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

No matter your position on public education and unions, we can all agree that New York City’s “rubber rooms” for teachers accused of wrongdoing are good for no one. The innocent teachers are kept from teaching for extensive periods of time, the guilty teachers are paid full salary and benefits for doing nothing, the administrators are forced to spend time and resources operating a holding facility, and the taxpayers have to pay for this idiocy.

Yesterday a group of teachers filed suit to get rid of the rubber rooms. The United Federation of Teachers isn’t supporting the lawsuit, citing its own efforts to address the problem with the city. And, to be sure, the plaintiffs’ motives are far from pure; they claim the rooms are a scheme to “reduce salaries by forcing teachers to quit or be fired.”

It’s not much of a scheme. There are more than 70,000 full-time equivalent teachers in New York City. There are fewer than 700 teachers in rubber rooms.

Still on jury duty, but even on the night shift I’ve got this for you:

As reported late last Friday here on Intercepts, NEA decided to continue its past practice of finding certain candidates “acceptable” and others not, in lieu of an endorsement of a single presidential candidate. The union named as acceptable all seven Democrats who answered NEA’s questionnaire and appeared in front of its representative assembly last July (three have recently dropped out of the race), but not Mike Huckabee, the lone Republican to do so.

This is bad news for Huckabee, who continues to get hammered by his GOP opponents for an NEA New Hampshire endorsement that had little relevance, and who will now receive no help from national NEA for his trouble.

Reliable sources tell EIA that the leadership of the Arkansas Education Association was instrumental in the effort to sink any chance Huckabee might have had in winning NEA’s national endorsement in the GOP primary.

This is a bit of a surprise, since Huckabee had a relatively good relationship with AEA during his tenure, getting the union’s endorsement for his district consolidation plan in 2003 (see Item #3 here) and getting general kudos from AEA for raising teacher salaries.

The word is, however, that AEA felt he didn’t quite measure up to NEA standards – I guess in the same way Dennis Kucinich did – and that the Arkansas affiliate’s opinion carried significant weight with the NEA PAC Council, who clearly weren’t predisposed to endorse Huckabee anyway.

Note: There will be no EIA Communiqué on Monday due to my summons for jury duty (four times in seven years!), so here’s something to gnaw on until I resume.

It has taken a full month to determine what happened to the much-promised and postponed National Education Association presidential endorsement. It’s still on hold.

Unable or unwilling thus far to settle on a single candidate, NEA President Reg Weaver and the union’s PAC council did what they have done in previous presidential elections – create a list of “acceptable” candidates. The union’s affiliates can materially support any, all or none of the “acceptable” candidates.

The affiliates’ job was made easier by the fact that three of the acceptable candidates have already dropped out of the race: Senator Joe Biden, Senator Christopher Dodd and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. The four remaining are all Democrats: Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator Barack Obama, former Senator John Edwards and Representative Dennis Kucinich.

The PAC council could still choose to endorse one of these candidates before the primaries end, but the decision has to be approved by the NEA Board of Directors, and the board’s next meeting is not until February 8 – three days after Super Tuesday.

Notably absent from the list of acceptable candidates is former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, the only Republican candidate to speak before the NEA Representative Assembly last July and the recipient of NEA New Hampshire’s endorsement in that state’s GOP primary.

Whatever NEA does, it can undo, so it is always possible that an endorsement of Huckabee could occur later on, but all signs point to NEA finding Huckabee unacceptable for a national endorsement – something that remains available even to Dennis Kucinich.

NEA’s actions have succeeded in keeping all of the union’s options open, but it will have no unique leverage over whichever candidate ultimately wins the Democratic nomination. As for Huckabee, he comes out badly because his opponents will continue to bash him for the NEA New Hampshire endorsement, but no national help for his campaign is forthcoming.

Writers’ strike got you down? Head over to This Week In Education for the tastiest bon mots from host Alexander Russo and guest star Joe Williams. Amid the cracks and one-liners you get some genuine insight, like:

“What do you wish reporters understood about education politics that you’ve learned since starting in at DFER?

“JW: They need to understand just how scared the average politician is of teacher union leaders. There are politicians who literally whisper sometimes if they are talking about education and they aren’t exactly sure what the union’s talking points are on that topic. Some of them worry that the union president is going to jump out of the bushes and yell ‘gotcha’ if they aren’t careful. It makes it an awful lot easier for electeds to just keep their mouths shut and do nothing about the fact that we have thousands and thousands of kids who are getting completely screwed by our school systems.”