Intercepts
A listening post monitoring public education and teachers’ unions.

* It’s safe to say that labor-management relations in the Buffalo school district are less than cordial. There have been a lot of disagreements in recent years, and the latest is over health insurance costs and layoffs. In a last-ditch effort to bridge the gap, Superintendent James A. Williams met with four school employee union presidents.

It didn’t go well.

Williams ended up calling Buffalo Teachers Federation President Phil Rumore “a liar,” immediately after which Rumore and Crystal Barton, president of the Buffalo principals’ union, left the meeting. Williams then told the remaining union presidents that he’d like to take Rumore outside and “kick his [rear end].”

“I’ve never had that kind of experience with a superintendent before,” Rumore told the Buffalo News. “He’s completely out of control.”

Barton’s reaction was pretty funny. “Phil Rumore was called a liar,” she said. “He [Williams] said he doesn’t give a damn about children. He cursed. He was profane. I’m the only lady among the union presidents. I don’t need to be exposed to that.”

* In six months, a group of 136 San Diego County school employees have lost a combined 1,162 pounds in an anti-obesity program run by the Voluntary Employees Benefits Association. That should make Peter Brimelow very happy.

The Michigan Federation of Teachers & School Related Personnel has changed its name to AFT Michigan, following the lead of AFT affiliates in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

This is a blessing for those of us who have to type teacher union names all the time, but MFT&SRP wasn’t the worst teacher union acronym in the world. This one and this one are both pretty bad. Let me know if you’ve heard of others.

The members of Nevada’s board of education asked for an organizational flow chart of the state’s K-12 public education system. This is what they received.

It’s somehow appropriate, because it looks as though it was drawn by a fifth-grader.

This might be the most detailed news story on the school district size issue I have ever seen.

Click here to read.

1) NEA Pledges Additional $5 Million Against California Initiatives
2) Ohio Education Association Plans Internal PR Campaign
3) Will Massachusetts Teachers Association Go After Charter Teachers?
4) Detailed Results Show AFT Was Pummeled in Puerto Rico
5) National Teacher of the Year Speech to NEA Delegates
6) Not Enough Thought Amid the Action
7) Las Vegas Teamsters Will Get to Argue in State Supreme Court
8) AFT President to Meet with KIPP Co-Founders
9) Why Even Hostile NEA Members Should Read the EIA Communiqué
10) Scheduling Note
11) Quote of the Week

You’ll need to register with the site to read this article, but it’s worth the effort. Katherine Kersten of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune went to a local Wal-Mart to ask real people about shopping and working there. Turns out they like it, and don’t much care about the boycott or the Wake Up Wal-Mart campaign. Kersten writes:

“A woman loading packs of ballpoint pens into her cart caught my eye. No, she didn’t have 120 children. She was Karla Keller Torp, executive director of the Caring Tree in Bloomington, a nonprofit organization that partners with social service agencies such as the Boys and Girls Clubs to get school supplies to low-income kids across Minnesota.

“Torp told me that 121,000 Minnesota kids live at or below the poverty level. Last year, Caring Tree outfitted 17,000 of them for school. Yes, she knew about the teachers’ union boycott, but wasn’t deterred.

‘At the Caring Tree, we’re trying to squeeze every dollar we have for the sake of the kids. Wal-Mart helps us leverage and maximize our dollars.’”

People exercising their consumer choice is the best response to the union campaign. And isn’t this kind of consumer choice the reason Wal-Mart is being targeted by NEA-AFT, instead of, say, non-union Target, also the focus of a UFCW organizing drive?

* No matter your position on the No Child Left Behind Act — I happen to think it’s a federal power grab but that many of its opponents are hypocritical — you should read this piece by Linda Shaw of the Seattle Times.

The implicit suggestion in the article is that — in Washington State anyway — NCLB will neither work wonders nor utterly destroy public schools. In fact, school districts will simply do what they have always done without much concern about it one way or the other.

“I don’t have the time to worry about it,” said William Miller, superintendent of Wahluke, a small district in Grant County.

I believe this is the default position of any bureaucracy as large as America’s public school system. The people who want reform institute it without federal insistence. The people who don’t want reform won’t institute it no matter who insists. If forced to reform, they will undermine it.

So, as with so many education issues, it devolves to winning or losing the political battle, without any regard for the ultimate outcome.

* Outpost of the Odd: Without a doubt, the low point in the history of California law enforcement.

Have a great weekend!