Senate calls teachers union financially irresponsible, its members spent up to $600 of their own money on supplies.

…(cont) Sixty-one percent said basic supplies — pencils, folders, the stuff a classroom just needs to function. Better than a quarter said the funding shortfalls at their schools get passed down to them, personally, at the register. Some are picking up second jobs. Some are cutting into food and hygiene money to cover it. I wrote all that down too. Hang on — here. Second job. Food and hygiene items. Same survey, same two thousand people.

Now here's the part I keep circling, the reason the $600 is underlined instead of just written: the same week that survey came out, a Senate committee chairman went on the record calling that same union — the teachers, the ones I just told you about — financially irresponsible. Said the charter ought to be reconsidered. Cited "irresponsible financial activity." I had to read that one twice.

I don't know what irresponsible spending looks like from a Senate committee. I know what it looks like from where I sit. My car's had the same fan belt problem for two years now — I keep meaning to get to it — and every time I'm idling at the toll plaza I go through the glovebox looking for the E-ZPass and I find receipts instead. Gas. Registration. A twelve-dollar thing of wiper fluid I bought because it was raining and I only own the one raincoat and it wasn't doing the job anymore. That's not irresponsible. That's just what it costs to keep something running that somebody else isn't paying to keep running.

So when the committee says "financially irresponsible" about a union whose own members are the ones who told a pollster, on the record, that they're the ones covering the six hundred dollars — whose ledger are they reading from? Whose financial activity, exactly? The one where two thousand teachers self-report buying folders with money that was supposed to be theirs? Or is "irresponsible" just the word you reach for when the group you're talking about has, in their words, far-left associations, and you'd rather talk about that than the six hundred dollars?

Because I've got another page — different pen, a little older, from a Groundwork Collaborative write-up that ran in August — that said workers' wages accounted for 54.7% of the whole national income last quarter. Lowest share ever recorded. Ever. I underlined that one too. I don't know what to do with two underlines in the same notebook except ask whether they're describing the same economy — the one where the money's tight, and the one where the money went.

Anyway. I've got the toll plaza receipt, I've got the wiper fluid, I've got the fan belt I keep not fixing. That's my financial activity for the week, for what it's worth.

Oh — excuse me, before you go. One more thing. The charter review. Is that supposed to happen before or after somebody adds up what the members already spent?