The following was received by Pratt on Texas on 6 January 2014. The sender will be kept confidential and to that end a few phrases have been removed from the original email.
Mr. Pratt,
I’m a teacher at a small school outside Lubbock. Today has been very busy getting ready for the new semester to begin but has also been rather surprising.
Our entire district was just called into the auditorium so that our superintendent could tell us how evil republicans are for education and how important it is that we teachers get out and vote. He listed Dan Patrick and Greg Abbott by name and highly advised us against voting for them. He went on to list their involvement in ending C-SCOPE as an offense, even though I see it as a badge of honor, and mentioned their interest in privatizing schools.
This was all followed by him heaping praise on Wendy Davis for her record on education, disregarding her record on abortion and other issues, and him urging us to vote.
I sure don’t want to stir anything up, but is this legal? Can he really use his pulpit to try and persuade us to vote one way or another? He even mentioned a couple times that he had to be careful in how he phrased things even though not much restraint was shown in my opinion. I was incredibly uncomfortable the entire time and outraged that no one else was given a chance to counter his uninformed opinions.
Thanks,
[name withheld]
Hey Pratt
This public education forced voting issue is widespread! These politically influenced superintendents often pay for substitutes for each teacher and schedule a voting time for them whenever a bond issue or candidate will directly benefit either teachers, administration or both! The well being of the community is relegated to a secondary position. This unfair influence must stop!!
Randy