The Clark County Education Association is looking to hire a new bookkeeper/accountant. Applicants will be expected to handle all payroll matters.

Ha ha ha ha!

Am I the only one who sees the irony in the American Federation of Teachers bellyaching about people using teachers’ money for causes they might not support?

Members of the Hawaii State Teachers Association overwhelmingly approved a four-year contract that creates a new teacher evaluation system, half of which will be based on student growth.

It didn’t come cheaply. The agreement restores a five percent pay cut from 2009, and teachers will receive a 3.2 percent salary increase each of the next three years. There’s a salary re-opener clause for 2014, and the state will go back to paying 60 percent of health insurance premiums. All told, the contract is estimated to cost $330 million.

The new performance evaluations won’t go into effect for all teachers until July 2015.

Dateline – Chicago:

The president of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) announced she will join a coalition of organizations and activists who are fed up with the status quo and want to change the face of City Hall and the General Assembly – literally. Karen Lewis said because the mayor, some members of the City Council and some members of the Illinois General Assembly have failed to listen to the voices of thousands of parents, educators, students, school employees and activists on school closings, a “comprehensive voter registration and education campaign is now underway.”

…Lewis said CTU and others will…Host political education forums, as well as trainings for candidates for mayor, City Council and statewide offices.

We’ve obtained video of Lewis describing the union’s strategy. Enjoy!

If the Wall Street Journal can recycle the notion that teachers’ unions are suddenly making a push to organize charter school employees, I can recycle my response from two years ago, when it was the New York Times who had the “scoop.”

I’ll reset the clock for April 2015, when I expect this will next crop up. In the meantime, keep this in mind:

Charter schools that unionize through employee vote are a rarity [5% of charters], which might explain why such occurrences always get media play. Worrying about this becoming a trend or a movement is a waste of time and emotion. Just from a practical standpoint, unions will not spend money and manpower to organize a handful of teachers at a single charter school. If they have designs on increasing membership through charter employees, it’s much more likely to happen through a state mandate.

Horrible news today, but even worse for the group of Newtown, Connecticut parents who were running in the race in memory of the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre.

As I write this, the Boston Police Department is reporting 2 dead and 23 injured. Keep them all in your thoughts and prayers.

UPDATE: Newtown Patch reporting Sandy Hook parents who ran in Boston Marathon are safe.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported that Wisconsin Education Association Council executive director Dan Burkhalter will step down in July, about the same time that WEAC president Mary Bell finishes her final term. “We don’t have any further details we can share,” a union spokesperson said.

It should normally send up red flags when the union acts cagey about the resignation of its top staffer, but it looks pretty straightforward this time. Burkhalter has worked for NEA affiliates in Illinois and Wisconsin for 31 years. WEAC is in bad shape, many of the employees were laid off, and with a new president on the horizon, it just looks like good timing.

It will be interesting to see whether the turnover in leadership positions speeds up or slows down the merger process with AFT-Wisconsin.