Working in Concert

Exhibit 1: An op-ed piece from the Seattle Times written by Mary Alice Heuschel, formerly of OSPI and now the Superintendent of the Renton School District. The last paragraph:

As a state, Washington must support educators who help our children learn, grow and succeed. It is the key to our future.

Exhibit 2: A letter in the Kent Reporter, placed there by one Dan Morris of Stand for Children and signed on to by the Kent School Board. The sign off?

As a state, Washington must support educators who help our children learn, grow and succeed. It is the key to our future.

Organization--it's everywhere you look.

Read more here, if any.

Washington Education Week #8: More News That's Bad News Edition

We've just about reached the halfway point of the legislative session, and it's shaping up to be a beaut. I've got $5 that says they don't finish on time; any takers?

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Item #1: The Tax Man Co....you know what, that's been done. Wednesday's vote to suspend I-960 made for some great viewing on TV Washington this morning as Ross Hunter's House Finance Committee took it up. On one side the Taxed Enough Already believers; on the other, an alliance of social service advocates.

As the always excellent Bill Lyne of Western Washington University points out, though, talking about how to raise taxes revenue is pretty meaningless until they get the votes together to do it, and I'm not sure how long it will take them to get there.

Or consider my favorite issue, levy equalization. Everyone agrees that LEA is important and we need to keep that lifeline available for property-poor school districts, but with the budget deficit ballooning to $2.8 billion dollars you would either have to cut $142 million dollars from somewhere else to save LEA, or you have to come up with that much more revenue, particularly if they do raise the levy lid (see below).

In short, even if they do suspend I-960 and get more income coming in, there are still going to be cuts, and they could be pretty terrible for the schools. Speaking as a union president who lost 5 jobs last year, I'm terrified of what the future could bring. Calculated Risk says that there could still be a layoff crisis coming in the states; will Washington teachers be a part of that?

(Aside: over at Sound Politics, Stefan Sharkansky blames part of the deficit on teacher union contracts, because apparently the budget office didn't understand how exactly layoffs work. #1, that says a lot about the stupidity of the people who put the budget together if they don't understand who gets laid off. #2, any time you brush even remotely close to an argument for laying off the most highly paid teachers first, union guys like me win. I'm looking at you, Marguerite Roza.)

(Aside #2: Threatening to kill your legislators isn't a really effective way to make your point.)

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Item #2: On the other hand, the People seem to be OK with school taxes. It was a great day for levies statewide on Tuesday. My own district passed a $17 million dollar bond measure which will allow us to add on to two buildings and close down a third, and that was the story all over. More from the Senate Democrats here and the League of Education Voters here.

The simple majority made a difference, as the LEV points out. 66 levy issues passed with between 50% and 60% yes, including 49 of the all-important M&O levies. More from the Washington Education Association, including a wider look at the revenue picture, here and Goldy at Horse's Ass here.

I also note that Kent passed two different levies, which is important given that they had a painful strike this past fall. Bellevue, who had their significant troubles in the fall of 2008, passed their levy with a 66% yes vote. For all the talk about strikes turning communities against teachers, it hasn't played out in these two cases. Battle Ground passed their levy as well; they were talking about financial insolvency if they didn't.

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Item #3: What are liberal and democratic values, anyhow? A passel of legislators came out at the end of the week and proposed an increase in the sales tax to help the budget deficit. The Washington Budget and Policy Center says that it could save jobs; the EFF says that it will increase unemployment.

The struggle I'm having is this: in 2003, it was said that Washington State has the absolute most regressive tax system in the country. This was echoed just last November and during the debate on I-1033. While I certainly don't want to see these cuts to eldercare, children's health, and public education, taking the money to save those programs out of the hides of those who can least afford it feels like terrible, terrible public policy, especially when you take the unemployment rates into consideration as well.

If we, by which I mean progressives, are trading on our values for 30 pieces of silver, then we've already lost the discussion.

