Ad blitz targets school funding
Teachers' union buys TV spots
(Correction: Because of a reporting error, an article in yesterday's City & Region section about a television ad being run by the Massachusetts Teachers Association misstated the amount of money the group is spending on its advertising campaign. The correct figure is $1.3 million.)
The state's largest teachers' union is rolling out a television advertisement dramatizing the financial plight of Massachusetts schools, part of a six-month $1.3 million multimedia campaign, designed to influence the legislative budget debate.
The new television advertisement launched by the Massachusetts Teachers Association yesterday does not mention Governor Mitt Romney, who proposed a slight increase in school spending in the budget plan he unveiled in January, or any other politician. But the implicit message is that the Bay State is not spending enough on schools.
The union began running radio ads in January and plans to continue its media blitz until June, when the Legislature is expected to end the budget debate.
The advertisements were directed by Hollywood filmmaker Joel Schumacher, a product of New York public schools who waived his fee because he wants politicians to spend more on education. Schumacher directed two of the ''Batman" movies in the mid-1990s and ''The Phantom of the Opera," released last year.
''The real goal of the ads is for the citizens of the Commonwealth to really understand what is going on in the schools and what is at stake," said Anne Wass, vice president of the union. ''Many teachers are spending upwards of $400 or $500 to bring in supplies for students in their classes -- and I'm not talking luxuries and extras."
Both the television and radio advertisements feature vignettes of teachers and students hamstrung by a lack of supplies and overcrowded classrooms.
In the television spot, a science teacher poised to begin a lesson using microscopes is reminded by a voice over the intercom, ''There is only one microscope for every 10 students." The voice tells a different teacher, who has stopped at a student's desk: ''There is no time for individual instruction. Move on."
The advertisement concludes: ''Let our teachers teach. Give our schools the support they need."
Romney spokeswoman Shawn Feddeman defended the governor's school-spending record, noting that he has proposed a roughly $100 million increase for fiscal 2006, to a total of $3.8 billion.
The governor, however, has been arguing that more money will not solve the problems facing still-struggling schools and that what they really need is stronger leadership and increased state oversight.
Advocates for more spending argue that in inflation-adjusted dollars, the school spending proposed for fiscal 2006 is less than what the state spent in 2001, before the economic downturn and resulting state fiscal crisis.
The Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, a nonprofit organization that monitors taxes and government spending, said that is true but other areas of state government were hit much harder during the downturn. 