Teachers Call Romney's Education Plan 'Backwards' [VIDEO]

Within minutes after a dozen active and retired public school teachers got off their school bus at the Obama for America-NH office on Brewery Lane, they lit into Mitt Romney's record of cutting teachers and funding.

"He wants to return to the same failed policies of the past," said Scott McGilvery, president of the New Hampshire Education Association. "Romney has it backwards. It didn't work then, it won't work now."

Zach Galvin, an assistant principal at Natick High School, said he was a high school teacher there when Romney was Governor from 2002 to 2006.  He said Romney cut $2.5 million from the special education budget, which lessened the number of special ed teachers and increased class sizes for those students.

He quoted from Romney's book, "No Apology," and said that Romney wrote that cutting class sizes hurts children's ability to learn. He also said Romney vetoed a bill to create universal pre-kindergarten in Massachusetts.

For these reasons and more, Galvin and other public school educators said they support President Barack Obama's re-election bid in November.

Rhetta Sabean, a science teacher at Alvirne High School in Hudson, said Romney's belief that larger classroom sizes do not adversely affect children s way off base. "It makes sense the smaller the classroom, the more time teachers can spend with students," she said. "That concerns me, definitely."

Kerry Costello, who has taught special education at Andover High School in Massachusetts for 40 years and serves as the school psychologist today, could not say if Romney has a lack of understanding about education or just cares more about creating tax cuts to benefit the wealthy.

What she knows for sure is that during his entire time as Governor, Romney never met with the Massachusetts Teachers Association or the education leadership to gain a better understanding of how the education cuts affected Masachusetts schoolchildren.

Portsmouth was one of several stops the school bus full of teachers made on Wednesday to deliver their message. Before coming to the city, they started out at the New Hampshire State House in Concord and made stops in Laconia and Rochester. They were scheduled to make a final stop in Manchester following their Portmouth visit.

What follows is a video from the Portsmouth stop.