|
1) EIA Exclusive: NEA Conditionally
Recommends Obama. The National Education Association PAC Council
approved a conditional recommendation of Senator Barack Obama for the 2008
Democratic Party presidential nomination. The recommendation will only take
effect if one of two things occurs before the next PAC Council meeting on
June 29:
a) Senator Hillary Clinton withdraws; or
b) Senator Obama obtains the necessary number of delegates to win the
nomination.
The PAC Council's decision was placed before the NEA Board of Directors
during a conference call last week, but only 96 of the 184 voting members of
the board participated. The recommendation delays any NEA action until the
race is decided, but there was still opposition. The board approved the
recommendation by a vote of 69-27.
The half-assed nature of the resolution, voted on by
only slightly more than half of the union's national representatives,
epitomizes NEA's year-long inability to reach a decision that promised to
anger and upset a significant number of members either way it went.
Locked into a procedure in which the PAC Council must recommend a
candidate, followed by an authorization vote of the board of directors, the
union found itself approaching its July representative assembly without a
clear picture of what, exactly, it would ask the delegates to do regarding
the Democratic Party nomination and the general election. This hurried
resolution is an effort to allow NEA to prepare for an up-or-down vote on
Obama at the union convention should the situation resolve itself in the
next month.
Should either of the two conditions in the resolution
occur prior to the NEA convention, the union can immediately go to its
standard procedure in election years, which is a concur/non-concur vote of
the delegates on the board's recommendation. If, however, Sen. Clinton
decides to keep her campaign alive, and Sen. Obama does not cross the
nomination-clinching threshold, NEA will have to conduct a time-consuming,
expensive and fractious mail-in ballot of some 9,000 delegates in August or
even September. All of this is required before the union can technically
begin working on the candidate's behalf.
Much of this is academic in an election that will not
be decided on education issues, and where teacher union support for the
eventual Democratic candidate is assured. But the melodrama cannot help but
to affect the future relationship of NEA and the next President of the
United States.
2) Grand Rapids School Board Fights Fire with Fire.
I have often wondered why school boards unilaterally disarm in the face of
various job actions, like work-to-rule, slowdowns and no confidence votes.
These things have little practical value, but they are very effective as
stunts to get attention.
The school board in Grand Rapids, Michigan, has
apparently decided to grab hold of the
fight-fire-with-fire-turnabout-is-fair-play-sauce-for-the-goose-goes-around-comes-around
clichés in its latest contract battle with the teachers' union. The board
took a
no confidence vote in Grand Rapids Education Association president Paul
Helder.
"It's just disrespectful, not
to me, I don't care about that," Helder said. "It's not my job to make them
happy; they're not supposed to have confidence in me one way or the
other. But it's disrespectful to the confidence the members put in me when
they elected me. It's disrespectful to the work they do."
The board also decided to
stop deducting and transferring member dues to the union. Until the
dispute is settled, the union will have to collect its dues from the members
individually.
Note to local Grand Rapids news: Send TV crews along
with the union reps as they perform this task. I promise excellent footage.
3) District Spending Data Updated for Six More
States. EIA has updated district-by-district enrollment, workforce and
spending tables for the states of Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire,
New Jersey and New Mexico. Some items of note:
* Montana's per-pupil spending increased 20.8% between
2001 and 2006 (about 5 points less than the national average) but spending
on compensation increased 27.4% (about 3 points more than the national
average).
* Nebraska may be the most unchanged state regarding
enrollment and hiring. Statewide, it had 45 fewer students in 2006 than in
2001, and had 54 fewer teachers.
* Despite its status as the fastest growing school
district in the country, and serious concerns about teacher shortages, Clark
County School District in Nevada has kept pace in hiring and compensation,
and has increased per-pupil spending beyond the state average.
* School districts throughout New Hampshire are
fighting hard against layoffs, but school budgets are now paying the
price for the boom in teacher hiring through years of declining enrollment.
* New Jersey statistics are handicapped by a lack of
district-level teacher numbers for 2001, but hiring greatly exceeded
enrollment statewide, and spending on compensation increased a whopping 34%
in the five-year period 2001-06.
* New Mexico differs from many other states in that its
largest school districts tend to spend less per-pupil than its smaller
districts.
The tables are located at
http://www.eiaonline.com/districts.htm. District statistics for all
other states will be added over the next several weeks.
4) Website Supports New Union Disclosure
Requirements. David Denholm and the Public Service Research Foundation
have created a new website dedicated to the latest revisions to the U.S.
Department of Labor's financial disclosure requirements for unions (see
item #6 here).
The site is
http://www.unionfinancialdisclosure.info and details of the revisions
and
how to send public comments on them to the Labor Department are on this page.
5) Last Week's Intercepts. EIA's blog,
Intercepts, covered these topics from May 19-26:
*
The Latest Media Wave: Paying Teachers Who Don't Teach. The mysteries of
the public school system.
*
Eduwonk on the EIA Beat. Andy Rotherham picks up some intel on the
Washington Teachers Union.
*
The Original Memorial Day. Something to remember.
*
Will No One Speak for Fido? Hardships for union delegates.
6)
Quote of the Week.
"With increasing cost of college loans and health care and the fact that the
buying power of the teacher dollar is no more than what it was 20 years ago,
we're pretty much back to where we were when I started teaching in the
1960s. I had to work in the summer to eat." – Cheryl Umberger of the
Tennessee Education Association. (May 23
Tennessean) |
