Nothing is sweeter in a debate than when your opponent makes outlandish statements and hands you an overwhelming rhetorical victory.
This just happened in the East Greenwich teachers’ union contract dispute when NEA union officials made public comments that showed how they live in a delusional world, completely disconnected from any form of reality.
Recent events began about one week ago when I wrote an email to town and school officials as well as to the media, raising concerns about how certain actions by teachers under “work-to-rule” or “contract compliance” working practices were adversely affecting our children. That email included a link to this posting, which highlighted the specific concerns.
There was an initial response to one of my challenges in a ProJo article that is referenced in this subsequent posting, where I also further clarified the questions that remain unanswered.
But nothing prepared me for an article this week in a local newspaper, The East Greenwich Pendulum. The article contained an interview with two union officials, Roger Ferland and Jane Argentieri, who provided specific comments on the issues raised in my initial posting noted above.
You simply have to read the article to believe it! For starters, though, first consider these eight quotes excerpted from the article:
1. “The teachers had to do [contract compliance] to show parents how much extra teachers really do.”
2. “[Work-to-rule] simply means we won’t do anything extra.”
3. [Tutoring (i.e., any form of academic assistance) before or after school] is not part of their job description.”
4. “Teachers have been doing more than what’s required for no money in the past.”
5. “…a majority of East Greenwich residents can afford to hire tutors for their children but have been receiving these services free from public school teachers for years.”
6. “More than 50% of East Greenwich residents have a very high income, $500,000 or over.”
7. “In the private sector no one works overtime without getting paid. And if they’re off the clock at 5 p.m., you can bet they’re out the door at 5.”
8. “…contract compliance is not hurting the children. Not going on a field trip isn’t hurting a child.”
Can you believe these comments? I am still shaking my head in amazement and I bet you are, too. But don’t take my word alone for it; you can read the entire article here.
If you ever wanted to understand why American public education is failing with no prospects for a viable turnaround, consider how our educational system provides union leaders – with the mindset shown above and large amounts of money from coerced dues – the ability to essentially dictate financial and management rights terms to local communities all across the country. And consider how parents and communities have few-to-no options of exiting this government-induced monopoly system wallowing in mediocrity.
American public education will never regain competitive excellence on a global scale until we rid our system of this union mentality with its self-serving focus and active resistance to excellence, performance metrics, and competitive choice.
Sadly, this rhetorical victory – while important – brings no lasting satisfaction, at least for now. There is no gusto in this victory right now because the battle directly involves our children and the price the teachers are forcing them to pay in this contract dispute.
But, once again, the value of this interview is that it smoked out the true beliefs of the teachers’ union and showed how little they know about the real world and how little they care about the well being of both our children and our town residents. May we never forget those lessons.
Union officials should be ashamed of themselves. East Greenwich residents should be furious.
I hope residents will rise up with a fierce response that tells off the NEA and demands compensation terms just like the rest of us, the working families and retirees of East Greenwich who pay their salaries and benefits.
Part of what makes a danger of modern approaches to addressing public policies that bear on “progress” is that we tend to view them on an individual basis, and when we do realize that they are tangential to each other, we hesitate to follow the implications but so deeply. (Sometimes the hesitance results from the complexity, sometimes from the sense that we’ll be proven wrong in what we want to believe.)
My latest column for TheFactIs.org dwells on the intersection of embryonic stem cell research, “right to die” trends, socialist healthcare schemes, and radical life extension. Ultimately, I don’t think any of these issues can be fully appreciated without consideration of the others. (And many others, but one can only do so much in fewer than 1,000 words.)
One of our local newspapers, The North East Independent, weighed in this week with these editorial comments on the East Greenwich teachers’ union contract dispute:
East Greenwich teachers union officials apparently won’t budge on a request for a tiered system for health care co-pays, reasoning that teachers on low steps will not be able to afford co-pays as easily as top-step teachers. We say that’s bunk.
The union has rejected an offer that included raises of 3.5, 3.6 and 3.7 percent and a sharing of the health care premiums of 6, 8 and 10 percent over the three years of the contract.
Asking a teacher – a first-step teacher with only a bachelor’s degree in East Greenwich earns $32,137 – to pay between 6 and 10 percent of his or her co-pay over the next three years is far from unreasonable. Private sector employees who earn far less often pay a higher percentage of their health care costs – as much as 40 to 50 percent. It’s time for educational professionals to ante up.
East Greenwich’s principals, perhaps fed up with waiting for the teachers contract to which their raises and benefits are tied, agreed to terms the teachers themselves rejected…
Union officials countered by saying the principals make more money so they can afford to contribute to health insurance premium co-pays.
