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

A great idea, poorly executed.

There are other news stories worth noting in Arizona.

I’ll bet it’s more than 4.2.

Having had their fill of present-day politicians, Californians reached back into the Seventies to elect Jerry Brown as governor. Brown embraced the nostalgia by appointing Bill Honig, the superintendent of public instruction from the Eighties, to the state board of education. Unfortunately for Brown, people remembered why Honig resigned from that position in 1993.

Honig was convicted by a Sacramento Superior Court jury for using state Department of Education funds to finance a project his wife had created to urge parents to get involved in the education of their children. He had served as schools chief from 1983 until the conviction forced his resignation. He was sentenced to four years of probation and 1,000 hours of community service. The charges were later reduced from felonies to misdemeanors.

“You can’t create an omelet without breaking the eggs.” said Brown about possible controversy.

Evidently people weren’t interested in Brown’s California omelet, and Honig withdrew his name from consideration yesterday, without comment.

This is a bummer for me. I covered the state legislature for a small political newsletter in the early Nineties and I still have a folder with Honig-related material from his reign. (Remember “whole language?”)

Now I’ll have to return that stuff to the vault. Still, you can amuse yourself by reading this People magazine profile of Honig from 1983.

“You will literally be fired, whoever you are. You must spend this money.”

- Maura Policelli, U.S. Department of Education’s senior advisor for external affairs, describing what will happen to school officials who don’t spend their stimulus money by the end of next year. (July 27 Thompson)

For the rest of the quotes of the year, click here.

Did you receive your invitation to the U.S. Department of Education’s Conference on Labor-Management Collaboration? Of course not. You’re just a lowly parent of school-age children or a dedicated taxpayer. This shindig is for stakeholders.

Invitations went out today to approximately 2,000 school districts that secured federal funding in the past year under key programs, including Race to the Top, the Teacher Incentive Fund, School Improvement Grants and Investing in Innovation. The Department will randomly select attendees from those who apply but will also ensure diversity in terms of district size and geography.

To attend, the board president, superintendent and teacher union or teacher association leader must all agree to attend the conference. In their RSVP, all attendees must further pledge to “collaboratively develop and implement policies in such areas as: setting strategic direction to advance student achievement and aligning all labor-management work with this overarching focus, including ways to share responsibility and hold each other accountable for results; and more effectively supporting the work of teachers, leaders, and administrators in advancing student achievement by improving such systems and structures as organizing teaching and learning time and schedules, and processes for the hiring, retention, compensation, development, and evaluation of a highly effective workforce.”

The “Union Collaboration Jamboree” will be held February 15-16 in Denver, Colorado. It is being funded by the Ford Foundation, which is pretty funny. Maybe the participants can discuss the Battle of the Overpass.

The last reporter has gone, the press section sits empty except for idle NEA staffers, and the most dramatic debate so far of the 1999 Representative Assembly went unobserved by the nation’s media. 

Only one substantive issue was addressed this morning, and that was the question of loan forgiveness for Education Minnesota, the only fully merged state affiliate of both NEA and AFT. Long-time readers of this communiqué will recall the details of the controversy arising from EM’s merger last September, in violation of NEA rules. EM was in fact disaffiliated from NEA, until votes from the union’s Executive Committee and Board of Directors reaffiliated it under specific guidelines, including the commitment to pay NEA full national dues for the 1998-99 fiscal year for the entire (merged) membership. 

The agreement was for a payment of $2,354,000 (plus interest) to be made over a period of 10 years. This year, EM submitted a new business item asking for that loan to be forgiven. Literally hundreds of delegates on both sides asked to address the issue. A two-hour debate ensued. Judging by the content of the remarks, the debate was less about a $2.3 million loan, and more about the direction toward merger that NEA is taking. 

“I did not hear about the merger of Education Minnesota from my colleagues in Minnesota,” said NEA Board member Kerry Costello from Massachusetts. “I did not hear about it from the president of the NEA. I heard about it in the newspaper.” 

The “for” arguments were carried by Judy Schaubach of EM, John Cyr of NEA Alaska, Eric Feaver of Montana, and Maureen Dinnen of Florida. Montana, New Mexico and Florida have already voted to merge with their AFT counterparts. 

Because the assembly had already agreed to implement the state merger guidelines (more details on that next week), many speakers felt that treating Minnesota differently was both academic and punitive. “I urge you to vote yes on New Business Item 78 and let’s move on,” said California Teachers Association President Wayne Johnson. 

The “against” arguments were carried by many of the same speakers from last year’s Principles of Unity debate: Bob Haisman of the Illinois Education Association, Mary Washington of the Louisiana Association of Educators, and Julius Maddox of the Michigan Education Association. 

Maddox recalled that last year’s RA had agreed that “no state affiliate will merge until guidelines are in place.” He compared the requirement that EM pay its dues to the “tough love” that parents and teachers often administer to children. 

Yet another merger vote came to a roll call. And the results could hardly have been closer. The final tally:

YES – 4,091(49.8%); NO – 4,131 (50.2%). EM will be liable for an additional $240,000 or so per year. As EIA reported early this year, this also is problematic for EM, since it has promised its members that under no circumstances would the merger itself require a dues increase. Generating the funds will be a public relations as well as financial difficulty for EM.

In examining the apparent leanings of state affiliates on this merger-related vote, it was clear that Washington, Wisconsin, Arizona, Oregon, Missouri and the four merging states were still a solid bloc for merger. Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New Jersey, Iowa, Massachusetts, Puerto Rico and Alabama still stand firmly opposed. Pennsylvania and Ohio still seem split. 

The most noticeable changes from last year were the increased numbers from the California delegation who joined with the pro-merger forces, and the very large vote against NBI 78 turned in by the Texas delegation, despite the recent local merger of its Austin affiliate.