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Education Action Group rants against school employees

'MEA members should be concerned about EAG.'

Education Action Group claims to be a “group of citizens and school board leaders” advocating for public education, but a closer look reveals an anti-school employee agenda.

Since EAG went public in 2007, MEA members in many communities have heard of this outfit through its public outreach efforts and attempts to meddle with local bargaining.

Its tactics include sending anti-union mail to residents, attending local school board meetings and using the news media to further its negative agenda.

EAG’s Web site, which features a “Thug Watch” blasting MEA members, leaders and staff, states that EAG wants to help schools by promoting competitive bidding for health care and non-instructional services, a practice known as privatization.

Close encounter

Bill Milligan, a faculty member at Bay de Noc Community College in the Upper Peninsula, knows first-hand about EAG’s methods.

Milligan had a close encounter with the group last fall after he wrote an e-mail to EAG, criticizing an opinion column published in The Detroit News by EAG’s only apparent staff member, Kyle Olson. Olson contacted Milligan’s boss, the college’s president, to complain. The president supported Milligan’s right to exercise free speech.

“They constantly rant whenever teachers exercise basic, everyday freedoms that most Americans take for granted: the right to assemble and exercise free speech, and the right to bargain and have a voice in their work environment,” Milligan said.

“Furthermore, they criticize these rights behind a veil of secret funding and a false front. MEA members should be concerned about EAG.”

Behind the false front

It may be helpful for MEA members to know about EAG, in case it tries to interfere with local bargaining matters. Here’s some of what is known about EAG, as of March 1:

• EAG isn’t really a group. It’s two very partisan men with ties to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and Dick DeVos of Amway Corp. fame. Olson’s brother is director of education policy at the Mackinac Center, another anti-union, pro-privatization group. The man who incorporated EAG, Eric Doster, is a Michigan Republican Party lawyer who has served on the board of the Great Lakes Education Project, a political action committee linked to DeVos. DeVos, of course, helped finance the failed 2000 vouchers initiative.

• EAG bashes the collective bargaining process and school employees’ rights to inform the community and to work to elect leaders who value students and the employees who teach and help them at school.

• Olson claims to be nonpartisan, but he is a partisan Republican Party activist and an officer in the state party.

• Olson refuses to disclose his group’s funding sources, making it difficult to discern whose agenda EAG is pushing.

If EAG surfaces in your district, please inform your local MEA UniServ director. You also may want to share what you know about EAG with your school board members and administrators, so they can consider EAG’s motives.

Updated: May 21, 2012 10:04 AM