Check out this video of Jeb Bush on Morning Joe. He couldn’t be happier with the policies of the USDE under Arne Duncan.
This from the former governor of Florida, who pushed vouchers until the court stopped him and who was a major proponent of corporate and un-regulated anti-union charters.
H/T SchoolsMatter
The school board and the union are sitting in a room, trying to settle some tough issues. On one side of the table are board members and their attorney. On the other side is the union negotiating team and their staff person. In the NEA, the staffer is called a Uniserv Director, or UD.
Now imagine that the teachers have been on strike for two weeks. The sticking point is how much should the teachers pay for their health insurance benefit. It’s a common issue. That’s why there’s a crisis in health care and a legislative battle going on in DC.
In this scene the board is complaining about costs to the district. So in the give and take of negotiation the UD points out that the board is spending beaucoup bucks on their attorney who is sitting at the bargaining table. There is no attorney on the union side.
In my own district, the board once used Seyforth Shaw, a pricey national union-busting law firm with seven floors of a downtown skyscraper. We often asked our board that same question.
But in Ottawa when the question was asked, the board filed an unfair labor practice complaint against Stacie Wilson, the OTHSEA UD. I’ve met Stacie. She’s as professional and capable a UD as you can find.
Last week the Ottawa board complained they couldn’t negotiate because they would get too tired.
This week they complain that it is an unfair labor practice for the union and their UD to ask about the financial decisions of the board.
This board is looking more and more like a bunch of clowns. Messed up. How long will the folks in Ottawa put up with this?
“Honored in February, sacked in October,” was the headline in the Washington Post.
There are only 39 National Board Certified teachers in the DC public schools. In February, Marie Fonrose, a counselor at Anacostia, was honored by Chancellor Rhee and AFT president Randi Weingarten at a reception for twenty DCPS teachers who had pursued the rigorous process of achieving NBC status.
Fonrose didn’t stay at Anacostia when it was was taken over by Friendship Public Charter Schools at the end of the 2008-09 school year. Friendship wanted to make its own decisions about teachers, so Fonrose was “excessed” into a pool of instructors assigned elsewhere by the school system’s human resources department.
Last week, Rhee fired her along with several hundred veteran and skilled teachers like Ms Fonrose.
OTHSEA members met Monday to mourn the suicide death of their superintendent, John Harrison.
Ottawa Township High School teachers met in solidarity late Monday afternoon, not to discuss their ongoing work walkout, but rather to mourn the death of a beloved colleague.
Grieving members from the Ottawa Education Association gathered at Trinity Lutheran Church on the city’s South Side to mourn the loss of high school Superintendent John Harrison, who was found dead in his Dayton Township home Sunday.
As one instructor said on her way inside the church, “We meet today not as a union on strike but as a teaching community (to support each other).”
Tears, hugs and memories of the man who walked their hallways with them each school day were shared by the heartbroken assembly stunned by the news.
Walking through the church parking lot under dark gray skies, science instructor Joe Jakupcak called Harrison “the only guy in the building everybody liked.” Like others in the group, Jakupcak insisted walking the picket line is separate from the Harrison tragedy.
Meanwhile school board president George Hupp continued to threaten the teachers with “dock days” and demanded they return to work by Wednesday.
Hupp said Sunday’s meeting failed to resolve the situation, and the strike – which began Wednesday, Sept. 30 – continued into today.
He also said if school reconvenes on or before Wednesday, Oct. 14, there will be no dock days for days missed as a result of the strike.
“We won’t dock them for the days they’re out of they’re back in school Wednesday,” Hupp said. “If they do return to the classroom Wednesday, the OTHS football team can play this weekend.”
Hupp said the teachers could return to the classroom while they and the board continue to negotiate a new contract.
No new negotiating meetings were set as of Monday.
“My comment is, ‘Who is running that school, the teachers or the community?'” Hupp said.
Things are gettng crazy in Ottawa.
A simple request for fairness by the teachers union in what teachers pay for health insurance has, by the actions of the board, disintegrated into a battle that has turned bizzare.
Last week the board of education refused to negotiate with the teachers, claiming that the meetings went on too long and they would get tired.
After the OTHSEA, which represents the teachers, filed an unfair labor practice complaint, the board agreed to meet yesterday, Sunday.
OTHSEA Prez Glenn Weatherford:
Weatherford said teacher’s negotiators focused their proposal Sunday on making changes in insurance that might meet the board’s interests while still addressing the teachers’ concerns.
But at 4 p.m., the board’s negotiating team left despite Hupp’s verbal agreement to meet from 2-6 p.m.
Weatherford said the board didn’t give them a counter-proposal. Instead, the board threatened to seek “dock days” if the union doesn’t accept the board’s most recent proposal before Wednesday.
Meanwhile, OTHS Superintendent John Harrison was found dead in his home on Sunday.
La Salle County Coroner Jody Bernard said the sheriff’s office was called Sunday afternoon to Harrison’s home in Dayton Township. Deputies found him dead. The coroner’s office, the sheriff’s office and state police crime scene technicians are investigating, but as of 7:37 p.m., foul play was not suspected and evidence indicated Harrison committed suicide.
You won’t see this draft on ESPN.
Pay-to-play with state retirement funds.
DC teachers union takes it to the streets and takes Rhee to court.
Debbie Meier recommends some reading.
From the Rag Blog: Nobel Prize is mandate to exit Afghanistan,
build a green-powered, nuke-free earth.
Polls persistently find that the country is skeptical about what should and can be accomplished in Afghanistan. They voted for Obama not least because they wanted a new post-9/11 vision of national security, and they will not again be so easily bullied by the blustering hawks’ doomsday scenarios. That gives our deliberating president both the time and the political space to get this long war’s second act right. Frank Rich
Wall tile. Family toilet. Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin.
I read Lives on the Boundary by Mike Rose two decades ago. It is a profound yet accessible book about teaching and learning.
It is part autobiographical, part philosophical and very practical. Practical, not in the sense of a silly make-and-take workshop you might find yourself in on a staff development day. But practical in the sense of how to think about your work and your students when you walk into your classroom Monday morning.
Why School? is Rose’s latest book. It is little more than 170 pages. You can read it in a couple of hours. You will think about it for days. Hopefully longer.
It addresses the big issues of schooling that are being debated today. The public and the private sphere. NCLB. Assessment and testing. Standards and accountability. No, no. Don’t yawn. Rose writes about these issues with sensitivity, along with telling the stories of real students and real teachers. He writes without ideological blinders. He calls for a real discussion of the purpose of schools in democratic life. He yearns for the discussion.
In this course, Why School? is required reading.
Requested. Rufus and Chaka Khan.
Fred Klonsky 