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1) NEA Sends $5.2 Million "Behind the Wall."
The National Education Association may find its 2008 election campaign
effort stalled due to an inability to choose a Democratic candidate, but
that doesn't mean union activists are twiddling their thumbs. There are, by
NEA's count, more than 40 ballot initiatives in 18 states that demand
attention, and the union is allocating considerable cash to address them.
Election and union operations laws require NEA to
segregate its PAC activities from its political issues activities from its
collective bargaining and member representation activities. NEA's method of
abiding by the law consists of assigning staff and appropriating funds to be
used exclusively "behind the wall," to ensure there is no mixing of funds
and no coordinating of activities between the union, candidates and
campaigns.
This month, the NEA board of directors dropped nearly
$4.7 million "behind the wall" to fund the national organization's public
communications regarding various state ballot initiatives. An additional
$500,000 was allocated for general operations of the "behind the wall"
effort. All of this money was disbursed from NEA's Ballot
Measure/Legislative Crises Fund, to which each NEA member contributes $10
each year.
NEA will also send $600,000 to an ongoing project,
which I term a "behind four walls, a drawbridge, and a moat of press
indifference" effort –
Communities for Quality Education. Formed in 2004 as "America
Learns," CQE is wholly owned and run by NEA, though no mention of the
union exists in its press statements or on its web site. Fresh from its role
as NEA sock puppet during the Utah voucher campaign last November, the $600K
grant should help CQE misdirect education and political reporters for the
rest of the 2008 campaign.
2) NEA to "Privatize" Its Members? This year's
NEA convention will feature debate on two hot-button issues. One is the
union's presidential endorsement (more on that next week). The other is a
by-law amendment, approved this month by the NEA board of directors after
much debate.
By-law 2-1(b) defines the qualifications for NEA
membership. The proposed amendment would open membership to employees of a
"private elementary or secondary school, public or private pre-school
program" or "other public or private institution devoted primarily to
education."
There will be more detailed analysis of this to come,
and the union rank-and-file will react strongly in both directions, but I
don't expect this signals a raid on private schools. The key to the
amendment is the ability to organize pre-school employees, wherever they
work.
NEA has neither the capacity nor the desire to organize
workers on a school-by-school basis. What the union hopes for is an
accommodation similar to that won by the
United Federation of Teachers to represent child care workers in New
York. In this model, the union negotiates with the state, and the people who
actually receive the services are, frankly, an afterthought.
3) NEA Will Not Change Its Position on Performance
Pay. Last May, NEA President Reg Weaver commissioned the union's
Professional Standards and Practices Committee to
review NEA's positions on performance pay and make recommendations. The
results are in. The committee has determined that NEA need not amend its
current resolutions on pay, the relevant sentence of which states, "The
National Education Association is opposed to the use of merit pay or
performance pay compensation systems."
The committee did have one useful recommendation. It
suggested that NEA develop a definition of terms, so that everyone means the
same thing when they use the phrases "merit pay," "performance pay."
"incentive pay" "differential pay" or "knowledge and skills pay."
4) Outsourcing Pays! At EIA, I get a lot of
requests from people – including union insiders – who want to know how much
certain people in the NEA hierarchy make. From presidents to executive
directors to UniServ reps to receptionists, I've combed public records and
internal documents to satisfy their curiosity. But no one ever asks about
the best-paid individual in the NEA organization, probably because he isn't
an employee.
I mean, of course, the legendary NEA General Counsel
Robert Chanin. Chanin's tenure with NEA goes back to its earliest days as a
union, and he has made his mark on virtually every teacher collective
bargaining law in the United States. At one time an NEA employee, Chanin is
now essentially (and exclusively, as far as I can tell) subcontracted to the
union via his law firm of
Bredhoff & Kaiser. NEA's 2006-07 payments to both Chanin individually
and to Bredhoff & Kaiser surpass anything paid to Reg Weaver or executive
director John Wilson.
As is the case with all contract services, NEA paid for
Chanin's legal services per project, and not in one lump sum. But amassing
the payments into a single figure was relatively simple, revealing the union
paid Chanin and Bredhoff & Kaiser $1.32 million in the last fiscal year.
NEA has attorneys on payroll, and it is questionable
whether Chanin's unique arrangement as general counsel will survive his
eventual retirement. We can expect NEA will have a familiar debate over the
costs of in-house vs. outsource.
5) Dues Hike. Pending the formality of approval
by the union's representative assembly, NEA national dues for the 2008-09
school year will be $158, an increase of $5. Education support employees
will pay $91.50.
6) Another Newspaper Series on Teacher Discipline.
Any fair and reasonable observer has to conclude that, considering the
number of teachers, there are a minimal number of dangerous or predatory
ones. And any fair and reasonable observer also has to conclude that the
problem sustaining so many multi-part newspaper series on criminal teachers
is the too-frequent tendency of school systems to pass these people on to
other school systems rather than take the difficult but necessary steps
required to keep them away from children.
The
Oregonian is the latest media outlet to focus on this. Like previous
series in Ohio (Columbus Dispatch), Illinois (Small Newspaper Group)
and nationwide (Associated Press), the Oregonian found administrators
fearful of litigation and thus eager to transfer the perpetrator out of his
or her jurisdiction. Perhaps the only way to change this equation is for a
victim to sue a district that
passed the trash, in addition to the one that hired him.
7) Last Week's Intercepts. EIA's blog,
Intercepts, covered these topics from February 11-19:
* Obama
Feeling His Oats. They've caused an edusphere foofaraw, but Obama's
comments on school vouchers are much ado about not much.
* Attention
Performance Pay Advocates! When everyone's super, no one will be.
*
It's Not Gambling If You Win. The president of the Massachusetts
Teachers Association has a thoughtful and considered opinion about
addictions.
* NEA's
Conventional Influence. The one place NEA's clout may yet be felt.
* Japan
to Return to Core Curriculum. The Japanese end an eight-year experiment
with relaxed environments and fostering creativity.
* Denver
Union Folds on Contract Waivers. Retreat or tactical withdrawal?
8) Quote of the Week. "Holy smokes! We're upside down." – Montana
Labor Commissioner Keith Kelly, upon learning that for every $1 the state
was giving the Montana AFL-CIO to help displaced workers, the labor
coalition was spending $4.01 on its own staff salaries. (February 12
Billings Gazette) |
