By Jenna Portnoy/The Star-Ledger
BRANCHBURG — Gov. Chris Christie today continued his divide and conquer approach with public school teachers and their union.
At Raritan Valley Community College, he took a question from a woman who identified herself as a teacher and Rutgers University graduate frustrated by the bad rap he’s given her profession.
“When did the rhetoric change that teachers are part of problem and not the solution?” she said, standing near the tippy top of bleachers in a gym decorated with flags and all the usual trappings of Christie’s trademark town hall meetings. “You’re in a building built with taxes.”
As people streamed into the event an hour earlier, the college’s Faculty Federation handed out a letter urging Christie to restore public funding to community colleges and chastising him for weakening tenure.
“We must remind you that institutions of public education, supported and enriched by strong public unions, do not harm the public but in fact represent an invaluable public good,” the letter says.
[…]“I don’t think teachers are the problem. I think unions are the problem,” he said, launching into a diatribe about “shared responsibility.”
“We need to make sure everyone shares somewhat fairly in the costs associated with those types of benefits, which in the main are not offered anymore in the private sector,” he said.
Then he gave the teacher a turn with the microphone. “The teachers are the unions. We are the same people,” she said, explaining that part-timers at the college, like herself, are not eligible for pension and benefits.
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