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Item #4: Putting the Equality back in Levy Equalization. Levy Equalization has the profile that it does here in Washington primarily thanks to the work of one man: Neal Kirby, a former legislator from the 7th who now serves as a school principal in Centralia. If you've read an article about levy equalization, it's probably from Neal Kirby. If you've gotten an email about levy equalization, it's probably from Neal Kirby. He's one of the most gifted and passionate organizers you're ever going to find on any issue, and those of us in property-poor school districts all owe him a debt of gratitude.

That said, HB2893 is a divisive piece of legislation. It raises the levy lid from 24% to 28%, while at the same time raising the state's percentage of levy equalization from 12% to 14%. In Neal's reasoning that only widens the disparity between rich and poor districts, and he's absolutely correct. Here in my portion of Eastern Washington only 7 out of 60 area districts would benefit from the lid lift, but they would benefit to the tune of millions upon millions of dollars, and that's an awfully hard thing to walk away from.

What's interesting is that, while there were members of the House who voted against the bill because of the equity issue, none of them offered amendments to fix that problem. That seems odd. Further, there is a fiscal note attached to the bill--it'll cost another $26 million in this bienium--and while that seems small given the $2.8 billion dollar hole we're facing, it's not chump change either.

This is perhaps the most important fight of this legislative session, especially given how many school districts are already on the financial brink. More from the PSE of Washington here and the Seattle PI here.

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Item #5: Judge Doran Erlick says that the state is underfunding education; the state says, "Yes, we know" and carries on unabated. Long ago, on February 4th, King County Superior Court Judge John Erlick looked at all the accumulated evidence, analyzed where the state says that the schools need to be, and said, "Well, duh, you're obviously underfunding education."

Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown (D-Spokane) popped up on TV Washington the night of the decision, and after they got her a booster seat she stared down Austin Jenkins and said, "Yep, the schools are underfunded!" A bunch of other legislators (notably, Ross Hunter and Skip Priest) issued statements saying, "Good Golly, we sure are verklempt about all that underfunding!" Everyone seems to agree, sure enough, that the schools are underfunded.

But, as Goldy points out, whinging without working isn't going to do anything to solve the problem we're looking at. Austin Jenkins makes much the same point over at Crosscut. Randy Dorn, who is an ineffectual idiot, can stand tall and yell to the heavens that this is a landmark decision, but when OSPI is pissing away hundreds of thousands of dollars on consultants and unproven programs, he doesn't have any sort of moral authority on the issue.

The Northwest Education Law Center here, The Advance here, The League of "Education" Voters here and here, and a useful Google search here.

(Aside: It feels like Governor Gregoire is backing next Governor Rob McKenna into a bit of a corner here; if he doesn't appeal the decision he's got the state on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars in new spending, which isn't exactly going to play well to his base. If he does appeal the decision, he loses a lot of his credibility as a centrist. Could be a fun dynamic to watch.)

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Bits and pieces:

• I laughed. Then, I laughed again.
  
  
• Watching the State Senate when Sen. Rosa Franklin is serving as President Pro Tem is mind-numbing.
  
  
• Music teachers are meeting in Yakima this weekend, and they're not too concerned with the state budget according to the article. Also in Yakima, they're closing the School for the Arts. Just sayin'.
  
  
• I don't know much about Maria Goodloe-Johnson as a superintendent, but I do know that she's got to be one of the most politically tone deaf people in the business today.
  
  
• Mike Antonucci hates school consolidation.

Read more here, if any.

It's All Your Fault

In the Kent strike, as with any strike, the teacher's beef is with administration.

Meanwhile, the Kent School District is part of the NEWS lawsuit seeking more funding from the state, thus putting the blame on the legislators.

Senator Claudia Kauffman, of both Kent and the Senate Education Committee, puts the blame back on the district.

Humorless hack Mike Antonucci blames the color orange. The News Tribune blames the economy. Liv Finne, who makes being a blogger quite easy, blames everybody but taxpayers. Publicola finds a way to blame PETA.

