On the Seattle Children's Levy

Seattle is running a new levy to pay for services in the schools: remedial programs, intervention programs, early learning programs, etc. Spokane has a similar version on the ballot, too.

I wish them both well. The struggle that I have with levies like these, though, is that they're designed to circumvent the current 28% levy lid that school districts are allowed to ask for. By having these additional levies run by outside groups you can pour that much more additional money into the schools, which is great for those schools but only makes the disparity between the very richest and the very poorest that much greater.

If levy equalization goes away this session you'll see that chasm get even wider as property-poor districts lose one of their major funding sources while property-rich districts move along with their lifted lids and supplemental levies.

Education is a resource game.

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The Rich Get Richer

So we had this bill in the legislature, 2893.

It lifted the levy lid, what school districts can raise themselves, from 24% to 28%.

It also lifted the levy equalization percentage, which benefits property-poor school districts, from 12% to 14%.

It was also written in such a way that if the increase in levy equalization wasn't funded, then the increase in the levy lid wouldn't be valid either.

Governor Gregoire used a line-item veto to take that away.

Now levy equalization for property-poor districts is being threatened with a 3% to 5% cut for the coming school year.

Property-rich districts, though, will still be able to ask voters for more and more levy dollars, while property-poor districts watch the one lifeline they have get frayed away.

There are two Americas. It's hard to tell that Governor Gregoire really gives a damn about the one I'm in.

Even beyond basic school levies, though, are programs like the Families and Education Levy in Seattle and the proposed Children's Investment Fund in Spokane where the levies are run through the city instead of the schools, meaning millions of extra dollars for programs for kids. I don't begrudge them their success, but see the title of this post.

More from KPLU here and the Everett Herald here.

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You Call It a Class A Felony, I Call It Making the Most of a Bad Budget Situation

Seattle high-school drug counselor indicted:

A drug-and-alcohol-intervention specialist at Seattle's Rainier Beach High School has been indicted on a charge of selling narcotics, at least once leaving the school campus in the middle of the day to make drug deals, according to documents unsealed Friday in U.S. District Court.

Robert Henry Smith, 59, a district employee since 1992 and a drug-intervention counselor at Rainier Beach for the past 12 years, pleaded not guilty to a five-count indictment alleging he and another man — a convicted federal drug felon — were selling the powerful narcotic oxycodone.

What you have there is a drug-and-alcohol-intervention specialist who knows his job inside out and upside down.

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You Know What This School Needs? KIPP! Or Maybe a Charter.

Seattle Police were called to a middle school graduation on Capitol Hill last night when a melee broke out after off-duty officers tried to arrest a teenage girl.

Just before 6pm last night, off-duty officers working Meany Middle School graduation ceremony spotted a 16-year-old girl who had previously been trespassed from the building.

Police say the officers attempted to arrest the girl when another 14-year-old girl jumped in and attacked one of the officers. Police called for backup and arrested both teens.

(via)

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The AFL-CIO-SEIU-NEA?

Could be something, could be nothing, but it's certainly worth watching. From a New York Time article on how the AFL-CIO is looking to heal from its recent schism and become one big labor union again:

One somewhat surprising attendee was Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, which, with 3.2 million members, is the nation’s largest labor union, but has traditionally remained outside any larger labor federations.

A couple of years ago the Seattle EA affiliated with the AFL-CIO, though I'm not sure that much ever came of that alliance. If any of the Seattle teachers out there have thoughts, I'd love to read them.

Oh, and Eduwonk beat me to this.

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A Few Brief Thoughts on the Sonics Leaving

I hate to see them go, but I’m glad to see them gone.

In the early-to-mid ‘90s I was a huge Sonics fan. Kemp, Peyton, McMillan, Schrempf, Scheffler—I loved them all. When I graduated from high school in 1996 the Sonics were playing the Bulls in the NBA finals, and I have vivid memories of riding the bus on my senior class trip and listening to Dennis frickin’ Rodman goad Frank Brickowski because Rodman was a jerk and Frank was an easy target.

Damn you, Rodman.

I’d grown away from the Sonics since then, mostly by virtue of being on the wrong side of the state. Watching from afar the Sonics and the NBA in general, the piece that’s really started to get to me is a simple matter of ethics: David Stern has turned the league into an extortionist operation, gouging cities to make money for the owners that he is beholden to, and it’s sickening to watch.

