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1) NEA Front Group Airs Ads in Four
States. Communities for Quality Education (CQE),
the new political advocacy organization created by the National Education
Association, initiated its first national operation last week by
broadcasting television ads against the No Child Left Behind Act in four
battleground states.
The ads were aired in Florida, Nevada,
Arizona and Ohio. Pennsylvania is schedule to see CQE ads this week. The
Associated Press reported that CQE claims the ads aren’t meant to be
political. “That’s not what it’s about,” said CQE spokesman Damien Filer.
“It’s about taking something that’s broken and trying to fix it.”
CQE’s continuing efforts to bury its
union roots extend to the ads themselves. The organization’s press release
begins “Teachers across the United States are speaking out in a new
advertising campaign to call for reform of the Bush ‘No Child Left Behind’
law.” The ads feature six different teachers from the four states targeted
in the campaign. But while they are all identified in the ad as public
school teachers, CQE doesn’t mention that some of them hold other positions
equally relevant to their appearance in the ads.
Rosemary Rosas-Delich, a sixth-grade
teacher featured in the ad airing in Tucson, also happens to be a member of
the executive committee of the Sunnyside Education Association, an NEA local
affiliate.
Susan Thomas, featured in the Phoenix
ad, is identified simply as “public school teacher,” but in fact she divides
her working hours. Ms. Thomas spends half her time working exclusively as
president of the Chandler Education Association, another NEA local affiliate
in Arizona.
Sixth-grade teacher Nanci DiBianca is
featured in the Cleveland ad. She doubles as the president of the Cuyahoga
Heights Association of Teachers, an NEA local affiliate in Ohio, and was
recently named president-elect of the Northeast Ohio Education Association (NEOEA),
one of nine regional affiliates of the Ohio Education Association. NEOEA
oversees 34,000 teacher union members in 194 locals.
2) Miami Union Sells Headquarters
Building to Cut Debt. The United Teachers of Dade
(UTD) took a giant step in ridding itself of the legacy of former president
Pat Tornillo by selling its headquarters building to a Fort Lauderdale
development group for $22 million.
The building, which was completed in
2001, was Tornillo’s pride and joy but UTD’s financial albatross, as
declining membership made it difficult for the union to meet the monthly
$65,000 mortgage payments. UTD took in $2.5 million in member dues during
the final quarter of 2003.
According to the Miami Herald,
the union will lease space in the building from the new owners for at least
the next five years.
3) Get Ready for EIA’s Summer
Convention Coverage. For the seventh consecutive
year, EIA will bring you gavel-to-gavel coverage from the floor of the
National Education Association Representative Assembly in Washington, DC,
beginning with the first report on the evening of July 3. Four more daily
reports will follow, then a short break before gavel-to-gavel coverage of
the American Federation of Teachers Convention, also in Washington, DC,
begins on July 14.
Both events are likely to focus on the
November election, the No Child Left Behind Act, and the internal status of
the unions. EIA’s readers will automatically receive the news in their
e-mail inbox, but this year EIA will accommodate everyone else by posting
the daily reports, blog-style, on the EIA web page. A few technical details
still need to be worked out, but I’ll provide more information and the
direct link in the June 28 EIA Communiqué.
4) Union Balks at No Smoking Policy.
The Muscatine School District wants to join the
growing number of districts in Iowa that ban smoking on campus. The ban has
the support of district officials, and even students are gathering
signatures on a petition. But they are meeting unusual resistance from the
Muscatine Education Association.
“We don’t want them, in essence,
violating what we have a right to do,” union negotiator Phil Fitzgerald told
the Des Moines Register. The union claims any change to the current
smoking policy must be negotiated through collective bargaining.
5) New AFT Restrictions Cause Local
Budget Problems. In the aftermath of the Pat
Tornillo scandal in Miami, the AFT Executive Council issued new rules for
its local affiliates on the transmission of dues. For several years,
Tornillo was able to disguise his misappropriation of union funds by
delaying the transmission of national dues to AFT headquarters.
However, late transmission of dues is a
way of life for many AFT local affiliates, and the first one has become
ensnared in the new regulations. The Poway Federation of Teachers in
California found itself unable to cover $40,000 in back dues owed to AFT.
Now union officials expect to enact both a dues hike and budget cuts to
cover the debt. Poway president Don Raczka told the Pomerado Newspaper Group
the problem began with poor new member projections in 2000 and 2001.
“We probably should have put a buck or
two in then, to kind of make up the difference, but there was really no
consequence for slipping behind,” he said.
AFT’s financial disclosure report for
2002-03 showed 25 locals who were overdue transmitting dues, not including
the Washington Teachers Union and United Teachers of Dade, both under the
direct administration of AFT because of dues misappropriations by former
local officers.
6) Quote of the Week #1.
“We’re just working guys. We don’t know what goes on there.” – Jack Hackett,
a 25-year member of the Federation of Public and Private Employees in
Broward County, Florida, reacting to the organization’s corruption scandal
(see April 12, 2004 EIA Communiqué). The union’s president, Walter
Browne, was convicted last week on racketeering and fraud charges stemming
from his practice of accepting bribes from companies not to organize their
workers. (June 4 Miami Herald)
Quote of the
Week #2.
“If we as public school educators are providing what we claim to be, i.e.,
an education without rival, why would vouchers cause us such fear?” – New
Jersey Education Association member Scott Reed of Burlington, in a letter to
the editor of the union’s monthly organ. (June 2004 NJEA Reporter) |