Personally, I blame Greg Nickels. That seems to be the thing to do.

Read more here, if any.

An Aside from the Kent Teacher's Strike

A couple of days ago on the Kent School Districts web page there was a brief update on negotiations, saying that the Kent EA had failed to show up to that day's mediation session. Pretty damning, if true.

What the KSD didn't point out, and which the Kent EA subsequently did, was that was the day that the two sides were in court making their arguments about the injunction the Kent SD had filed for to end the strike.

Making it sound like one side didn't show up on a lark, and publishing that information as truth on your publicly-funded website, sure doesn't feel like good faith negotiating.

Read more here, if any.

Tom Vander Ark, Keen Observer of Bizarro World

This is one of the most nonsensical things I've read in a while:

Who owns Washington? In Washington State the answer is clear--the Washington Education Association. They dragged their feet in hundreds of districts and called strikes in a couple districts last night just to screw up the first day of school.

Riiiiiiiiiiiight. In an environment where the WEA is at open odds with Democratic legislators, where levy equalization and class size reduction money was cut out of the budget, and where HB2261 passed into law despite a full-court press from the WEA, you're going to try to sell the line that the WEA runs Washington?

Denying reality doesn't change reality, and anyone who is still trying to portray the WEA as an all-powerful, omnipotent entity is certainly out of touch with reality.

In Kent, a Seattle suburb, the WEA welcomed a great new superintendent, Dr. Vargas, to town with a strike. Kent is a well run district where the previous superintendent served with distinction for a decade. Unfortunately, Vargas is receiving familiar treatment; it happened on my first day as superintendent 15 years ago. My kids asked me why they weren't going to school and why there were people with signs in our driveway.

Why yes, Kent is so well run that they trail in almost every metric, and now the KSD's half-assed negotiations strategy has forced a strike.

Even though strikes by public employees are illegal, the WEA picks a few districts in key media markets and runs strikes every year just to remind local and state officials who's really in charge. The Kent strike is supposedly because teachers don't want to meet with their principal more than once a week; they're trying to spin this as 'more time with the children'--please. They also mention class size, but that's a red herring in a state with equalized funding and big budget deficits. This isn't about issues; it's about power.

The WEA can't make a district go out on strike.

The WEA can't make a district go out on strike.

The WEA can't make a district go out on strike.

I made similar comments last year during the Bellevue teacher strike--anyone who thinks that it's an easy thing to get 85% of the membership to say that they're going to stop doing their jobs and walk a picket line is so blindingly ignorant about how unions work that their opinions are irrelevant, even if couched in the language of the "education expert".

Read more here, if any.

A Liv Finne School Wouldn't Be Much of a School At All

Over at Washington Policy Blog from the Washington Policy Center they've got a blogger by the name of Liv Finne. She runs their education policy center and has a ton of ideas that I don't agree with, which is fine because hey, diff'rent strokes and all.

Today, though, her post tied into the Kent teacher's strike is just asinine.

Today, the Seattle Times reports that Lisa Brackin Johnson, president of the Kent teachers' union, has led Kent teachers into striking against their students.

As a local president, I'll personally attest that on something like this the president is more of a follower than a leader. When 86% of the members vote to do something, it's because they want to do it, not because of prompting from their leadership. Liv's attempt to personalize it by calling out Brackin-Johnson by name is silly.

If principals were in charge of their school budget and staffing decisions, teachers would feel that they are connected to, and part of, the important budget decisions that affect them, including the number of students assigned to their classrooms.

This simply must be true, because there has never been a teacher--ever, in all of history--who has disagreed with their principal. Similarly, there has never been a bad principal. The solution is obviously to give them more power, because that's what teachers are clammoring for.

This strike is not only illegal, but entirely unnecessary. Washington's schools receive over $10,000 per student from all state, federal and local sources. Each class of 20 students receives $200,000, which should allow their principals, not a statewide single salary scale, to determine teacher pay, to pay the best teachers up to $100,000, and to take the rest to run the school.

