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1) CTA Nearly Outspends Arnold in a
Single Day. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
has faced numerous union protests as he travels the state raising funds for
his three ballot initiatives: on redistricting, the budget and teacher
tenure. The Los Angeles Times reports that the governor managed to
raise $24 million in eight months of constant fundraising.
Last week, as the Times put it,
the California Teachers Association poured $21 million into the opposition's
campaign war chests "in a single afternoon of money transfers." The money is
believed to be the largest single-day campaign contribution in state
history. The contributions raised CTA's campaign-related expenditures to $45
million this year.
"You're looking at $60 per member, as
opposed to the governor, who is reaching out to one or two corporations that
can give him hundreds of thousands of dollars," said CTA President Barbara
Kerr.
Of course, Arnold can't merely garnish
paychecks for his money.
The latest Field Poll suggests that the
governor's three initiatives are already on life support, which will likely
force both sides into a Manichaean struggle over a fourth initiative, one
which the governor has yet to endorse.
The Field Poll shows Proposition 75, the
paycheck protection initiative, holding steady with a 55 percent to 32
percent lead. With his own measures apparently doomed, the governor may
endorse Prop 75 in an effort to salvage something. CTA and the other public
employee unions will doubtless throw more and more resources into the Prop
75 campaign as the election approaches.
It's somehow proper that this election
will end up being a battle royal over union political clout. The campaign
thus far has clearly not been about the issues raised in the initiatives,
but about which side will be able to impose its will on the other. I expect
Californians to turn off their TVs and radios in droves over the next two
months.
2) Organizing? Politics? How About
PR Instead? One of the inevitable consequences of
Labor Day is the bevy of self-pitying stories and political grandstanding
from union officers (see today's
Intercepts for the worst of it). In Pennsylvania and Michigan,
efforts are underway to make every day Labor Day.
The Pennsylvania State Education
Association (PSEA) affiliate in Centre County sponsored a joint workshop
with the Centre Daily Times, with more than a dozen teachers
attending. The newspaper's executive and city editors and education reporter
trained the PSEA members in how to write a column (in only 4 hours!) for
which they all received continuing education credit. The paper will publish
the columns on a weekly basis.
PSEA is also one of the unions backing a
new radio show in Cumberland County called "United for Progress." The hosts
say their show "will be a home for pro-labor, pro-middle class,
progressive-oriented discussion." They have the time slot you might expect
for such a show: 4-6 pm on Sundays during football season. The hosts say
they have a 12-week agreement with the unions for funding with "verbal
commitments for longer." Let's see if PSEA takes its own advice and keeps
sinking cash into a failed enterprise until it gets better.
Meanwhile over in Michigan, the
Detroit News is adding a Friday feature column called Labor Voices,
which state union officers, including Michigan Education Association
President Lu Battaglieri, will write on a rotating basis.
In the spirit of current public policy,
EIA believes all newspapers should be required to carry the column, or pay
for it, whether they want to or not. Those who don't want to read the column
could get a portion of their newspaper subscription returned to them,
provided they applied in writing between September 15 and November 15, and
attended an arbitration hearing to be held on a weekday morning in Lansing
in January.
3) Missing Union Funds a Maine
Trend? The Maine Education Association (MEA) has
fewer than 21,000 active members, but it appears to have more than its share
of a problem best associated with larger unions: missing funds.
The Bangor Daily News reported on
Saturday that a teacher was
under investigation for embezzling funds from the SAD 34 Education
Association, an MEA local in Belfast. Details were sketchy, but the local
police chief said "a significant amount of money" was involved and the theft
may have begun six years ago.
Travel back to the 2003-04 school year,
when MEA reported on its LM-2 form for the U.S. Department of Labor, "An
employee admitted to writing 145 checks to herself, each in the amount of
$250 or less, totaling $35,608.82. Full recovery has been received from the
insurance company."