The union wants to link co-pays to a percentage of an employee’s salary, but we all know that insurance rates are volatile and double-digit increases are not uncommon. That scenario is a losing proposition for the district…
We hope teachers realize that many in the state around them don’t enjoy the same benefits they have for all of these years. The committee’s offer is a fair one, and the teachers should follow the principals’ example and accept the terms.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
If anything, that previous School Committee offer was too generous, as I have noted elsewhere. [Remember, for example, that 3.5-3.7% increases equate to 9-13% total annual salary increases for 9 of the 10 job steps]
But the offer was quite effective in one very important way: It smoked out the true intentions of the teachers’ union and showed how greedy they are and how little they care about well being of our children and our town residents.
Let that be a lesson to all of us.
By the way, I have been told there are sixteen school districts in Rhode Island whose teachers’ union contracts expire this summer (Bristol/Warren, Central Falls, Cranston, Foster, Glocester, Jamestown, Johnston, Lincoln, Middletown, Newport, North Providence, North Smithfield, Pawtucket, Scituate, Smithfield, Tiverton) or fall (East Providence). You can bet they are watching what is happening in East Greenwich (and Warwick). This fight with the NEA teachers’ union in East Greenwich is a fight on behalf of people around the state. We have a moral obligation to lead firmly and strongly so we can make a meaningful difference here in Rhode Island.
We live in a global economy. Our children are going to be competing with the best students not from Central Falls or even Barrington when they grow up. Rather, they will be competing with students from countries like China, Taiwan, Singapore, India, etc. Not to mention students from the best prep schools in America as well as Massachusetts towns such as Wellesley, certain Long Island communities, Palo Alto in California, and other truly superb public education schools across the country.
To be uncomfortably blunt, some East Greenwich residents spend too much time congratulating ourselves on how good our school system is. I said it publicly while serving on the East Greenwich School Committee and I will say it again now: Being the best school system in Rhode Island doesn’t mean anything in a national and global context.
With the ability now to compare relative performance between school districts across the country on the new School Matters website, my comment is now an empirically valid one, not simply an opinion.
East Greenwich is a wonderful community full of many talented people. We have the people resources in our town to do unbelievable things in the future. Rather than polarizing and offending us, I would hope this empirical observation would make us even more willing to challenge the political mediocrity of the status quo. It also puts other battles into perspective. E.g., when we fight high taxes, it is a battle to keep successful people from leaving this state. It is also a battle to bring new, innovative businesses to this state with jobs and talented people. When we fight the power of the teachers’ union, it is about fighting for the freedom to build a great school system free of a costly system that currently only rewards mediocrity. All of these efforts are about ensuring we have an economy and a school system that empowers our working residents and children to compete successfully on a global scale.
With that global competition in mind, this story about charter schools is an example of why I supported Sue Cienki and Merrill Friedemann so strongly in last year’s East Greenwich School Committee elections. They are strong-minded, independent people who think outside the box and are not tied to the status quo like so many of the members of past School Committees. Kudos also to John McGurk on the EG Town Council for also supporting the exploration of similar ideas.
I haven’t agreed with Sue and Merrill on everything since they were elected and I am sure we will tangle publicly when we disagree on issues in the future. That is perfectly all right in our democratic society. But, regardless of whether we see eye-to-eye on every issue, I have confidence that they are intelligent people who are genuinely committed to seeking the best answers, not just the politically advantageous answers. We need more public servants who are willing to test new ideas.
In the end, this charter school concept may not be practical. It may not be the right way to go for any number of reasons. I personally think charter schools still suffer from too much government regulation which makes them a half-baked attempt at true school choice and vulnerable to manipulation by the public education bureaucracy and teachers’ unions.
But excellence never happens unless people are willing to think outside the box. And we all will be better off the more we challenge the status quo in our mediocre, monopolistic public education system.
This report is simply over-the-top and contributes to the ongoing destruction of civil society in America:
Hollywood once again jumps into bitter DC politics when an episode of NBC’s Law & Order: Criminal Intent suggests a judge killer would wear a ‘Tom DeLay’ T-Shirt!
The House Majority Leader plans a letter of protest later this afternoon…
TRANSCRIPT OF EPISODE ‘FALSE-HEARTED JUDGES’
In the season finale, Detectives Goren and Eames suspect an imprisoned white supremacist is behind the shootings of a judge’s family, but their investigation widens when an appellate judge is later murdered…
ADA RON CARVER (COURTNEY B. VANCE) : An african-american judge, an appellate court judge, no less.
