Illinois Valley Times

“Drop Dead” was how school Superintendent Mike Matteson (Rutland CCSD 230, Wallace CCSD 195) responded to an e-mail from the Heartland Institute telling the districts to stop deducting union dues from the paychecks of non-union school employees or face legal action. 

In July, Heartland sent all Illinois school districts a copy of a letter from the National Right to Work Foundation (RTW)  that cited the U.S Supreme Court’s June ruling in Janus v. AFSCME. The court ruled that collecting dues from non-union employees was illegal since it violated workers' First Amendment rights.  

Matteson did not respond to a request from Illinois Valley Times asking him to elaborate on his “Drop Dead. Thanks, Mike” response to Lennie Jarratt, project manager for School Reform at Heartland.

Lennie Jarratt

The RTW letter that Jarratt sent to the state’s districts told them to stop collecting the dues “immediately” or face legal action from their staff attorneys “seeking class-wide injunctive relief, damages and attorneys’ fees for any nonmember employees of your district who request their assistance.”

Jarratt said that Matteson’s response “stuck out” as most responses to the letter were “cordial.”

Both the school district and the public sector unions are responsible for explaining the rights of employees under Janus, Jeffrey Schwab, senior attorney at the Liberty Justice Center (LJC), said for an earlier story on the ruling. Employees should also be presented with an opt-in choice for paying union dues.

In a recent commentary on Janus, William J. Bennett, former U.S. secretary of Education under President Ronald Reagan and now chairman of Conservative Leaders for Education, affirmed that “the outcomes of the case are not self-executing.”

“The outcomes depend upon how state and local policymakers and teachers react,” Bennett wrote in an August 7 commentary published by Fox News. “Unfortunately, some of the first state reactions harken back to days when states purposely resisted the realization of individual rights after the Supreme Court had identified violations of those rights.”

“Take Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh, for example, who recently told all affected employees that (the) Janus decision essentially does not mean anything,” Bennett wrote.

In his Heartland blog, Jarratt wrote that Matteson’s earnings for 2017 were $64,403 for his Wallace position and $63,956 in Rutland for a total of $128,359, according to OpenTheBooks.com.

The Illinois Report Card shows only 45 percent of the 59 students enrolled in Rutland were proficient on PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) testing for 2017. This is down from 53 percent in 2016. Wallace didn’t fare any better with a PARCC proficiency of 46 percent for 320 students in 2017, down from 47 percent in 2016.

“Superintendent Matteson should spend more time worrying about the students who are failing under his leadership instead of telling people who try to inform him of his responsibilities to ‘drop dead,’” Jarratt wrote.