A Wauwatosa high school teacher says she's upset that Gov. Walker is again referring to her, in his speeches.
Last year, Gov. Walker started highlighting the story of Megan Sampson, who was a top-rated first year high school English teacher in the Milwaukee public schools. She was laid off in 2010, due to budget problems and seniority rules. A year ago, Sampson wrote that she was hurt that her story was being used to "make her the poster child for Walker's political agenda." Sampson also noted she had been hired at Wauwatosa East where Walker's sons go to school. Recently Walker has again been referring to Sampson's Milwaukee layoff, for example in this speech last week at the Milwaukee Rotary Club.
"How could you possibly lay someone like her off?" he asked. "Well, under the old collective bargaining system, last hired, first fired. Anytime there were layoffs and these were layoffs long before I was elected as governor, that said if you were the last one in, you were the first one out. Seniority and tenure trumped over everything else. Our reforms changed that."
In an e-mail last week to Wisconsin Public Radio, Sampson wrote it upsets her that Walker continues to use her story "in a wielding way." She says Walker could have talked with her at Wauwatosa East parent-teacher conferences a few weeks ago, and finds his "disregard for her presence there, odd to say the least." Sampson says she still works with Milwaukee students through a program called Upward Bound. She says she sent Walker e-mails last year, saying she would appreciate him no longer using her situation in his political rhetoric.
