My Other Favorite Exchange from Inside Olympia

Sen. Zarelli: "Don't give medical care to illegals."

Rep. Hunter: "You're a moron. That will cost more money in the long run."

Sen. Zarelli: "At least I'm proposing ideas, like closing McNeil Island."

Austin Jenkins: "Should we close Larch Mountain, too?"

Sen. Zarelli: "NO! Also, Walla Walla sucks."

Austin Jenkins: "I think they actually send them to Coyote Ridge, which is new and efficient and awesome."

Sen. Zarelli: "Zip it, pinhead. I'm talking with my hands, which proves my sincerity."

Rep. Hunter: "I support closing everything in Sen. Zarelli's district. This seems fair, and wise."

Sen. Zarelli: "You almost lost an election to Mike the Mover."

Rep. Hunter: "Oh, go to hell."

Austin Jenkins: "Let's talk pensions."

Sen. Zarelli: "You work until 85, then we bill your family for you dying on the job."

Rep. Hunter: "Actually, that sounds about right."

Austin Jenkins: "And that's all the time we have for today. Tune in next week!"

Read more here, if any.

Joe Zarelli: Huh?

Something odd that Sen. Zarelli said in the paper the other day:

“We've made our points on this. We're going to let them do what they're going to do,” said Sen. Joe Zarelli, R-Ridgefield, who is the ranking Republican on the Senate Ways and Means Committee.

Zarelli said the looming deficit might not even exist had Democrats taken his advice to adopt the budget well before April so the cuts would have been in place longer. He's hoping they won't wait to act until the end of the 2010 session.

“The inaction is really what we're paying for,” he said. “The problem we're going to have this budget is probably consistent with savings we passed on by not acting in January 2009.”

Does he really believe that passing a budget in January instead of April would have meant an additional $1.8 billion dollars in savings, especially since some of the savings that were projected haven't happened?

Bizarre.

Read more here, if any.

The Top Washington Education Stories to Watch in 2010 (A WEW Special Edition)

If we were to label the aughts, education wise, I think it would have to be the No Child Left Behind Decade. Education reform took on a tone we've not seen before with the 2002 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and that new-found emphasis on testing, gaps, and school-level accountability was certainly the defining story.

(Aside: We're sadly left to only imagine what a decade-end Bracey Report would have looked like. Dig him or dislike him, the guy was a hell of a writer.)

This decade for the schools is lining up to be every bit as breakneck as the last was, given that we're starting out with a Secretary of Education in Arne Duncan who has more authority than we've ever seen before and we have a financial crisis hovering over the state budget that has the potential to be absolutely transformative, but quite possibly not in a good way.

Here, then, are my top things to watch in the coming year. Come back next Christmas and give me a grade!

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#10: Funding Administrative Fiddling While Rome Burns. I get that I'm just about the only person in the state whining about this, but I'll be damned if the principle isn't the most important thing. When we're talking about cutting kids health care and laying off teachers while AT THE SAME TIME funding internships for principals and leadership camps for superintendents, something has gone seriously wrong in our priorities. If you want to know why I'm so cynical about the Governor's budget boo-hooing, there it is in a nutshell.

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#9: Election 2010. Come the end of the legislative session in March, this is where the action will be.

On the Federal level, Brian Baird stepping aside in the 3rd CD opens up a seat in the House of Representatives, and that has started a stampede. You've got Republican State Sen. Joe Zarelli thinking about it, along with Republican State Representative Richard Debolt and Democratic State Senator Craig Pridemore and a cast of at least 9 others.

It'll be really intersting to see how things shake out, particularly on the GOP side. If Debolt and Zarelli both decided to run (along with Republican State Representative Jaime Hererra, you could have a ton of open seats suddenly appear in Southwest Washington. Zarelli particularly has been the Republican voice on state budget issues for quite some time; losing him wouldn't necessarily be devastating (there's always a replacement to be found), but it would certainly leave a void until the next perosn came along.

Also at the state level you'll have every House seat and half of the Senate seats open this coming November. The general theme seems to be of a Republican resurgence and Democratic downswing, but with the Tea Party Movement saying some fairly provocative things about RINO Republicans, there's potential for some normally-staid primary campaigns to turn bloody--hell, it's already starting with Herrera.

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#8: College Tuitions--Up! The United Faculty of Washington State run a great blog where they talk about higher education issues; one of the writers, Bill Lyne of Western Washington U, is about as well-informed on education issues as you'll ever hope to find, and a dynamic speaker to boot.

In this post they looked at how the Governor's budget would impact higher education. Put that side-by-each with what's going on in California where students are taking over buildings and forming torch-wielding mobs, which is only OK if Frankenstein's monster is on the loose.

So the trick is that, given the proper legislative authority, the colleges can raise tuition enough to ameliorate the impact of state budget cuts. That cost is then borne by the students, many of whom (particularly at the community college level) are struggling with the mortgage and unemployment problems that are effecting society writ large. Having permission to collect the money isn't the same as having the ability to collect the money, and that's what we're seeing in Cali.

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#7: The WEA vs. The LEV: I'm not a fan of the League of Education Voters; as an organization, I think they're far more interested in change for change's sake than they are in actual school reform. The debate over HB2261 proved this to my satisfaction; some of their comments this past summer drive the point home even more clearly.

The two groups came together briefly to beat down Tim Eyman's most recent initiative, but I think that the changes required to qualify for the Race to the Top money are going to open a whole new can of worms. Throw the Washington State PTA, Stand for Children, the PSE, and all the other groups into the mix as well, and this'll be a Battle Royale.

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#6: Financially Failing School Districts: One of the refrains oft-heard this past year was that there were 5 or 6 school district statewide in serious financial straits. If you believe Randy Dorn, that may only get worse. With pension costs set to spike and the future of levy equalization uncertain, I predict that this is the year that you'll see a school district--I'm guessing a mid-size one--drown in its own red ink. And that leads us nicely into.....

