those hard working teachers who aren't properly compensated. I understand that most teachers do not make the kind of salaries teachers on Long Island are paid. However, there is something wrong with a system where some educators make more the the Governor of our state and some school district superintendents make more than the President of the US while at the same time claiming there are insufficient funds to properly educate children with disabilities in their districts
The main reason we are told by our schools that they cant provide an appropriate education for our children is because they don't have the funds due to teacher salaries, benefits, and pension commitments. That rankles...especially when it is our hard earned tax dollars that are going to those salaries and not to educate our special kids. And yes, I am aware that lack of funds technically cant be an excuse to deny a child services but unless you have $50,000 to hire an attorney and fight the school on it, it is the reality.
For us, this fictional account parents and teachers of being able to change a school for the better was uplifting. Our reality and the daily struggles we face to ensure our children get the education they are constitutionally entitled to is wearing. Of all of us at one time or another have wished we were able to remove our children from their public schools and from those teachers who did not understand our children's disabilities or called them stupid and dumb and lazy.
This movie was uplifting to us, just as the movie Rocky would be uplifting to a would be boxer. We walked out of the theater with a renewed strength to continue our daily fight to get our children the free and appropriate education they are entitled to.