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

In Arizona, a joint legislative study committee began work to “provide a consolidation and unification model” for school districts.

“The ultimate goal is to find ways to bring more money into the classroom and raise teacher salaries,” said state Rep. John Fillmore, R-Apache Junction, who authored the bill.

Want to bring more money into the classroom? Stop funding committees and studies on ideas that, whatever their other merits, don’t save money.

Don’t take my word for it. Check out Maine, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Mississippi, Delaware, Kansas, Georgia and Vermont.

This weekend we’ll be treated to the Save Our Schools rally in Washington, DC. Various individuals and groups are involved but we are told in bold face type: “We stand united by one belief – it’s time for teachers and parents to organize and reclaim control of our schools.”

Reclaim control from whom, exactly? The group’s demands reference “an end to political and corporate control of curriculum, instruction and assessment decisions for teachers and administrators.”

In support of this goal, the rally has called upon noted public school classroom teachers such as Matt Damon, Richard Dreyfuss, Jon Stewart, Tom Chapin, Diane Ravitch and Alfie Kohn, as well as the usual parent organizations, such as the Freedom Socialist Party, Radical Women and 56 labor unions.

If not for the Washington Teachers Union, whatever would we do for entertainment?

In 2003, we had the Barbara Bullock scandal.

In 2006, we learned WTU office manager Gwendolyn Hemphill was being stalked by the Zuni Fetish Warrior from a ’70s-era TV movie.

In 2008, then-WTU vice president Nathan A. Saunders accused then-president George Parker and a handful of other WTU officials of embezzlement and racketeering.

Last year, Saunders challenged and defeated Parker for the WTU presidency, but not before the election prompted an attempt by AFT to impose an administratorship, which was blocked by court order.

Now Saunders has suspended without pay vice president (and popular blogger) Candi Peterson for walking out of a meeting.

Peterson told The Washington Examiner that Saunders “verbally abused” her and spoke  to her “like how you would talk to a dog.”

“We’re a union, we represent people, but here we are reprimanding someone without any type of progressive discipline, discussion, or dialogue,” she said. “We would fight against the very same thing if it happened to one of our members.”

We all know that the assessment for NEA’s Ballot Measure/Legislative Crises and Media Campaign Funds will increase this year from $10 per member to $20 per member.

That is, except for members of the Virginia Education Association, who received a deferral for one year. The reason is unclear, although VEA has suffered significant membership losses.

They will have to make up the difference over the following four years, paying an assessment of $22.50 per member until 2016.

Click here to read:

1) Coming This Fall: NEA Media Barrage

2) Last Week’s Intercepts

3) Quote of the Week

When Ohio Gov. John Kasich signed SB 5, a new law restricting public sector collective bargaining, plans were already underway to place the question as a referendum on the state ballot. Unions put together a campaign, named it We Are Ohio, and set out to gather the 231,150 signatures needed to accomplish the task.

And there can be no doubt they were hugely successful. They ultimately delivered a state record 1.3 million signatures to easily qualify the referendum. The number was so large, it became the lead story in the state press, it was trumpeted by the National Education Association, and became the focus of We Are Ohio‘s web presence.

This week, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted announced SB 5 would appear on the November ballot, and released the results of its validation process. Husted said “more than 915,000 of the signatures were valid.”

915,000?

While still greatly exceeding the threshold to qualify the measure, more than one of every four signatures gathered by the “10,000 volunteers and some paid workers” were invalid.

The secretary of state’s worklog reveals the breakdown of valid and invalid signatures for each of Ohio’s 88 counties. Some of the largest counties had some of the highest percentages of invalid signatures.

Of the 159,946 signatures submitted from Franklin County, 48,972 were invalid (30.6%). In Lucas County, 34.4% of the signatures were invalid. In Cuyahoga County, 36.2% were invalid, and in Hamilton County 49.9% were invalid.

The only basis for the state to invalidate a signature is that the person signing is not a registered voter of the county in which the signatures were gathered. This happened almost 352,000 times.

Certain elements in Chicago are losing their minds over the decision of Mayor Rahm Emanuel to send his children to the private University of Chicago Laboratory Schools instead of a city public school. Typical was a headline from Chicagoist: “Spawn of Rahm Not Attending Public School in Fall.”

Asked to comment, Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis laid it on thick:

“We understand why he would choose a school with small class sizes; a broad, rich curriculum that offers world languages, the arts and physical education; a focus on critical thinking, not test-taking; a teacher and an assistant in every elementary classroom; and paid, high-quality professional development for their teacher. It’s wonderful that he has that option available to him.”

I’m not sure what’s making Lewis so gassy. Teachers at the Lab Schools are unionized and represented by AFT Local 2063. The school’s director seems to crib his talking points from CTU anyway.

Lab Schools teacher salaries start at $44,885 for 2011-12, topping out at $99,208. Chicago public school teachers start at $49,159, topping out at $93,227. Apparently the only difference between them is that the Lab Schools take in pricey tuitions ($24,000 annually) and don’t apply the extra money to the teacher salary schedule. No wonder they have small class sizes and assistant teachers.