A middle-school teacher made her students join her in protesting budget cuts (video here). Unfortunately for her, it looks like her protest did nothing but prove that perhaps our teachers are, in fact, overpaid and underqualified.
Worth...every...penny.
__________________
"I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776
You've seen part of the video (here), now watch the whole thing (via Big Government) as union astroturfers from the SEIU, AFSCME and members from the teacher's union in Illinois clamor for tax increases:
Apparently, American History is not in their teaching curriculum.
__________________ "I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776
Across the country, teachers, those who are responsible for educating children and young adults basic skills in reading, writing and arithmetic (and a whole lot more) are acting out.
One of the basic tenets in business or of common sense (which, unfortunately, they don't teach in school) is that you cannot eat more than you produce. However, teachers and, more importantly, their unions seem to be failing at grasping that basic concept.
Sometimes organizations don’t realize how good they have it until public support for their positions erodes, the good will vanishes and the bottom suddenly falls out.
Well, the bottom has fallen out in many cases. States and municipalities are on the brink of bankruptcy, many taxpayers are out of work and they still have mortgages to pay and the property taxes that fund the salaries that public-sector workers receive still come due. Therein lies the rub.
As Americans have cut largely cut back on their own personal expenditures by putting less on their credit cards, eating out less frequently and clipping more coupons, it is only reasonable that the public-sector workers who are fed from the trough filled by income and property taxes tighten their belts as well.
But unions like AFSCME, the SEIU, NEA and AFT are fighting tooth and nail (and actually spending their members' money) to raise taxes to keep the public till well fed. And, when cuts are made (or even proposed), they take to the streets in protest, causing more costs to be borne by the taxpayers.
This week alone, teachers in Pennsylvania and in California have gone on strike in protest of budgetary cuts cuts. In the Pennsylvania strike, despite the recession, the dispute is not over cutting salaries but how much the teachers' raises should be:
The union proposed no salary increase in the first year and raises of between 2.50 and 2.85 percent in each of the next four years.
[snip]
...the school district proposed a zero percent increase in the first year and a 2 percent salary increase in each of the next four years.
School Board President Vince Sherpinsky argued that the district must pay additional millions to finance salary increases, due to changes in seniority.
When those figures are considered, the district's last offer amounts to an 18.81 percent cumulative pay raise; the union's proposal is 22.74 percent, Sherpinsky said.
The union offered to reduce its proposal by $1.25 million to address the seniority issue, but that, too, was rejected by the school board.
To add insult to injury, as the teachers' union bickers with the school district over how much of the taxpayers' money to spend, while the teachers are striking, many single parents (or those households where both parents work) have to make other child care arrangement or miss work entirely. This takes an even bigger chunk out of their already-strained budgets.
For the first time since 1976, New Jersey voters rejected a majority of proposed school budgets. Only 41.3 percent of the 538 proposed budgets received voter approval in yesterday’s Annual School Election, according to unofficial results released this morning by the New Jersey School Boards Association. That figure compares with a 73.3 percent approval rate last year.
According to the New Jersey Department of Education, nearly 26.7 percent of eligible voters participated in Tuesday's election, a significant increase from last year's 15-percent voter turnout.
“This has been a year unlike any we’ve seen before,” said Marie S. Bilik, NJSBA executive director. “Local boards of education did their best with the hand they were dealt. The election results should not be viewed as a rejection of public education or school programs. It's clear that voters were reacting to many concerns, including the poor economy and high property taxes."
In Chicago, however, public-sector workers rallied with their unions on Wednesday and, as noted on Big Government.com (from which the title of this post came), "a phalanx of public sector employees, including SEIU, Illinois Education Association, Illinois Federation of Teachers, AFSCME, and AFL-CIO, rallied in support of the tax hike in the capital, Springfield." [Emphasis added.]
As the attitude of many public-sector unions is greatly (and grossly) personified by this teacher, it has become a national problem. Unless and until more Americans realize the basic principle that you cannot eat more than you produce, taxpayers will continue to be the meal by which public-sector unions will continue to feast.
If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor.
Now, back to work you serf!...There's a government worker out there who needs a new car.
__________________ “I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776
"Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted."Vladimir Lenin
The California Teachers Association has a glowing article about how a Los Angeles high school teacher indoctrinates teaches his students about the "benefits" of unions.
The question, posed by social studies teacher Dean Wood to his 12th-graders at Drew Medical Magnet High School in Los Angeles, draws mostly blank stares.
"It's a place where they treat workers bad. It's a place where people are overworked," one student ventures.
If this urban classroom is any indication, there is a great deal of work to be done when it comes to educating tomorrow's workforce — and the general public — about the importance of the labor movement and what it means to be part of a union. But Wood is up for the challenge.
He calls on another student, who informs her classmates that unions protect the rights of workers. Her teacher beams his approval before talking about union benefits, contracts, negotiations, mediation and arbitration — and last but not least, strikes. Everyone, it seems, knows what a strike is.
[snip]
"Do you know anybody in a union?" Wood asks. Most students shake their heads no and only a few raise their hands.
"Lots of people you know are in unions," says Wood. "I'm in the California Teachers Association and also a member of United Teachers Los Angeles. When you leave here, I want you to interview a family member or friend who belongs to an organized labor union. I want you to find out what union they belong to, what the union does for them, and why they joined a union."
After interviewing a union member, students must research the union their interviewee belongs to and write a paper that explains that union's history, goals and tactics.
"Find out how this union benefits the workers it represents," says Wood. "How does it get information to workers? What techniques does it use to gain leverage on behalf of the workers it represents? Have these techniques proven to be effective?"
Wood admits that he goes above and beyond the state standards when it comes to teaching his students about unionism. But he feels it's too relevant to just gloss over.
