The California Teachers Association is thrilled that only 1,300 school employees received final layoff notices this year, and credited the passage of Proposition 30, the tax increase package CTA championed last November.

That’s fine, but it tends to lead to the interchangeable use of terms that aren’t synonymous. In California, school districts are required to issue preliminary layoff notices by March 15. Traditionally the phrase “pink slips” has been used to describe these notices. It’s a rare occurrence when districts know how much money they will receive from the state by that deadline, so they issue far more pink slips than necessary, in order to err on the side of caution.

Comes May 15, the deadline for “final” layoff notices, and suddenly most of those with pink slips will be returning. This year it’s 57 percent. Last year it was 60 percent.

But the new school year doesn’t start in May, and over the summer months and even into September more of those laid-off employees are recalled. The California Legislative Analyst looked strictly at teachers, and found that last year 96 percent of laid-off teachers were rehired. He also noted that not all districts were affected equally during the recession. At the worst of it, 36 percent of districts had no layoffs at all. Last year, 65 percent of districts had no layoffs.

Another confusing factor is that CTA accumulates all non-renewal notices into its pink slip and layoff notice figures, including those issued to probationary teachers. Since it will never happen that every probationary teacher receives tenure, there is a base level of pink slips that will never be entirely eliminated.

EdSource surveyed the state’s 30 largest districts about their staffing in 2010-11, which was the worst year for public school teachers. Of the 96,226 teachers employed in March, 94,013 were still employed in October (97.7%).

So how can this be squared with the reductions-in-force we know have occurred in California? Easy. Layoffs are not the major contributor, but attrition and retirements.

At its peak in 2008-09, California had 610,494 teachers and education support employees. Last year that number was down to 572,591 – a reduction of 6.2 percent. Enrollment dropped by almost 1 percent during that same period, but it is true that the remaining employees had more kids per person to deal with.

That’s a lot of numbers to say a simple thing: Just because we have fewer employees doesn’t mean a lot of people lost their jobs.

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I was reading a summary of a speech given by NEA executive director John Stocks to the union’s board of directors a couple of weeks ago, and he called on the assemblage to “get off defense and get on offense.” He described some of the ways NEA has been on the offensive in the past year.

In his list of achievements, he included the re-election of President Obama. When the union’s endorsed candidate wins, that’s a victory, but offense? It contradicts what NEA was saying during the campaign, where the President was often described as a “goalie,” as in this blog post from NEA vice president Lily Eskelsen:

A goalie doesn’t make points. A goalie keeps the other side from making points. If we keep the Crazy House (i.e. House of Representatives); if the Senate goes Crazy, they will pass legislation to kill unions and to kill Social Security and to kill Medicare, and there will be only one hope that this radical legislation will not become laws that kill the middle-class. Our Goalie, President Obama, holding the veto pen.

Stocks also listed NEA litigation against Florida’s teacher evaluation law, Alabama’s immigration law and California’s Proposition 8 – all of which sound like defensive measures against other people’s initiatives.

Stocks described how NEA has begun to expose the American Legislative Exchange Council “using behind-the-scenes work.” That sounds like defense, too, not to mention that NEA has been trying to “expose” ALEC since, oh, 1996.

Everyone wants to be the initiator of events, rather than the victim. But driving off the army surrounding your castle walls is not gaining ground.

It’s that time of year, so let’s continue the round-up:

* Marietta English was re-elected as president of the Baltimore Teachers Union. This will be her seventh three-year term, and it has become so pro forma that the union didn’t even bother to announce the tabulated vote, the turnout, or even if she had a challenger.

* The New Jersey Education Association had an election/accession, as incumbent vice president Wendell Steinhauer moved up to president, and secretary-treasurer Marie Blistan advanced to vice president. We’re looking forward to seeing what they’ll be wearing this season.

* There was a minor upset in Miami as incumbent secretary-treasurer Fedrick C. Ingram defeated incumbent vice president Artie Leichner for the presidency of United Teachers of Dade. The Miami Herald story inaccurately states UTD has 34,000 members, which instead is the number of people in the bargaining unit. There is no agency fee in Florida. UTD has 14,500 members, of whom 7,600 cast a vote in the election, which is a pretty high turnout for a union election.

* Votes will be tabulated this weekend for the presidency of the Buffalo Teachers Federation, where Phil Rumore has been president for 32 years. His opponent, Marc Bruno,  was six when Rumore first won.

Andy Rotherham wins the week with his call for the best education songs. There a quite a few crowd favorites, and a bunch more submitted on Twitter, but I thought I’d concentrate on the ones that won’t make anyone’s list. Here they are, in no particular order:

1) The Teacher Tenure Song.

2) The opening theme to High School Sucks.

3) Greatest Hit Songs of the Teacher.

4) Public School House Rock – Nouns.

5) And, of course, NEA Standing Strong.

NEA affiliates in the Pacific Northwest have had more than their share of labor problems with their own employees. The Idaho Education Association was sanctioned by the national staff union, the Oregon Education Association saw staff protests during a long and bitter contract negotiation, and now the employees of the Washington Education Association are distributing flyers accusing the union of violating the contract with the latest round of staff reductions.

“Staffing has decreased significantly over the past 4 years and on August 30, 2013, an additional 27 staff members will retire leaving the organization without the ability to
continue the necessary work,” reads the flyer. “WEA does not plan to fill those positions with permanent employees which is a violation of the negotiated Collective Bargaining
Agreement.”

The staff union claims WEA will end the year with a positive $8.3 million “fund balance.” I’m not sure to what that refers, but I do know that in 2010-11 the union’s net assets were $18.6 million in the red, mostly due to staff pensions and retiree health care.

NEA has been lucky not to see any staff strikes or major job actions during the economic downturn. In general, staff unions have recognized the financial straits many state affiliates are in. But as recovery proceeds, we can expect to see greater demands from union employees – at least the ones who are left.

Here’s a commercial designed to appeal to the corporate thinkers out there.