MAN: Chief of DS is setting up a task force. People are talking about multiple assassination teams.
DET. ALEX EAMES (KATHRYN ERBE): Looks like the same shooters. CSU found the slug in a post, matched it to the one that killed Judge Barton. Maybe we should put out an APB for somebody in a Tom DeLay T-Shirt.
This is simply and utterly unacceptable, polarizing behavior. Another example of Hollywood’s total disconnection from reality and the Left’s willingness to stoop to any low level to trash those who don’t agree with its secular fundamentalist political agenda.
As a conservative who has publicly criticized Tom DeLay here and here, my loud exclaim is: Enough already! Our country is too great to deserve this kind of demeaning behavior.
Here’s what Hugh Hewitt says about our RINO senator, Lincoln Chafee, in today’s Daily Standard:
“Stephen Laffey, the mayor of Cranston, Rhode Island, is being urged to take on Senator Lincoln Chaffee in the 2006 primary so that GOP voters don’t have to vote for a Democrat in November 2006. (Chaffee voted against the war, against the president’s reelection, and now for the filibuster. Chaffee’s presence was necessary with a Senate closely divided, but with a healthy majority, he should be booted before seniority puts him in a position to do real damage. Even big tent Republicans like me believe every tent needs an inside and an outside, and Chaffee’s way outside.)”
A very well-known reporter whose poltics are conventionally liberal told me a couple of years ago that right after 9/11, he asked for Sen. Chafee’s reaction to the attack. Chafee wouldn’t answer him because he hadn’t yet determined what OTHERS would say. Needless to say this honorable liberal was offended.
The vote against Owen was the last straw. Chafee needs to go.
The debate over the fiscal and philosophical aspects of education policy often intertwine, but the current goings-on in Warwick have much more to do with money than education philosophy. The Warwick School Committee and Mayor Scott Avedesian are on opposite sides with regards to the education portion of the FY 2006 Warwick City budget. In short, the School Committee wants more money than the Mayor says is available. In a sort of “stealthy strike”, the school committee has raised the spectre of closing an elementary school to up the ante and get parents involved in the debate.
The School Committee told the City Council last night that it might have to shutter the Potowomut School, a threat that sent parents dashing to the microphone to defend the 76-year-old facility.
School board Chairman John F. Thompson, speaking at the council’s first budget hearing, said the closing Potowomut would save $500,000 — funds he called indispensable if the council approves Mayor Scott Avedisian’s recommended spending plan for the year that begins July 1.
“It’ll have a lot of negative impacts on education,” Thompson said of the mayor’s proposed budget. “Class sizes would increase dramatically; a school could be closed.”
Avedisian has proposed giving the School Department $142 million, $7.3 million less than the school board requested. . .
Avedisian contended that the school board hatched the Potowomut closure plan to galvanize parents of the elementary school’s 200 students. The issue came up at a School Committee meeting Tuesday night, but school officials never emphasized it in earlier budget presentations.
“I think it’s ironic that 10 days ago it wasn’t on the radar,” Avedisian said. The only similar proposal school officials have recently discussed, he asserted, concerned closing the John Wickes Elementary School if T.F. Green Airport ever expanded.
The School Department, in public comments and letters, had beseeched parents to attend last night’s hearing devoted to the education budget. And the proposal to close Potowomut filled the bleachers and balcony in the council chambers, with more than 100 people.
So, apparently, the tactic worked and many parents attended the meeting to save their school. This would seem to have been a disengenuous and cynical ploy by the embattled school committee. It almost seems as if, feeling the heat of teacher contract negotiations, they want to transfer some of the load over to the city politicians. For his part, Avedesian has made a counter-proposal (pdf source1, pgs. 4-6) to the School Committee that includes outlining places to cut and other methods for them to obtain cost savings. Setting those micro-issues aside, it is worth noting a few of the important larger numbers in his budget regarding education.
While the $142 million proposed by Avedesian is indeed “$7.3 million less than the school board requested” it is also approximately a 2.33% increase over last year (see pdf source1, pg. 12) and overall the schools will comprise 54.9% of the city budget (pg. 18 of same report). This is actually a decrease by percentage (down from 56.5% – pdf source2, pg. 17) of the share that education has in the overall budget, but is still an increase in funding. (Also, as an aside, last year 66% [pdf source2, pg. 12] of all city revenue was generated by property taxes while this year it will be 65.5% (pdf source1, pg. 13). As previously stated, Avedesian explained why he couldn’t support the increase proposed by the school committee and suggested ways that they could cut their budget, but instead they took the fight to the city council.
