Arnold Butler is running for the vacancy on the Inglewood School Board.  (the one that's open now because the previous board member is serving 5 years in prison)

Arnold Butler is being supported by the Inglewood Teachers Association in his bid.

Two years ago, Butler was demoted from his position as Assistant Superintendent.  He was given a position as science teacher at our school.  Instead of reporting to his new position, he took sick leave for the entire year.  He kept saying that he was coming "next week", or stuff like that, but he never showed up.  We had substitute teachers in there the entire year.  We couldn't even hire a teacher to replace him, because he was officially still in that position.  The kids were badly hurt - they didn't have a teacher in the classroom the whole year. I even taught his classes for an entire quarter - writing lessons plans, coaching the substitute through the lesson, assigning homework, writing tests, and grading work for three periods - in addition to the five periods of my own I was teaching.  It was terrible.

So at the celebration in honor of my birthday (ok, in honor of all the February and March bdays) a representative from the union came up to get volunteers for a phone bank to make calls in support of Arnold Butler, the union choice.  I felt like I had to do it - after much internal debate, I got up and said "isn't that the guy who didn't show up for his science teacher job for a whole year here?"  The union-friendly people talked me down and made all these excuses for him.  A number of other people nodded when I spoke and gave each other looks like, "so, Butler's one of those..."

I can understand if you think you got screwed by the district.  But you can't purposely hurt the kids because of your petty problems.  If you think that being a science teacher is so horrible, quit.  But don't get paid for it while you take fake sick leave the whole year (isn't that fraud?).  So, in being public about my feelings, I'm putting myself on the bad side of the district.  They already don't like me much as it is, because their goals (more money and less work) are not the same as mine and I've been open about that.  But now I'm really, really hurting if any dispute with administration or parents comes up and I need the union support.  Hopefully that won't happen in the last 3.5 months I'm going to be working here.

So I need your advice.  Do I go more public with this?  Do I put up a sign, or write a letter to the editor for the local papers?  This is voted on by the people of Inglewood.  How strong should I be about this?