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

Having found that their traditional political might was insufficient to smite the Amalekites in the Wisconsin capitol, labor unions are turning to the only entity even more powerful and vengeful – the God of the Old Testament:

Capitol Weekly‘s latest Top 100 List is out (well, the top 50 anyway). The newspaper of California government and politics annually lists “the top influence peddlers, power brokers and political players in California.” Elected officials do not make the list.

Topping the list is Anne Gust Brown, the governor’s wife. In second place is Joe Nuñez. Who is Joe Nuñez?

The California Teachers Association remains the most powerful single interest in the state and Joe Nuñez moves the CTA’s power around. His official title is associate executive director for government relations, but what he really does is back the teachers’ political friends and punish their enemies – and they have a lot of both. The CTA, which represents some 340,000 teachers, was instrumental in helping Brown get elected, and since then they have fought on his behalf, including statewide radio spots opposing budget cuts. He’s sort of the Avis Rent-a-Car of Capitol Weekly’s 100 List – he’s always No. 2.

It might make sense that Nuñez is second during the term of a Democratic governor, but he was also second last year, during a GOP term.

However, we might finally have found the upper limit of CTA’s power and influence in the state Capitol. If reaching No. 1 requires sleeping with the governor, it’s probably a bridge too far.

From those evil rich corporate union-busting swine in… Massachusetts?

Kathleen Casasa has been the president of the Portland (Maine) Education Association for about 20 years. But for the last five years, she has worked full-time for the union and spent no time in the classroom. The members paid 80 percent of her $94,000 salary while the district picked up 20 percent.

But times are tough and the district found itself needing to make cuts when contract negotiations came around. Casasa and her bargaining team agreed to significant concessions – reducing professional development raises and agreeing to add five teaching days to the calendar with no additional pay.

What did the teachers get in return? It’s hard to say, but the union got the district to pick up an additional 60 percent of Casasa’s salary.

In light of the concessions made by teachers, Casasa said, the arrangement is a way to control union dues. “The job is to be the (union) president,” she said, “not to somehow service the district.”

According to the Maine Education Association, Casasa is the only K-12 full-time release union president in the state.

The teachers approved the contract, and it appears certain the city council will follow suit, though some have questioned the arrangement with Casasa.

“It’s strange to have someone on our payroll who is not going to be reviewed by city staff,” said councilor David Marshall. “(But) it would be out of bounds for us to say what the school board and superintendent can do in their negotiations.”

Click here to read:

1) The National Education Association and State Affiliates: A $1.5 Billion Annual Enterprise

2) Last Week’s Intercepts

3) Quote of the Week

From Counterpunch:

Teachers’ union activists in Chicago are contending with their union president’s decision to back legislation that all but bans them from striking and makes major concessions to the corporate education “reform” agenda…. Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) President Karen Lewis shocked members of the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE), a reform group that was the backbone of her candidacy last year, by personally giving the union’s endorsement for sweeping legislation that, among other things, severely restricts teachers’ right to strike, undermines seniority protections for Illinois teachers outside Chicago, and increases the school day without a guaranteed increase in pay.

To make matters worse, Lewis, a founding member of CORE, failed to report that she had already signed off on the legislation when she spoke to union delegates in a videoconference April 13, the day after she agreed to the legislation.

I’m stunned! No, not really.

Last October, Honolulu Civil Beat wanted to discover how many teachers and principals in the state had been fired or disciplined for either misconduct or poor performance. Its reporter ultimately learned that 10 teachers (out of 12,000) had been fired for misconduct in the last two years. What it took to extract that information from the state Department of Education is a lesson in itself.

We originally asked for all personnel actions dealing with teachers and principals over the last five years. The department said it would not fulfill our request because it did not keep such records in the fashion in which we were requesting them.

Then we narrowed the request and asked only for the number of teachers who had been fired from the Department of Education in the past five years. Again the department said it didn’t have the information in the form in which we requested it.

Because teachers who receive “unsatisfactory” evaluations are eligible for termination, we then asked how many teachers received marginal or unsatisfactory evaluations in the 2009-2010 school year; how many of those led to a grievance process; and how many of those were ultimately terminated. The department said it couldn’t provide such a record because it didn’t maintain the data in the fashion in which we were requesting it.

Finally, in November, we asked for a summary of the written decisions related to employment misconduct that resulted in an employee’s suspension or discharge.

It was only then that the department complied, turning over in March for a fee of $170 a two-page spreadsheet that gave the school year, the date of each action, name of teacher, district, school, allegation (it was always one word: “misconduct”) and the resulting action (“termination” or “suspensions”). No details were provided about the length of suspension or the reason.

It took almost six months and $170 just to find out how many teachers had been fired. Little wonder the actual practice is so rare.