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

Click here to read:

1) Now We Have Proof: NEA Is the Largest Political Spender in America
2) More from New Jersey Education Association 2009 Campaign Strategy Presentation
3) Upcoming: Brookings Webcast on Education Coverage
4) Irony Alert: Union Accused Rhee of Hiring Too Many Teachers
5) Janesville Education Association Joins AFL-CIO
6) Nightmare Headline of the Week
7) Contract Hits
8) Last Week’s Intercepts
9) Quote of the Week

The National Education Association is donating its records and documents to the library at George Washington University, to be housed in a special collection. The library has already received 3,000 linear feet of material, including “word-for-word transcription of many of the Board of Directors meetings.” Not to worry, NEA board members, that collection only contains documents through 2002.

The archivists inform us that a ”final review will determine when the subseries will open to researchers.”

Guam is a small place a long way from here, but it is host to some of the most entertaining union officer shenanigans in the entire U.S.

Our story begins with Matt Rector, president of the Guam Federation of Teachers, an AFT affiliate, getting elected to the Guam legislature last year. He kept his position as GFT president, even though he was named chairman of the legislature’s labor committee, and has had numerous conflict-of-interest accusations leveled against him.

Rector’s latest problem is largely of his own making. He applied for a permit to carry a concealed weapon, and the application requires listing of any felony convictions or misdemeanors involving a crime of moral turpitude. Rector listed none, but the FBI turned up a 1983 conviction for burglary in California. The news was leaked, and Rector admitted to the conviction, but claimed a) he had forgotten about it; b) he thought his record “was automatically sealed if I kept my nose clean”; c) burglary isn’t a crime of moral turpitude; and d) it’s all a conspiracy to discredit him. The conspiracy is vast and dangerous, which prompted Rector to apply for the concealed weapon permit in the first place.

The Guam authorities will eventually sort out this mess, including the fact that Rector failed to disclose his conviction when he ran for office, which is another potential legal problem. But you have to love Rector’s inflated combination of egomania and paranoia, as evidenced by his press release after this all came out. Here is an excerpt:

Calvo’s Corporation, which also owns Payless Supermarkets, Mid Pac distributions, a hotel and a number of other companies employ thousands of workers. Its owners, the Calvo’s, stand to lose thousands of dollars in profits if Senator Rector’s bills pass…. Senator Rector says, “It’s no secret that there has been a concerted effort to discredit me, soil my image and do everything possible to stop my efforts to improve the quality of life for Guam’s working families and that includes threatening my life. Over the last couple of months I have received threatening phone calls that have gotten so persistent that last week I applied for a concealed weapon permit.”

History has shown that time and time again progressive leaders who have fought against the rich and powerful and the tyranny of corporate power have been attacked and assassinated. Martin Luther King, Mahatma Ghandi, John and Bobby Kennedy, Malcom X, Huey Long and even our very own Senator Angel Santos have all met their untimely death for standing up for Working Families. Senator Rector continues, “Winning a better life for Guam’s Families has become my foremost mission in life and I can’t get it done if I am dead so I thought that it was important that I have the means to protect myself and the people around me. When I applied for a concealed weapon permit I had forgotten that I had a misdemeanor conviction 26 years ago.”

Apparently Rector isn’t inspired as much by Gandhi as he is by Gandhi II:

From USA Today:

WASHINGTON — A non-profit group that gets millions of dollars a year from Congress to help teach students about government misspent or failed to justify more than $5.9 million last year, Education Department investigators say in a report released Monday.

Mission accomplished, I’d say.

Click here to read:

1) EIA Exclusive: How the New Jersey Education Association Made Gov. Corzine’s Re-Election “An Organizational Imperative”
2) Bono Wins NEA Celebrity Substitute Teacher Poll
3) You Can’t Make This Stuff Up: National Teacher Hall of Fame Overspent Its Budget
4) New Mexico Schools Introduce Kids to World of Work
5) Contract Hits
6) Last Week’s Intercepts
7) Quote of the Week

Fresh off the Associated Press story of the teacher shortage morphing into a teacher glut and last week’s EIA Communique’ comes the first stream of what it is sure to be a flood of state and local stories on the phenomenon.

Last Tuesday, the Brunswick News printed a story headlined “Schools see rise in job seekers” with this lede:

The teacher shortage feared by public school systems in Georgia and elsewhere across the nation earlier this decade has gone the way of the dinosaur.

It’s no longer cause for panic in Brunswick and the Golden Isles. Today, in fact, open certified teaching positions fill rather quickly in Glynn County.

The reason is a teacher glut. There are more teachers than there are jobs to be had across the country.

The Kenosha News published “School cutbacks creating teacher glut” last Thursday, reporting anecdotally of several Wisconsin school districts with more teacher applicants than they can handle:

When Bristol School posted its job openings to fill teaching positions in 2nd and 5th grades, the response was overwhelming, according to Administrator Gale Ryzcek.

“We had tons of applicants,” he said. “We probably had 50 to 60 applicants for each,” he said. “There’s applications coming in every month for positions from people throwing feelers out there. We put them on file, but right now we have no openings.”

The next day, the Texas Government Insider ran with “State teacher shortage turns to statewide glut“:

Not too long ago, there was a fear that the teacher shortage would get even larger. Baby Boomers in classrooms were reaching retirement age and private sector salaries were wooing others away from teaching careers. The number of public school teacher openings was expected to grow even larger.

Then came the downturn in the economy. Teaching became one of the more stable career fields. Kids have to go to school and someone has to teach them. Interest in education job fairs increased. Those in education began seeking alternative certifications to broaden the possibility of landing teaching jobs in areas where there are more openings. And the shortage quickly turned into a glut.

The teacher shortage alarmists may ultimately get their wish, because prospective teachers won’t fall for it twice. The next time we need teachers, we may be the ones who are rejected.

Alabama Education Association executive secretary Paul Hubbert has been snoozing since 1991, and thinks we need to nip these newfangled charter schools in the bud.

Here’s a list of other things from 1991 that Hubbert thinks won’t last:

* U.S. Presidential candidate Bill Clinton.

* The independent nations of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia, Russia, Croatia, Slovenia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Macedonia, Tajikistan, Armenia, Turkmenistan, and a unified Germany.

* A Dow Jones Industrial Average above 3,000.

* U.S. Supreme Court Justice nominee Clarence Thomas.

* Comedy Central.

* Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez, Jamie Foxx, Adam Sandler and The Jerry Springer Show.

* The World Wide Web.