Scott Walker Aide Wanted Union Foe Michelle Rhee to Counter Teacher Protests, Email Shows

Former DC schools chancellor Michelle Rhee.<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/nationalacademyofsciences/3771812233/sizes/z/in/photostream/">The National Academy of Sciences</a>/Flickr

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Days after Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker “dropped the bomb” on his state’s public employees last year by proposing to cut most of their collective bargaining rights, a top Walker aide suggested bringing controversial school reform advocate and union foe Michelle Rhee to Wisconsin to quell potential teacher protests, according to newly released internal emails.

On February 12, 2011, the day after Walker unveiled his anti-union budget “repair” bill known as Act 10, Walker’s communications director Chris Schrimpf told colleagues that he believed teachers would put up a formidable fight over Walker’s assault on unions. “It seems from the coverage overall that the teachers are going to be the greatest opposition to this, which makes sense since they are in every community and can talk about ‘the kids,'” Schrimpf wrote. “Communicating to them and correcting their message will be key.” Schrimpf suggested sending letters to teachers, superintendents, and school boards touting Walker’s bill.

In a subsequent email, Schrimpf takes his teacher outreach idea one step further by bringing up Rhee: “I wonder if we should talk to michelle rhee’s group, students first. If we could get her to come do something that would give us a lot.”

Here’s the exchange with Schrimpf’s emails, released as part of an open records request:

 

Schrimpf was right about the teacher outrage. Teachers in Madison staged “sick-outs” the week after Walker unveiled Act 10, shutting down the city’s schools for several days. Hundreds, if not thousands, of teachers joined the throngs of protesters marching in the streets around the state capitol to protest Walker’s anti-union bill. They held aloft signs reading “Your Children Are Our ‘Special Interests'” and “Care about educators like they care about your child.”

Michelle Rhee, who ran the Washington, DC, schools system from 2007 to 2010, never made a big public appearance in Wisconsin as envisioned by Schrimpf. But Rhee did defend some of Walker’s anti-union measures twice on television soon after he announced his plan. “The move to try to limit what [public-sector unions] bargain over is an incredibly important one,” she said on “Fox and Friends.”

Months later, Rhee appeared alongside Walker at a DC meeting of the American Federation for Children, a hard-line conservative education organization founded by Betsy DeVos, the wife of Amway heir Dick DeVos and a funder of numerous conservative causes.

Since leaving DC, Rhee has embraced and promoted a more conservative, anti-union education reform agenda. She pushed a bill in the Tennessee legislature that ended collective bargaining for teachers, stumped for Ohio’s SB 5 bill (later repealed via referendum) which restricted bargaining rights, and has worked as an unpaid adviser to Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a tea-party-favorite who “has never met a voucher or a charter school he doesn’t like,” as one education reporter put it.

Want to read all 97 pages of the newly released Walker administration emails? Here you go (and leave any interesting discoveries in the comments):

 

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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