It wasn’t all that many years ago that we remodeled the Key Arena and had Stern praising it as a wonderful, modern building. Then Clay Bennett comes along, and it’s suddenly a dump. Then Stern says that the Key is beyond any hope of repair and a new building is a must-have for the team to remain; after the team leaves, he issues a statement on how he hopes to bring basketball back to Seattle assuming we renovate the Key for $300 million dollars.

Here on the dairy, we call that bullshit.

What Stern has helped engineer here is a trade of the 13th largest market for the 45th largest, which can’t possibly benefit the league. He’s taken a team from the Northwest, which now has only one other team, and moved it to the South/Midwest, where it will compete for attention with the likes of Dallas, San Antonio, and Houston.

I read that OKC is swelling with civic pride that they are now a major-league city. Good for them. They passed a large tax on themselves to remodel their arena so that it would be acceptable to Bennett and his business partners. That’s great. If having an NBA team means that much to them, then I wish them well as the nee-Sonics struggle to win 30 games.

I’m even more proud of Seattle in general and the state as a whole, though, for saying no. Stern is a bully of the worst sort, a politician in the worst sense of the word, and a hypocrite without compare. We know that he doesn’t truly care about the cities, or the players, or even the product—his interest is in making sure that his owners make all the money they can, even if that means taking it from taxpayers.

Seattle is not a worse city for losing the NBA. Seattle is a cancer patient that just had the tumor removed, and I would be just as happy if it never grows back. I hope that House Speaker Frank Chopp and whoever the next Governor is continue to say no to public funding for a new arena, and at the same time I wish Steve Ballmer well as he works on getting one privately financed.

David Stern and the NBA have shown their true colors. We must be vigilant the next time he oozes into town selling his snake oil, because it truly is venom.

Screw you, Stern.

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Around the State!

TV Washington is missing the boat by not putting the Seattle School Board meetings live on air. There's more drama there than there is on Lost.

Sidebar: Why can't TVW get on DirecTV and Dish? If they can give us our local channels, shouldn't they be able to give us TVW?

And now, in tribute to Eduwonk, a parade of potential Teacher Darwin Awards:

• First up we have the English teacher who told his kids he wanted to take them out, line them up, and shoot them all. Oddly enough, he's retiring.
  
• Then there's the kindergarten teacher accused of picking up a kid by the neck to get him away from a computer. Take a look at the comments section; there's probably more to the story here than meets the eye.
  
• The "Go to Hell, Go Straight to Hell" Award to Scott Riley, arrested for molesting an 11-year old student. At a previous job he became intimate with a 17 year old, then married her. They hauled him out of the school in handcuffs.
  
• Finally, we have Matthew Wakabayashi, a Spokane high school teacher, who used his school computer to order hardcore porn and used panty hose. I didn't even know there was a market!

I think the story of the Vader School closing is fascinating; if I was a journalist, it'd definitely be book material. The Cowlitz Tribe offered to play Dr. Frankenstein and breathe life back into the district, if only for a year, but (wisely, I think) they turned it down.

SVC Alumnus has a long post about HB2079, the WEA-sponsored bill relating to how union dues can or can't be used for political means. See also Sound Politics.

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Juxtaposition and Counterbalance

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

The Seattle teachers union joined forces Friday with the AFL-CIO in a move to bolster its leverage in debates on health care, pensions, education and other public policies.

As part of the move, the Seattle Education Association, which represents 5,500 Seattle Public Schools teachers and staff members, joined the Martin Luther King Jr. County Labor Council, gaining a role in the council's political activities, such as evaluating political candidates.

"We have a lot that we can work on together," said Maggie Crain, the union's associate executive director.

If teachers strike, they could gain more help from the broader labor movement. Other unions, for example, could be more likely to honor a Seattle Education Association picket line.

Compare that to this from the mission statement for the Teachers Union Reform Network, of which the Seattle Education Association is a member:

TURN (Teacher Union Reform Network) is a union-led effort to restructure the nation's teachers' unions to promote reforms that will ultimately lead to better learning and higher achievement for American's children. TURN will rely on models drawn from a variety of research, internal initiatives, and the experience of some industrial trade unions which have been forced to begin to transform themselves.

TURN members, 21 presidents of large AFT and NEA locals, recognize that reversing a century of hostile labor relations and replacing them with a compact that says "we are all in this together," will be difficult. But, succeeding in this new and unpredictable environment can only be assured by the mutual effort of administrators, union leaders and teachers, and the creation of a new social framework to hold it together.

So on one hand we have the idea that it's good to join up with the AFL-CIO because it gives them more leverage in the next strike. On the other, we're talking about putting the old unionism behind us and marching bravely towards a new tomorrow.

Methinks the SEA has gone bipolar.

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