For most schools and students in Colorado, summer vacation has arrived. Yippee! Time for students to escape from the classroom!

But what about teachers who escape from the classroom during the school year on tax-funded union release time? I’m not talking personal leave days or vacation time, but the special privilege underwritten by taxpayers that allows unions to release teachers for various days to do union business — including most recently so teachers could lobby at the State Capitol.

Shouldn’t tax dollars be focused on the educational mission of public schools? At the least, shouldn’t there be more accountability for how this type of release time is used? If it’s being used for legitimate purposes, there should be no problem in creating and enforcing policies that do as much.

Anyway, rather than listen to me ramble, you really ought to check out the new posting by Education Action Group on their NEA Exposed blog, after they interviewed my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow about the issue of union release time in Colorado.

It’s a long and thorough piece that concludes with a call to action:

“In general, greater public awareness of the problem is required, and taxpaying citizens need to make their voices heard,” DeGrow said.

Amen, brother. Keep up the good work. We’ll do what we can to help you spread the word.

For the excellent write-up and the offer to help spread the word, we all say Thank You.