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

At the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers, you can lose your re-election to union office and still hold onto your seat.

UPDATE: “It’s undemocratic. There hasn’t been any chance to unseat an incumbent for years, and now we have, and we feel that our votes have been made irrelevant.” – Dale Moss, newly elected to the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers executive board.

In the latest example of shooting yourself in the public relations foot, we hear from Hardy L. Brown, publisher of Black Voice News, a weekly newspaper in Riverside, California. Mr. Brown recounts how the California Teachers Association approaches community outreach:

For the past couple of years, California Black Media, a coalition of 22 African American newspapers across the state founded by myself and co-publisher Cheryl Brown, has sponsored a summit in Sacramento on various issues that impact the Black community. We invite experts on various topics to be a part of the panels so we can become better informed to educate our readers. This year the topics were “Crisis In Our Schools” and “Contracting With Our Small Businesses.”

Invitations were sent to select organizations to request that a high ranking policy maker represent that organization on the education panel and the CTA did not respond in a timely manner so we moved ahead. Working on a tight deadline to print the program and alert our readers of the event, we completed the process without CTA. CTA then contacted us and wanted to get on the panel and we said no. Our decision was no because it was too late.

This response sparked a threat from them as they reminded us about their advertising with Black Voice News in the past.

This incident happened at a time when I was reminiscing about my fiftieth year anniversary of graduating from segregated Jones High School in North Carolina. It was fifty years ago that I graduated from Jones High School in North Carolina with fond memories of my all Black teaching staff.

They, along with the community, had taught us that teachers were on par with preachers, doctors and lawyers. Fifty years later, I still believe that, but organizations that represent teachers have lost their way from the children they teach and have focused more time and money on bullying people who don’t agree with them.

…The CTA staff had researched their files and found out they had placed advertising with us as if that transaction bought our loyalty. Little did I know, this is why they purchased the space. I thought they had a message they wanted to share with the Black community. Now I have discovered their real motive. I have also found that to be true because they withdrew their funding from a branch of the NAACP in Los Angeles when the branch didn’t support their agenda.

Well I have news for CTA, and that is, my father taught me to be ready to move off of the sharecropping farm because when you disagree with the master, or he gets a burr in his pants, you might have to part company.

And then there was Sacramento Bee associate editor Ginger Rutland, who received a call from a CTA phone-banker:

Then, without giving me a chance to respond, she immediately launched into her scripted spiel – essentially a long denunciation of the California Legislature in general and Senate President Pro Tempore Darrell Steinberg, specifically, for cutting support to California schools.

…When the CTA’s breathless paid caller finished her script, she asked me if I would like her to transfer me to Sen. Darrell Steinberg’s office so I could tell him myself how outraged I was. I told her that I’d rather be transferred to CTA union bosses. I wanted to tell them how outraged I was that the union was throwing younger teachers under the bus so that senior teachers wouldn’t have to raise their co-pay for a doctors office visit from measly $1 to $15, which is more in line with what most of the rest of the world pays.

…When I called Steinberg’s office the next day I learned that they had gotten between 600 and 700 calls from people who were transferred to their office in the same way that I was about to be. Some clearly bought the CTA’s line and blamed Steinberg for education cuts. Many others were confused and wanted to know why Steinberg’s office was calling them. And a substantial number were senior citizens who didn’t want to be bothered.

Rank and file teachers, I have a question for you: Is this really how you want your dues spent?

Big Joe Henry hosts a fundraiser for the troops

Big Joe Henry is a DJ on New Jersey 101.5 radio, just like radio personalities in every city in the United States, except Big Joe has a bigger heart than most. He collected toys and, dressed as Santa Claus, took them to Louisiana and delivered them to the kids affected by Hurricane Katrina. He raised funds for the families of New Jersey National Guard troops and hosted a welcome home rally when those troops returned from the Middle East last year.

The Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank asked Big Joe to host the Basie Awards, which annually recognizes achievement in the performing arts by high school students in Monmouth County. Big Joe agreed to do it for free.

Some local teachers decided this was an outrage, apparently because other shows on 101.5 feature hosts who support New Jersey Gov. Christie and the Republican agenda. They threatened to boycott/protest the event. Regina McAllen, a music teacher at Howell High School, met with the theater CEO Numa C. Saisselin and asked that Big Joe be removed as host. In a letter to Saisselin written after that meeting, McAllen wrote:

I would first like to let you know that I have never stated not meant to indicate that Big Joe Henry has spoken out against public education nor been unsupportive of the arts.

However, the company that signs Big Joe Henry’s paycheck has a very clear agenda, which is evident from their choice of hosts and the topics that they discuss on a daily basis. To even suggest that NJ 101.5 is a fair and balanced source of media is ludicrous – its Republican agenda is consistent and unwavering, with a unified vision that demeans public education and educators.

…I simply cannot laugh, applaud and celebrate arts achievement while we advertise for a radio station that has been directly responsible for the demise of arts opportunities for students.

Rather than cause a distraction at the student awards, Big Joe voluntarily stepped down as host. One editorial writer called this “guilt by association,” but for that to applicable there would have to be guilt. Opposing school budgets on the radio isn’t a crime, yet. Nor is it beyond the pale, since the majority of school budgets were defeated by the voters of New Jersey. It’s poetic justice that the New Jersey Education Association is bearing the brunt of the blowback, even though it had no hand in the matter.

The union recognized what an ill-advised move this was. NJEA communications director Steve Wollmer called the radio station to say “the NJEA leadership did not order or authorize the threatened boycott of the Basie Awards at the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank.”

Fans of Big Joe have set up two Facebook pages - ”BIG JOE HENRY cares more about kids than the NJEA!” and “Reinstate Big Joe Henry as the host of the 2010 Basie Awards.”

I didn’t get a chance to watch the Law & Order series finale, but this clip from a scene at the headquarters of the Teachers Union of New York makes me think they did their homework.

I guess that actor just looked like the head of the NY City teachers’ union.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a clip of the scene where “Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston) got to unleash a vintage harangue on an uncooperative teachers union lawyer.”

Click here to read:

1) NEA Organizes EduJobs Call-In Blitz for Wednesday

2) Do Early Retirements Actually Save Money?

3) Minnesota Teachers to Receive Pay to Write College Recommendations for Students

4) Cure for Union Apathy: Contested Elections

5) New York Judges Court Teachers’ Union

6) Florida Education Association Endorses Crist and Meek

7) Scheduling Note

8) Last Week’s Intercepts

9) Quote of the Week

While shooting the season finale, the producers of Law & Order were unaware that NBC was about to cancel the long-running hit television series. Otherwise I’m sure they would have chosen a different story for the show’s swan song.

The plot of the finale centers around New York City’s rubber rooms. The villain is an anonymous blogger who threatens to blow up a city school. One plot element features “a site in which city teachers gossip about their jobs.” Edublogging makes the big time!

And there’s a teachers’ union subplot. The detectives visit the headquarters of the fictional “Teachers Union of New York” and interview an administrative assistant who turns out to be a key witness in the case. The role is played by Olympic Alpine skier Lindsey Vonn, who has been doing interviews about her role all week. Apparently the union honchos have something to hide, but Vonn points the detectives in the right direction.