Go back a little further to April 2002,
when MEA suspended former South Portland Teachers Association President
Rosemarie De Angelis amid accusations that "large figures" from the local
union were unaccounted for. The incident
reached comedic proportions when De Angelis and the wife of the state
attorney general were arrested for refusing to leave the MEA board hearing
on her suspension. The county DA dismissed the charges, calling it all "a
ridiculous drama." The resulting PR fiasco resulted in a
national NEA intervention.
4) Hidden Costs Missed in Per-Pupil
Spending. What is popularly known as per-pupil
spending does not take into account all funds spent on K-12 public
education. Left out of that calculation are monies expended on school
construction and debt service.
The reason for this is straightforward
enough. Per-pupil spending consists of current expenditures. The money used
for employee salaries and benefits, administration, supplies, textbooks,
maintenance, and the assorted and sundry costs of operating the public
school system is spent in the single year after it is appropriated.
Construction and debt service are spread out over many years, and may
consist of appropriation decisions made long ago, for needs far off into the
future.
Nevertheless, they are real and
substantial costs. In California, where below-the-national-average per-pupil
spending is the constant refrain of the public education establishment, this
spending can add as much as 20 percent to the total bill.
Two stories from opposite ends of the
state indicate that much more attention needs to be paid to these costs. In
the Los Angeles Times, California Trust for Public Schools Executive
Director Marc Litchman wonders why the
LA Unified School District spends twice as much as similar urban
districts to build a school. In Sacramento, the school board voted 5-1 to
overturn its practice of hiring the lowest responsible bidder for
construction contracts of $1 million or more. Now the contracts will go only
to unionized firms, or non-union firms that agree to pay union-scale wages
and benefits.
"It's wrong to waste money, but it is
far worse to throw scarce money away and have it 'coincidentally' go to your
campaign contributors," said Michael Day, a member of the committee charged
with oversight of construction bond money.
5) Taking Stock of Wal-Mart
Campaign. Another interesting tidbit from the most
recent U.S. Department of Labor LM-2 report of the Maine Education
Association is the list of its investment holdings and sales during the
2003-04 school year. MEA evidently sold off the full $25,000 worth of
Wal-Mart stock it had (though it held onto $24,422 worth of Target shares).
MEA purchased the shares during the 1999-2000 school year.
And before you ask, MEA is the only
union required to file an LM-2 that listed its holdings in such detail.
There is no easy way to tell how many other unions hold, or have held,
Wal-Mart stock.
6) New Book Takes On Big City
Education Politics. New York Daily News
reporter (and good friend) Joe Williams has penned what the Washington
Post is already calling a "blistering analysis of public school
politics." In a book titled
Cheating Our Kids: How Politics and Greed Ruin Education, Williams
draws on not only his experience monitoring the byzantine New York City
public school system, but on his time as the chief education reporter for
the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, where he witnessed the growth of the
nation's first school choice program.
And though school board trustees,
administrators and local politicians all get their hidden agendas exposed,
Williams pays particular attention to "the elephant in the room" – the
teachers' unions. He is an engaging writer and I highly recommend his book.
7) Quote of the Week #1.
"One of the problems with unions is that they don't know how
to represent satisfied workers. They sort of fan the flames of discontent."
– Hoyt Wheeler, business professor at the University of South Carolina.
(September 4 Augusta Chronicle)
Quote of the Week #2.
"We told the union that we'll give the list when we have one,
and that will be based on when we need it, not when GRESPA wants it. We are
not intentionally not asking for it. These are not our employees, and we
have no interest in whether or not they become GRESPA members." – Grand
Rapids, Michigan, school district official Fredericka Williams, commenting
on a request by the Grand Rapids Educational Support Personnel Association (GRESPA)
for the names of bus drivers hired by Dean Transportation, a private service
contracted by the district. About half of the drivers are former GRESPA
members, now represented by an independent union. (September 5 Grand
Rapids Press) |