[snip]
"When I teach about unions, I'm honest and keep my own personal bias out of it," says Wood. "But when they ask questions, I explain about the good things my union does for me."
If you took a test and got 52% of the questions right, would you expect to get a passing grade?
If you only got your job done half of the time. would you still have a job?
If your boss then called you into her office and said you either need to improve or find a new line of work, would you feel entitled to ask for a raise?
If you answered "NO" to each of the above questions, you are probably like most Americans who don't believe that failure should be perpetuated, let alone rewarded.
Unfortunately, in Rhode Island, the teachers and their union at Central Falls High School don't agree. As a result, they are being fired.
Rhode Island Education Commissioner Deborah Gist has approved a school district's plan to fire all its teachers.
All 88 teachers at Central Falls High School are expected to receive their pink slips on Tuesday, reports CBS affiliate WPRI in Providence.
Central Falls, Rhode Island has long been among the state's most troubled school districts - 90 percent of the students live in poverty, reports CBS News correspondent Jim Axelrod. Many struggle with English in this immigrant community - and that's just for starters.
"We lose 52 percent of our students between 9th grade and the 12th grade," Gallo told Axelrod. "They don't graduate."
Central Falls Superintendent Fran Gallo has proposed laying off all teachers at the school as part of a "turnaround" model for the school. That high school and five other schools in Providence have been identified by the state as chronically low-performing and must make major changes to avoid being closed.
The turnaround model requires a new principal and governance structure and allows no more than half the teachers to be rehired.
The teachers' union says it wants more pay for the additional work, WPRI reports. Teachers, along with their supporters, held a rally on Tuesday to protest the decision.
The U.S. Secretary of Education is applauding the vote to fire all the teachers at the high school in Central Falls because it is one of the worst performing schools in the state.
"This is hard work and these are tough decisions, but students only have one chance for an education," Duncan said in Wednesday's edition of The Providence Journal, "and when schools continue to struggle we have a collective obligation to take action."
While there are probaby more factors than just bad teachers affecting the students' poor performance, for an uncooperative teachers' union to demand more pay with such an abysmal record is wholly unrealistic. The teachers and their union have failed.
---------------------------------- “I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776
America has become used to Democrat politicians pandering to "buy" union support, but more often than not, the term buying support is a loosely fitting phrase to mean pledging allegiance to a union or promising their souls to the demi-gods of Big Labor. Typically, the expected favors curried in exhange for union support include promises of putting more money into union treasuries public employees' salaries through hiring more union members public workers.
That seems to be the way of influence-peddling politicians and the special interest that union bosses have become. It is, therefore, somewhat surprising to read that, in at least one part of the country, politicians are actually buying favor with a union...literally...as in money, greenbacks, dinero!
According to the Washington Post, the teachers' union in Montgomery County, MD has taken political influence peddling to a whole new level: Politicians are actually paying forbuying donating to the teachers' union with money to curry its favor.
MOST CANDIDATES for local office in Montgomery County covet the endorsement of the county teachers union more than any other, and all of them know the drill: Appear at union events, fill out the union questionnaire, submit to the union interview. The union, representing 11,000 teachers, helpfully provides a road map to candidates seeking its blessing, including 11 criteria spelled out in painstaking detail online. Just one thing is missing from this handy guide: Candidates who receive the union's stamp of approval are also then expected to pay.
As far as we know, this arrangement is unique; in elections elsewhere, unions and other special interests contribute to candidates, not vice versa. But such is the overweening power of the teachers union in Montgomery that the usual rules are turned upside down. And it's no coincidence that the union's toxic influence in local elections is matched by its success in squeezing unaffordable concessions from the county in contract negotiations -- at taxpayers' expense.
In the latest elections for the Montgomery County Council, in 2006, most candidates on the union-approved (and trademarked) "Apple Ballot" coughed up the maximum contribution allowed by state law, $6,000, to a PAC run by the Montgomery County Education Association, as the teachers union is known. Union-backed candidates for the Board of Education also paid handsomely. Supposedly, these funds covered the cost of the union's mailings to constituents and other activities on behalf of its anointed candidates -- although there is no real accounting on a campaign-by-campaign basis. In theory, these contributions are voluntary. In fact, several sources told us that the MCEA's chief political strategist, Jon Gerson, made it clear that he expected candidates, once endorsed, to pay what they "owed" for the union's campaign on their behalf. One candidate, asked to explain the decision to pay, answered concisely: "Fear." [Emphasis added.]
But what happens if one of the union-backed BoE members bucks the union?
A case in point is Nancy Floreen, the current County Council president, who suggested, during a budget crunch in 2003, that the union make some concessions on compensation. That probably cost her the MCEA endorsement in the 2006 primaries, in which she barely managed to retain her council seat. This year, facing reelection and even more dire budgetary circumstances, Ms. Floreen has been quiet as a mouse on the subject of union concessions, even though negotiations on a new contract for teachers are underway.
[snip]
Some MCEA-backed candidates, and the union, portray this as a win-win arrangement whereby teachers and the candidates who support them help one another out.
[snip]
Most elected officials, too fearful of the union to object, rubber-stamp the teachers' contract and the county budget, thereby repaying the union for its backing. Other big public employees unions in the county, jealous at the terms extracted by the MCEA, use the teachers' contract as a benchmark for their own negotiations, creating a self-perpetuating spiral of unaffordable concessions by the county. Little wonder that the county is facing staggering deficits -- $600 million on a budget of $4.3 billion in the fiscal year starting this summer. [Emphasis added.]
With politicians buying union support, it certainly is a "win-win" arrangement for the politicians and the union, but an arrangement where taxpayers are big losers.
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"I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes." Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776
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