Part of the problem is that the School Committee is putting estimated figures reflective of a 3.5% pay increase and retroactive pay and benefits for the teachers with whom the committee is engaged in a well-documented battle. Realizing this, many parents also turned their vitriol on the teachers.
The proposal to close Potowomut — and likely disperse its students to the Cedar Hill and Harold J. Scott Elementary Schools — also sparked criticism of the Warwick Teachers Union, which has been locked in a contract dispute with the school board for nearly two years.
Several parents called for giving the teachers lower raises and requiring them to contribute to the cost of their health coverage. The $2 million in this year’s budget earmarked for teacher raises, speakers said, should be spent on equipment and books instead, as should $2.4 million that the school board allocated for prospective raises in its budget request for next year.
“Teacher salaries are out of line. Something needs to be done,” said Bruce Gempp, to sustained applause. “Buy some buses, buy some books.”
Well, that sounds nice, but that’s $4.4 million that the Mayor says can’t be found in the first place! In short, the entire teacher contract simply needs to be renegotiated so that more money goes to resources used by the students, not to the teachers. The 3.5% raises are frankly unnecessary when the job steps are taken into account, anyway. In fact, I would even be willing to propose a guaranteed COLA + 1% raise in exchange for getting rid of the hidden salary increases present in the step structure. However, to stay out of the weeds, the fundamental issue at the heart of this battle is that the school committee and the teacher’s union need to hammer out a common-sense contract. Fighting over the city budget is a red herring.
One possibly beneficial outcome could be that the mayor becomes more involved in the negotiation process. As chief excecutive of the city, I would say that it definitely falls under his purview. At this point, two years and running, it is obvious that someone needs to take a leadership role and serve as a diplomat between the school committee and teacher’s union. Who better than the mayor? Isn’t this exactly the situation in which he can best serve the city and its future?
A previous posting reported the upcoming leadership change – and why – at the Textron Chamber of Commerce Academy, a charter school. Here is a related letter to the editor:
…Rick Landau has announced that he will step down as chief executive officer of Textron Chamber of Commerce Academy, in Providence. All because the teachers’-union leaders are furious at him for trying to protect the school’s role as an engine of innovation…
Textron, and other schools like it, work best for inner-city youth. They give students special attention. They raise test scores, and the confidence of students. These kids can then go out and get good jobs, because they had a caring teacher who told them that they could do whatever they wanted to do. My friend went to Textron, and now she works at a well-known law firm. She is a girl from the projects who benefited from these teachers.
So I agree that we should work, through changing the law or contract negotiations, to do away with “bumping” and let educational leaders give precedence to the best, most dedicated teachers.
The right recommendation, for sure.
What can inspire pride more than hearing that “a girl from the projects” now has an opportunity to live the American Dream?
Now contemplate how many children from the projects will not have a similar opportunity to live the American Dream – all because the teachers’ union insists that teacher seniority is more important than teacher merit.
Doesn’t that make you sad? Angry?
It is our moral duty as Americans to ensure every child has a similar opportunity to live the American Dream. To be successful, we must rid our society of the ills which stand in the way of fulfilling that obligation.
It is a duty we must never shirk.
Let’s be careful before we say yes too quickly to this request:
[Open full post]The FBI on Tuesday asked the U.S. Congress for sweeping new powers to seize business or private records, ranging from medical information to book purchases, to investigate terrorism without first securing approval from a judge.
Valerie Caproni, FBI general counsel, told the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee her agency needed the power to issue what are known as administrative subpoenas to get information quickly about terrorist plots and the activities of foreign agents.
Civil liberties groups have complained the subpoenas, which would cover medical, tax, gun-purchase, book purchase, travel and other records and could be kept secret, would give the FBI too much power and could infringe on privacy and free speech…
The [USA Patriot] act was passed shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. However administrative subpoena power was not in the original law. The proposed new powers, long sought by the FBI, have been added by Republican lawmakers, acting on the wishes of the Bush administration, to the new draft of the USA Patriot Act.
Committee chairman, Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts, noted that other government agencies already had subpoena power to investigate matters such as child pornography, drug investigations and medical malpractice. He said it made little sense to deny those same powers to the FBI to investigate terrorism or keep track of foreign intelligence agents.
But opponents said other investigations usually culminated in a public trial, whereas terrorism probes would likely remain secret and suspects could be arrested or deported or handed over to other countries without any public action…
Republican Senator Mitch McConnell gave this speech on the Senate floor prior to the capitulation by the 7 Republican senators. It offers a history lesson and is complementary to this posting by Mac Owens.
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