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

In California, as in many other states, teachers who do not wish to join the union must still pay an agency fee. However, fee payers cannot be forced to contribute to the union’s political and ideological activities unrelated to collective bargaining. Each year the union’s lawyers compute what percentage of the organization’s activities are chargeable to fee payers. The non-chargeable percentage is then reimbursed to the fee payer.

This week, the California Teachers Association issued its calculations for the 2005-06 school year to its estimated 30,000 fee payers. The percentages computed by CTA mean that each fee-payer will have at least $315.93 in dues money returned to him or her.

Here’s the breakdown:

* NEA dues are $140, 49 percent of which the national union has deemed is for political and ideological activities ($68.60).

* CTA dues are $543, 34.5 percent of which the state union has deemed is for political and ideological activities ($187.33).

* Additionally, CTA will refund the entire $60 special assessment for its campaign against the governor’s initiatives.

That equals a minimum of $315.93. But most California teachers also pay dues to a local CTA affiliate. The amount varies from zero to more than $200. In any case, CTA applies the state percentage to its locals as well, meaning fee payers will also get 34.5 percent of their local dues returned to them.

All told, resigning from CTA and accepting fee payer status will bring some teachers close to $400 in rebated dues.

The downside is a loss of union voting rights, liability insurance coverage, and access to member-only benefits the union offers.

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation set up a handy web page outlining the procedure for becoming a fee payer for 2005-06. The deadline is November 15.

* I know many of you think you have the worst school board in the world, and that nothing can match the hijinks you see every day. But I’m betting you can’t top the Baldwin-Whitehall School District in Pennsylvania.

Board member Beverly Coon is up for reelection on Nov. 8, but she might have a small campaign problem since being barred from entering any district school or attending any school activity. You see, Ms. Coon was arrested last week on charges of attempted homicide, arson, risking catastrophe, criminal mischief, reckless endangerment and stalking. She was released on $100,000 bail.

While Ms. Coon was separated from her husband, she had a two-year-long affair with Dr. Ronald Grimm, the superintendent of the nearby Bethel Park School District. When Dr. Grimm tried to break off the relationship, Ms. Coon allegedly fed him sedative-laced pastries and then set his bed on fire. Dr. Grimm was burned in the fire that destroyed his apartment, but he escaped serious injury. He has not yet returned to work.

Ms. Coon’s attorney says the evidence against her is circumstantial.

The school board can ban Ms. Coon from school buildings, but it must continue to allow her to attend school board meetings. Meanwhile, Ms. Coon is running for reelection on a slate that includes Michael Stelmasczyk and Edward Moeller. Mr. Stelmasczyk has spent much of the last week covering the name of Ms. Coon on his lawn signs and campaign posters with purple tape.

“I think the stores are running out of the [purple] tape,” he said.

* It’s natural to get lost in the predicaments of the present, so it’s welcome news to hear an international research group conclude that there has been “a dramatic, but largely unknown, decline in the number of wars, genocides and human rights abuses over the past decade.”

The Human Security Report, funded by the governments of Canada, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland and Britain, credit this happy state of affairs on the fall of the Soviet Union. I feel an odd mix of contentment and shame that U.S. students will soon have blank looks on their faces when the subject of the U.S.S.R. arises.

* EIA reported yesterday on the union representation election at the Joseph K. Lumsden Bahweting Anishnabe charter school in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. Thirty-three teachers are now represented by the Michigan Education Association (MEA). The school is located on the reservation of the Chippewa Tribe and is supported by tribal funds.

But my story missed the ongoing drama the union vote caused. Evidently the Chippewa tribal leaders really, really, really don’t want a union in their school. And, since they operate under a different set of rules than the state of Michigan, they have laid out a set of options that wouldn’t fly elsewhere. It should make for an interesting, if convoluted, legal battle should MEA get booted off the reservation.

* Quote of the Day: “Dwight (Schultz, who played A Team‘s Howling Mad Murdoch) and I are doing a radio show in Montana. We’re calling it ‘Dirk and Dwight’s one-man show.’ I play piano, he sings, we do a few songs and we discuss the politics of The A Team — how the liberal left went after us, how the National Education Association and teacher’s unions tried to get us off the air. Yet all my fans today are 32-year-old guys who watched it with mom and dad. The teachers unions would love to have it back now instead of Paris Hilton having sex.” — actor Dirk Benedict, who played Face on the 1980s TV show The A Team.

