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

When you talk to people about one thing for a year, then spring something entirely different on them in the space of two days, you’re bound to spark some heated debate.

First, the understated “Some wary of plan” in the Los Angeles Daily News. The Republicans and some business groups don’t like it.

Then the more-to-the-point “Romer: Antonio sold out.” LAUSD Superintendent Roy Romer states the obvious, “This is a very serious mistake and one the mayor and unions bought off on because they’re trying to serve each other’s interests.”

This story also contains a quote from Thomas Saenz, counsel to the mayor. “People are missing the forest for the trees: Who’s in charge is the mayor,” Saenz said. “There’s one person in charge of the system, and that’s the mayor.” (more on this in a minute)

Also, “Where does the power lie? It doesn’t lie with the board. It lies with the union,” said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political analyst and senior scholar at the School of Policy, Planning and Development at the University of Southern California.

Duke Helfand and Joel Rubin of the Los Angeles Times asked rank-and-file teachers what they thought of the plan: “Villaraigosa’s elaborate plan to take control of the Los Angeles Unified School District grabbed the attention of rank-and-file teachers Thursday, the day after it was announced. While some applauded it, many disagreed with him — and their own union leadership.”

Joe Mathews provided details of the negotiations, including the heartwarming anecdote that Villaraigosa and union negotiators shared war stories about the 1989 LA schools strike during breaks in the bargaining.

UTLA’s brief statement on its web site should give pause to the mayor, his representatives, and his counsel, Thomas Saenz: “UTLA has come to an agreement with the Mayor that takes mayoral control off the table and instead seeks legislation that moves us closer to real school reform.”

Yep, you have to love an agreement that puts the mayor in sole charge but at the same time takes mayoral control off the table.

But the Great Spitball-in-the-Eye Award goes to California Teachers Association President Barbara Kerr, who after coming out of a closed-door negotiation with no parental or public input, to introduce a plan that will not be voted on by the citizens of Los Angeles, said:

“The best school improvement decisions are made when parents, teachers and local communities are involved.”

Well, one out of three is about average for LA schools.

Teachers having sex with students has been a staple of tabloid TV for so long it has become passé. The latest craze is sex in school with other teachers.

For the most recent incident we go to East Hartford, Connecticut, where 55-year-old Angela Schmidt, a middle school teacher, allegedly had sex with colleague Steven Sandler (age unknown) – once in the staff bathroom and another time in a closet.

The incidents came to light when Schmidt went to police claiming Sandler had raped her. After an investigation, police determined that the sex was consensual and that Schmidt claimed otherwise because Sandler wanted to end their affair and she wanted to “ruin his career.”

Schmidt was arrested and charged with one count each of falsely reporting an incident and making a false statement. She was released on bond.

The Connecticut story follows two weeks after two teachers in Florida were forced to resign after being spotted having sex in a classroom, and three weeks after a Pennsylvania teacher received a $58,000 severance package despite admitting to having sex in his classroom with another teacher.

If you go back far enough, you can find the trend-setter.

In Greek mythology, the Hydra had the body of a serpent and many heads, “of which one could never be harmed by any weapon, and if any of the other heads were severed another would grow in its place.” The myth also states that “the stench from the Hydra’s breath was enough to kill man or beast” and that “when it emerged from the swamp it would attack herds of cattle and local villagers, devouring them with its numerous heads. It totally terrorized the vicinity for many years.”

The big news out West this morning is the Grand Compromise reached between Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the teachers’ union, the school board, and state legislators over control of the Los Angeles Unified School District. The mayor wanted a set-up like the one in New York City; the rest wanted to be left alone.

After days of closed-door negotiations, the parties involved delivered a settlement that leaves the following people in charge of LAUSD:

1) the mayor
2) the school board
3) the superintendent
4) a council of mayors
5) the teachers’ union

The Los Angeles Times story explains who gets to do what — sort of. What’s clear is that if everyone is in charge, then no one is in charge, and that’s just how LAUSD has become the state’s poster child for unresponsive government bureaucracy (remember “mini-districts?”).

But the proposed deal is even worse than the status quo, because under the guise of “mayoral control,” it gives UTLA and CTA “authority to shape classroom instruction” – a power the union has long sought but has been unable to achieve on its own, even with an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature.

But let’s leave the details of this disaster-in-the-making aside for a moment, and list the people who did not have, and will not have, any say in its design, implementation or evaluation:

1) parents
2) LAUSD employees who don’t belong to UTLA
3) Republicans or independents
4) voters

You learn all you need to know about education policy in California when you understand that both a Republican governor and a Democratic big-city mayor are compelled to negotiate behind closed doors with the bosses of a private enterprise – the teachers’ union – but are in no way obligated to solicit the views of the public, who will pay the price for such grand schemes.

The Los Angeles Times editorial page got it exactly right this morning: “Consider a school whose students are failing at math. Who could responsible parents see to address the problem? The teachers picked the curriculum, but they can’t be voted out of office. The school didn’t decide its budget; the superintendent did that. But both the board and the mayor have a say in it. The board can’t hire and fire the superintendent on its own; the mayor can say the board selects the superintendent. And because the board loses power in this deal, it has little interest in seeing it succeed.”

The deal does provide one critical element that all parties to the agreement want: ass-covering. When this goes wrong (and believe me, it will), no one can be singled out for blame. So, in the ultimate irony, a plan with the stated purpose of bringing greater accountability to the city’s schools achieves the exact opposite.

A big net is catching some pretty big fish in Ohio, with more to come, I’m told. I’d be stunned if Ohio is the only place where this is going on.

EIA has learned that NEA Alaska Executive Director Tom Harvey tendered his resignation last Thursday.

Harvey was the focus of an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawsuit, prompted by complaints of three female former NEA Alaska employees. The staffers had accused Harvey of bullying and verbally abusing them in 2000. NEA Alaska promoted Harvey to executive director after the EEOC lawsuit was filed. NEA and NEA Alaska settled the case last month, agreeing to pay the former staffers a total of $750,000 without admitting to any wrongdoing.

The Harvey case was a legal landmark of sorts, because in examining the details the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that harassing conduct against female employees can violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act even if it has nothing to do with sex.

In his resignation letter, Harvey cited medical and family reasons for his decision, making his resignation effective at the end of the union’s fiscal year — midnight, August 31. Harvey’s contract was to run until June 2007.

NEA Alaska did not respond to a request for comment.

The Blue Man Group voted last month to be represented by the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) Local 720 (not the pipefitters union), but the election is being challenged by Blue Man management, which has hired the high-powered Washington law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld — described by the Las Vegas Review-Journal as “the New York Yankees of its profession.”

This is only the latest in a series of union disputes for Blue Man Group, which set off a boycott in Canada last year for utilizing non-union performers.

Blue Man Group’s political leanings are also a matter of some debate, evidenced by their appearance in a global warming video and the subsequent deep thinking it inspired on The Huffington Post.

If the Blue Men strike, at least there won’t be any singing or chanting on the picket line.

Yesterday’s communique’ prompted a response from a former high-ranking NEA state affiliate officer, whom I will not name here:

“I am tired of this communique and the conservative community describing me and the NEA as ‘liberal left’! The liberal thinker is someone who has an open mind and respects all members of society. FDR once described a conservative as someone who has a perfectly good set of legs but cannot move forward. You don’t know me or most of the NEA education family so your rhetoric is faulty!”

My reply:

“I’m quite at a loss as to how to respond. You say a liberal has an open mind and respects all members of society, yet you chastise me for describing NEA as liberal-left. So is NEA not liberal or not open-minded? I can’t figure out which, but I’m trying to keep an open mind.”