This is a math fail of such magnitude that it's hard to even know where to begin.

Firstly, I wish that she had linked to a source for her $10,000 figure, because the most recent data from OSPI puts the figure at $9,344.

Secondly, as any small school advocate will tell you, if those 20 kids are high schoolers who require an english teacher, a science teacher, and a social studies teacher, you've suddenly spent this mythical $200,000 without even paying the electric bill.

But the real heart of dumbness is in the next paragraph (emphasis mine):

As for the class size complaint so often heard in these strikes, this link from the OSPI website shows that the state funds enough certificated instructors to provide class sizes of 18 students. Too many teachers are simply not teaching, instead drawing salary by reviewing curriculum, administrating, or fulfilling some other less essential function. This link from the OSPI website shows that out of a total of 103,614 public school employees, less than half, or 49,146, are actual elementary or secondary school teachers.

OH MY GOD, ONLY HALF OF SCHOOL EMPLOYEES ARE TEACHERS?!?! SOMEONE CONVENE A TEA PARTY, STAT!

But wait a minute....if it sounds too weird too be true, it just might be. Follow her second link and take a look at that second chart, and look at who Liv says is just "simply not teaching" and "fulfilling some other less essential function":

• 1,240 Librarians
  
• 2,122 Counselors
  
• 989 Speech-Language Pathologists
  
• 888 School Psychologists
  
• 436 School Nurses
  
• 325 Occupational Therapists
  
• 116 Physical Therapists
  
• 5,211 "Other Teachers", which the OSPI defines as "Instructs students in ungraded classes, special education, gifted, disadvantaged, early childhood, home/hospital, and adult education."
  
• 3,339 "Operators", which is the fancy way that OSPI categorizes bus drivers.

....and a host of others, including all of the principals that she wants to give more power to. The numbers above add up to another 14,666 employees who I'd consider pretty important to the operation of a school, not "less essential."

In Liv's world, the Air Force should only have pilots, not mechanics, because it's the pilots who fly the plane, so clearly they're the only resource that matters.

Similarly, Hollywood should fire all the foley artists and FX professionals because it's the actors and the actors alone who make movies what they are. "Lights!" and "Camera!" are only preludes to "Action!", after all.

A hospital can be made up of only general practitioners, because really, that should be enough--who ever needs to see a specialist? Any teacher should be able to handle any reading difficulty, because aren't all learning disabilities pretty much the same?

You're going to walk to the Liv Finne school, because the bus drivers are clearly unimportant. You're not going to get any music, art, or PE at the Liv Finne school, because those aren't classroom teachers. Don't you dare be disabled at the Liv Finne school, because there are no OT or PT specialists to help you, much less the special ed support staff to help make sure that you're acquiring the skills you need. If your dad is an alcoholic and you're thinking of ending your life, you keep that to yourself at the Liv Finne school, because counselors are not teaching.

If you'll excuse me, I'm off to watch the video for "Another Brick in the Wall", because it totally fits what I'm envisioning the Liv Finne school to be.

Read more here, if any.

A Swing and a Miss, EFF Edition

So it's August, and you know what that means--more rightous indignation about the potential for teachers to go out on strike. This post from the EFF's blog is on point, and it lays out the anti-strike position well, even though I'd respectfully disagree with where they're going with it.

At the bottom, though, they really go off the rails when they talk about the Kent School District and their ongoing negotiations with the Kent EA:

If the Kent teachers' union truly cares about the education of the children in that district, it should not strike. Instead, continue to work out problems at the bargaining table. Don't take them out on the students.

Here's the trick--the KEA would like to work those problems out at the table, but it's the District that cut off negotiations and declared an impasse, refusing to interact with the EA any longer.

If Kent gets pushed to the brink, it's going to be the KSD that put the kids in a bad way. They pretty much admit as much in their open letter to the community.

It's going to be an interesting couple of weeks.

Read more here, if any.