Now we get the Florida plan. The Florida Education Association, the 120,000-strong merged affiliate of both NEA and AFT, has determined that the problem is external. At its annual Delegate Assembly, union representatives passed an ambitious plan to challenge the state’s school funding system in court, defeat Gov. Jeb Bush and most Republicans in the legislature in 2002, and "educate" FEA members and Floridians about public education.

The first step is to sue the state, claiming that the current method of funding public education violates the state’s constitutional requirement to provide "a uniform, efficient, safe, secure, high quality system of free public schools." The second step is to clear out the state legislature. "We are absolutely committed to directing the full energies and resources of our organization to get new leadership in Tallahassee," said FEA President Maureen Dinnen. "Delegates, the 2002 election will determine the fate of Florida for the next quarter-century because it will determine the destiny of public education."

To accomplish that task, Dinnen explained, "we must educate our members that we cannot avoid politics." Calling for "more unity, more solidarity," Dinnen told the delegates, "We must think more like a real union."

FEA Chief of Staff Aaron Wallace followed Dinnen. He said the attacks on public education were "about destroying the very idea of community responsibility -- the greater good. It is about destroying the notion that society as a whole must share responsibility for the well-being of all its children and indeed all people in need." Wallace called it "the underlying theme of the new capitalists who are currently engaged in trying to sell off the people’s government under the veneer of free market economic competition."

FEA’s action plan includes: 1) hiring a PR firm to craft a "strategic message;" 2) establishing a polling center; 3) expanding the union’s communications staff; 4) spending up to $50,000 on voter education and registration; 5) expanding its base of PAC contributions; 6) developing a plan "to change the political attitude toward public education in this state;" 7) "censuring" Gov. Jeb Bush and the Florida Legislature; and 8) spending $25,000 on billboards at state borders.

Florida is an odd location for this sort of all-out war. For one thing, outside of Pennsylvania it’s the home of the only union-Edison Schools partnership in the country. Secondly, fewer than half the public education employees in the state belong to FEA. Billboards won’t change that.

+ Another AFT Local President Ousted. Members of the Chicago Teachers Union ousted incumbent President Thomas Reece in favor of challenger Deborah Lynch-Walsh, in a move widely described as a repudiation of Reece’s accommodationist policies. Lynch-Walsh’s slate of candidates for other union offices also won. Observers believe Lynch-Walsh is more likely to oppose the initiatives of Mayor Richard Daley and the Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas. Chicago is the second city to see the defeat of an incumbent AFT local president in as many months. The Cincinnati Federation of Teachers turned out Rick Beck in what was viewed as a backlash against the city’s performance pay plan.

+ Union Provides "School Voucher" to Mayoral Candidate. When former California Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa was term-limited out of office last year, he decided to run for mayor of Los Angeles. The campaign, which will end next Tuesday with a run-off between Villaraigosa and James K. Hahn, has been difficult and expensive. But Villaraigosa hasn’t had to stumble along supported only by his wife’s public school teacher salary. He picked up a part-time job as a consultant to the California Teachers Association. It must be part-time because Villaraigosa said that campaigning is "an 18-hour-a-day job, seven days a week." The Los Angeles Times discovered through the candidate’s financial disclosure forms that CTA is paying Villaraigosa somewhere between $10,000 and $100,000 for his services, whatever those may be.

When the Associated Press picked up the story, its headline read: "Consulting job with teachers union helps Villaraigosa pay bills." One of his bills is the Catholic school tuition for his two children. When asked about this in a recent debate, Villaraigosa replied, "I’m doing like every parent does. I’m going to put my kids in the best school I can. My kids were in a neighborhood public school until just this year. We’ve decided to put them in a Catholic school. We’ve done that because we want our kids to have the best education they can. If I can get that education in a public school, I’ll do it, but I won’t sacrifice my children any more than I could ask you to do the same."

No word on whether The Children’s Scholarship Fund will change its name to The Children Whose Parents Are Not Mayoral Candidates’ Scholarship Fund to avoid confusion with the CTA program.

+ NEAFT Partnership News. The proposed NEAFT Partnership agreement promises to be hotly debated when NEA holds its Representative Assembly in July, but there is no evidence of a concerted effort to defeat it when it comes up for a vote. Instead, there are a lot of little signs of continued unease with the unions’ direction towards ultimate merger with AFT, and at least one omen of what a merger could mean for the labor movement in general:

* I have been reading the California Teachers Association’s monthly newsletter for about nine years, and have never seen an article like the one in the May issue, which discusses the partnership proposal and actually admits that the union is split on the idea. The newsletter quotes CTA officials on both sides of the debate, including Mike Green, a member of CTA Board of Directors who said, "The vote in the RA two years ago was really clear on this. More than anything else, the people said no to merger."

* Delegates from the Iowa State Education Association will support a secret ballot vote on the partnership agreement, something which is not called for in the agreement itself. At last report, the agreement will be placed on the floor and will be subject to a voice vote.

* Delegates from the Virginia Education Association plan to oppose another effort by Education Minnesota to get their NEA debt forgiven. The Minnesota union picked up a $2.4 million dues liability when it merged with the state AFT affiliate in September 1998, before NEA has established binding guidelines for such a move.

* The merger of NEA and AFT-affiliated unions in Montana left former Montana Federation of Teachers President Jim McGarvey without a job. But it also left the merged MEA-MFT as the largest union in the state, and that clout lifted McGarvey into the presidency of the Montana AFL-CIO last week. For better or worse, merger ties the fate of teachers’ unions with that of the AFL-CIO. Which will become more like the other?

+ Third Seat Opens on NEA Executive Committee. The election of NEA Executive Committee member Eddie Davis to the vice presidency of the North Carolina Association of Educators means a third seat will be open on the Executive Committee this year -- two three-year term seats and the one year remaining on Davis’s seat. The seven current candidates have the option of declaring for Davis’s seat instead, though no one can run for both a full-term and a one-year term. Candidates have until June 22 to file.

+ Iowa Governor Signs Performance Pay Bill. Iowa became the first state to institute a statewide performance pay plan for public school teachers. In the end Gov. Tom Vilsack signed the bill over the objections of the Iowa State Education Association. While the bill happily ditches the seniority pay scale, it also contains all the elements that led to backtracking in Cincinnati this year -- uncertain funding, uncertain teacher participation, and an extended entrenchment period, which leaves plenty of time to slow it down or stop it before it gets rolling.

+ Detroit Goes Down Swinging. Not content to be outdone by San Francisco (see last week’s communiqué), Detroit fired back with revelations in the Detroit Free Press that 60 school district employees are being paid more than $100,000 annually -- a fifteen-fold increase in just four years -- even while enrollment declined by 7.3 percent over the same period. "And obviously, looking at [state test] scores, it’s far beyond what their talents would justify," said Michigan state Rep. LaMar Lemmons (D-Detroit).

+ Washington Union Plans Multi-Local Strike in Next Two Years. The Washington Education Association declared a vote of no confidence in Gov. Gary Locke and the legislature, then voted to hold a multi-local strike sometime in the next two years. There was speculation that the term "multi-local" was used because the union lacked support for a statewide strike. The union is involved in a dispute with the legislature over whether a recently-passed cost-of-living increase initiative applies to all public school employees or only those whose salaries are funded by the state.