Click here to read:

1) NEA Readies Plan B for NCLB Lawsuit
2) Merger Noises in Massachusetts
3) Question Still Unanswered: Do Districts React to Competition?
4) Charter for Chippewas Goes Union
5) Will Aramark Charge NJEA an Eatery Fee?
6) Quote of the Week

* Here’s a story you won’t see too often. The Grossmont Union High School District is involved in a bitter contract dispute with the local teachers’ union. But the district contains the Helix Charter High School, run by an independent board of directors, whose teachers are also represented by the local teachers’ union.

The district’s regular teachers appear to be headed for a strike, but the charter school teachers have already settled a contract with Helix’s board of directors. Now Helix’s parents are demanding that the Grossmont district release the funds to pay for the new contract. They fear their settlement will be held hostage by the poor relationship between the district and the union.

Maybe that vaunted charter school flexibility also oozes into labor relations. Wouldn’t that be ironic?

* Last week, Intercepts noted that the Cleveland public schools seemed to have made a tiny little error in counting their excused student absences for the year. Yesterday, a Cleveland school official acknowledged that the correct number of absences was not 620, but 519,000. This is an error roughly equivalent to inviting the Members of Congress, the Cabinet and the Supreme Court to a charity event and having the entire population of Washington, DC show up.

* Outpost of the Odd: A college student has sued her school under the Americans with Disabilities Act because it won’t let her keep her pet ferret in the dormitory. University officials can avoid the suit by claiming the Endangered Species Act requires them to keep one of these in the dormitory as well.

* Our neighbors to the north are dealing with an illegal teacher strike in an intriguing way. The British Columbia Supreme Court ruled that the 40,000 member British Columbia Teachers Federation (BCTF) can no longer issue strike pay, or spend any union funds in support of the strike. That means no spending on communications, signs or any other method to further the job action. The court appointed a monitor to oversee the BCTF books to enforce the ruling.

This was actually a half-measure, as the court decided not to freeze the union’s operating funds, or send anyone to jail for contempt of court. The BCTF web site hasn’t addressed the ruling, but the page is still loaded with strike news and information, so we’ll see if there is a showdown brewing.

Washington Education Association President Charles Hasse addressed BCTF rallies in Sooke and Vancouver Island earlier this week. EIA is reminded of the near-strike in Issaquah in 2002 and wonders if WEA is still giving the same advice (see “Why ‘No Strike’ Laws Are a Waste of Paper“).

* The Liberty Counsel, a Christian conservative law firm, and the Christian Educators Association International are teaming up on an education and litigation campaign to see to it that Christmas celebrations are permitted in public schools and government offices and buildings. This isn’t a new battle. These folks, among others, have been trying to put Christ back in Christmas for years. Adeste fideles!

* The editors of the Sacramento Bee have announced their opposition to Proposition 75, California’s paycheck protection initiative. This is not very surprising. But there’s a sentence in their editorial that just blows me away:

“Proponents of this measure claim it protects individual rights – which is arguably in the public interest – by requiring that public employee unions gain the explicit permission of members before spending their money for political purposes.”

Protecting individual rights is arguably in the public interest?

EIA performed some deep and extensive research this morning, and discovered this document, which I’m not sure the Bee editors have heard of, but it does have something to do with protecting individual rights.

* Here’s a shocker: Some people are wondering if Syrian Interior Minister Ghazi Kenaan actually committed suicide, even though the Syrian authorities insist he did. Syria’s foreign minister blames Kenaan’s death on the Lebanese media, while Syria’s attorney general wrapped up his one-day investigation just in time for Kenaan’s rather rapid funeral.

Let’s put it this way: if you believe the man who ruled Lebanon with an iron fist for 20 years was so overwrought by Lebanese press reports and a United Nations investigation that he shot himself, then you also have to believe that this guy will hang himself after a bad editorial in the New York Post and a harshly worded letter from the General Accounting Office.

* A new Contract Hits is up.