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

Soft drink machines were removed from San Francisco school cafeterias in 2003, and now they may be banned in teacher break rooms as well.

You might not think this is much of a big deal, but then you don’t write ledes for the San Francisco Examiner:

“Overworked and exhausted San Francisco public school teachers and principals could be forced to give up their soda machines, as part of an effort to make sure they’re not setting bad health examples for students.”

or sit on the San Francisco Board of Education:

“I know of one school, and I won’t name names, where there is a soda machine in the principal’s office,” [board member Jill] Wynns said, adding that it sets a bad example if teachers are telling kids not to buy caffeine-laden drinks but sipping one themselves.

or work for the United Educators of San Francisco:

“I don’t drink soda, but people might need a caffeine boost and don’t particularly like coffee,” said Matthew Hardy, spokesman for the teachers’ union.

It’s time to focus on more important things. For example, the UESF informs us on its web site that “California Falls to 47th in the Nation in School Fuding.”

I’m not sure if that’s Fuding, feuding, or something else, but it can’t be good.

Click here to read:

1) NEA to Spend $250,000 on Inauguration
2) Farewell to OLMS
3) Aren’t They the Same Kids?
4) Scheduling Note
5) Last Week’s Intercepts
6) Quote of the Week

The California Teachers Association wants members to “tell us your budget crisis stories,” so I thought I’d help out:

1) RiShawn Biddle of The American Spectator details the growing costs of teacher pensions.

2) Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters explains how the California budget process was largely created by the CTA.

3) The Bee also has a database of the lowest, highest and average teacher salaries for every school district in California. Forty districts have an average teacher salary of more than $75,000. Only one district in the state has an average teacher salary under $49,000.

If buttercups buzz’d after the bee,
If boats were on land, churches on sea,
If ponies rode men and if grass ate the cows,
And cats should be chased into holes by the mouse,
If the mamas sold their babies
To the gypsies for half a crown;
If summer were spring and the other way round,
Then all the world would be upside down.

- lyrics to “The World Turned Upside Down”

It’s a campaign finance legal quandary involving state legislators and the teachers’ union in Maryland – with a twist.

The state attorney general has been asked to weigh in on whether elected officials can transfer funds from their campaign accounts and send the cash to Montgomery County Education Association President Bonnie Cullison to pay for her campaign for a seat on the National Education Association’s Executive Committee.

Yes, you read that correctly. The teachers’ union president is soliciting donations from lawmakers to help pay her campaign costs for higher union office.

Cullison is shooting for $50,000 in donations to pay for “airfare to attend the NEA’s regional conferences and to distribute literature to the 9,000 union delegates, who will vote in July on committee members.”

So, let’s see, the attorney general has to determine whether money from legislators’ campaign accounts, of which some portion is certainly union PAC contributions, can be returned to fill the internal campaign coffers of a sitting union officer. Wow! Tough one!

Andy Rotherham is right. Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times buried the lede in his story about the presidents of the AFL-CIO and Change to Win labor federations calling for reunification. It isn’t until paragraph 20 of a 21-paragraph story that we get:

“One somewhat surprising attendee was Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, which, with 3.2 million members, is the nation’s largest labor union, but has traditionally remained outside any larger labor federations.”

While he was vice president, Van Roekel was NEA’s liaison with Big Labor and was deeply involved in hammering out the Labor Solidarity Partnership Agreement with the AFL-CIO in 2006. Van Roekel supported national merger with the American Federation of Teachers in 1998, voting for the Principles of Unity as secretary-treasurer and member of the union’s executive committee.

There is no evidence that this signals any new initiative on the merger front, but it’s clear that Van Roekel wants NEA to be more involved in the wider labor movement. It’s my judgment that Van Roekel lacks the support from key state affiliates to pursue wholesale NEA membership in the AFL-CIO, but perhaps he seeks a limited collaborative role in a “new” labor federation.

If Van Roekel has anything larger in mind, he better get cracking to prepare the state affiliates for it. One of the reasons for the failure of the merger in 1998 was that many NEA delegates felt the plan was presented to them as a fait accompli. It caused some of them who might have been predisposed to support unification to get up on their hind legs.

I don’t know how many remain of that 1998 anti-merger coalition, but if you’re still out there, I’d love to hear your thoughts about this.

Thanks to a tip sent from EIA’s Dead Drop page, I discovered that Hans Moleman (a pseudonym for a purported National Education Association employee and iconoclast) has his own blog, titled Mister Moleman and His Friends.

They hold forth on many pressing issues of the day, not just teachers and unions. I’ve placed Moleman’s blog on the EIA blogroll, and I encourage you to visit.

“When the scores go up, it’s not just meaningless. It’s worrisome.”

– Alfie Kohn (October 18 Salt Lake Tribune)

Read the rest of 2008′s top ten quotes here.