Parents in one rural Michigan school district are outraged at the local teachers union’s involvement in a case that transparently demonstrates union priorities lie with the members and not the students.

The Daily Caller Education Editor Eric Owens has the details:

Michigan’s largest teachers union will force arbitration in an effort to compel a rural school district to pay a $10,000 severance buyout to a former teacher convicted of molesting a teen boy.

The disgraced teacher, Neal Erickson, had been a math and computer-education teacher at Rose City Middle School before he was convicted of having sex with the victim on multiple occasions. The sexual encounters began when the unidentified student was an eighth-grade student.

The boy’s father, John Janczewski, called the Michigan Education Association’s efforts to collect $10,000 for the convicted pedophile “ludicrous,” according to EAGnews.org. Janczewski notes that any money disbursed ought to go to his son, who is “out there trying to make it in this world all messed up.”

The criminal case against Erickson began when a seven-year-old photograph of the then-14-year-old boy was sent anonymously to the school board and superintendent. Details about what exactly was in the image are scant, but police concluded that the boy had sent it to Erickson in 2006.

The male in the photo, who is later graduated and attended Western Michigan University, told police that he and the pedophile teacher had a homosexual relationship.

There were about 10 encounters. They involved oral sex. They occurred at the teacher’s house.

According to EAGnews, the sexual relationship lasted a few years.

Erickson pleaded guilty to a single count of criminal sexual conduct. He was sentenced in July to 15 to 30 years in prison.