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

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1) Teachers Head Back to School; Union Officials Head to the Sky Box
2) Public Schools Must Accept All Students
3) Eye-Opening Stats and the Imponderable Question of the Week
4) Where Have I Heard This Before?
5) Scheduling Note
6) Last Week’s Intercepts
7) Quote of the Week

Today’s Wall Street Journal has a good summary of the performance pay system and contract dispute in Denver (but no mention of doughnuts), while John Mooney of the Newark Star-Ledger discovers that the size of a school district doesn’t necessarily coincide with the size of the superintendent’s salary.

The Denver Classroom Teachers Association is in a contract dispute with the school district. It is gaining national attention because the major point of contention involves the future of the city’s unique performance pay program.

That’s the standard plot you’ll find in any story about the dispute. But there’s a subplot as well. It involves a group of teachers who think their own union is being obstructionist on the contract. They have set up a web site, and have 287 teacher signatures on a petition calling for a settlement.

Teacher Jessica Buckley says the union is reacting to the opposition. “I honestly felt very intimidated,” she told Rocky Mountain News reporter Nancy Mitchell. Mitchell explains that Buckley “cited the presence of the National Education Association and envelopes of cash given to schools as ‘incentives’ for teachers to pass out fliers explaining the union’s side of the dispute.”

DCTA President Kim Ursetta disputes Buckley’s interpretation of events. According to Mitchell’s story, “The NEA is assisting the union, Ursetta said, and a retired NEA spokesman who lives in Colorado did attend Thursday’s meeting. The envelopes of cash are meant to buy doughnuts for teachers passing out fliers.”

How much do doughnuts cost in Denver? If you also buy coffee, do you need a brown paper bag for cash?

From a union protest in Racine, Wisconsin:

I sacrificed some brain cells watching Olympic synchronized diving last night and came abruptly out of my stupor after hearing the following.

For the happily uninitiated, synchronized diving involves two people leaping off a platform at the same time, mirroring each other’s actions during the entire dive. They are then judged on how well they synchronized. Remember that: Two people. Synchronized.

Anyway, the announcer mentioned that American diver Haley Ishimatsu moved from California to Indianapolis so that she could train with her diving partner Mary Beth Dunnachay. To which Cynthia Potter, NBC’s synchronized diving analyst, replied:

“It’s so important in synchronized diving to be in the same place training.”

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick vetoed a pension increase for teachers and state workers in the name of budgetary prudence. But the news isn’t all bad. The bill would have hiked payments to retirees by only $120 per year anyway which, as we already know, would have barely covered the cost of a hefty latte and a muffin.

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EIA’s Special Economic System Quote of the Week Issue