#5: School District Consolidation. When the Governor's budget came out I actually breathed a small sigh of relief, because school district consolidation wasn't nearly as promoted as it had been last year. Trick is, I was looking in the wrong place.

The place to look, oddly enough, is in the work of the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee (JLARC), which has on its agenda for this year a "study of the relationship between the cost and size" of school districts around the state. On a per pupil basis, those kinds of evaluations never favor small schools; it's $60,000 a year to educate a kid in Benge, versus an average of $9,700 in districts like Seattle, Kent, Puyallup, and Spokane. I've got Republican legislators telling audiences that the purge is coming; what that will look like has yet to be determined.

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#4: The Battle Over Levy Equalization. For the districts that I work with here in Eastern Washington, this is the #1 issue with a bullet. For my own local, it's about a $1.4 million dollar impact. Conceivably, that could be 20 teaching positions. 220 of Washington's 295 school districts receive levy equalization money, but the trouble is where those districts are--when the bulk of the state's legislators are in the Seattle metro area, and those districts don't need the LEA funds to get by, I'm not sure they "get it." I think that's why we sometimes see attitudes like this.

(More levy equalization talk here)

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#3: Randy Dorn on Standards--Does He or Doesn't He? When Randy Dorn went to the State School Directors Association meeting last month and called for yet another delay in our math and science mandates, the press, parents, and politicos all took turns beating him like a rented mule. His proposal to the legislature sounds like it's dead on arrival, but the larger issue isn't going to go away: how can we demand that kids pass a test that is constantly changing, with standards that are as ephemeral as if we had written them with our finger in the sand at the seashore?

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#2: The Quality Education Council, McAuliffe and Oemig, and HB2261. The QEC was born out of HB2261, which Senators McAuliffe and Oemig have been traveling the state relentlessly pimping for the past 5 months. The final report from the QEC is due in a couple of weeks, and then we'll see if it's worth anything more than Washington Learns or the Basic Ed Finance Task Force were.

The pro-reform crowd will always say that it's never a bad time to do the right thing, but at the end of the day there really isn't any money--if we were still doing priorities of government, could we really justify spending millions of dollars to reform a system that's being beaten senseless by budget cuts? Right now it feels like we're piling the QEC on top of the changes from the State Board of Education and the Race to the Top, and given all that it's no wonder that teachers feel like they're under siege.

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#1: The Race to the Top. So, how far are we going to go for $150,000,000 and 30 pieces of silver?

In at least one respect Washington is well positioned to cash in on some of Obama's Dash for the Cash--data analysis--but pieces like authorizing charter schools, linking teacher evaluation to student test data, and merit pay are going to be far more problematic. Each of them is going to be its own giant legislative battle, and each is going to expose some fascinating divides within the Democratic party, the school advocacy community, and the legislature writ large.

This is going to be particularly interesting in the run-up to the 2010 election, because these are going to be the kind of votes that many legislators would have much rather taken last year, so they could put some distance between the debate and the upcoming campaign. That could be the poison pill that stalls many of these changes in their tracks, because rushing through a reform is a sure way to get the reform wrong.

Take merit pay. We have models across the nation for how merit pay is being done, but we also have models for how merit pay has fallen apart. The bottom line is that there is no national consensus on what merit pay for teachers should, could, or would look like, and the message that I tend to get from looking at what's been done is that it would be nigh-on impossible to create one system of merit pay that would work for every school in Washington.

Look at TRI Pay, particularly what Dan Grimm wrote in his minority report coming out of the Basic Ed Finance Task Force in 2008. It's perfectly fine to say that it creates an inequitable system, but I'll argue the point until I'm blue in the face that districts NEED that flexibility to meet their needs on the ground. Now expand that out to merit pay--is excellent teaching in Bellevue the same as excellent teaching in Benge? What about our Native American students--is the work that their teachers do fully comparible to the work of teachers in other districts? Or, the extreme example, our juvenile institutions--what would merit look like for them?

And that's only merit pay. Getting everything done that Race to the Top requires by March 11th, the end of the session, will require a ramrod that won't serve the system, the students, or the process. The predictable result is that certain groups will react as their conditioned response dictates, blaming the union and the Governor, while others will again be put on the defensive. Wash, rinse, repeat.

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But that's not the bottom of the list....

#0: The State Budget Crisis and the Public Schools. It's #0, because we have $0. That's the problem in more ways than one.

I was the lead negotiator the last time our contract with my district was up, and there's an adage that goes like this: if you can't get money, get language. With the schools in line to potentially take a $400 million dollar hit, we're not going to get money. The trouble is the language we might get instead. I think that's a big part of the reason we got stuck with HB2261 last year--the legislature couldn't cough up any money, but they could deliver this 111-page behemoth that made an awful lot of promises about how we would raise and spend money in the future. You can also look at the QEC and see how some timelines are getting moved up; my suspicion is that's mainly to give the appearance of doing something, but that the flailing around to be seen could hurt our schools in the near term.

The budget woes tie everything else together. We're being told that we have to go after Race to the Top money because of the budget crisis. School districts are being pushed to the brink because of the budget crisis. HB2261 and the QEC gain new urgency because of the budget crisis. School district consolidation started getting a fresh look because of the budget crisis. Levy equalization is at risk because of the budget crisis.

By mid-March we'll have a better idea of where we're at, but the reverbations of the budget will echo for a long time to come.

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Thanks for reading! Please come back as the year goes on for new editions of the Washington Education Week newsletter, as well as the other fun stuff that makes a blog a blog. Happy New Year!

Read more here, if any.

Joe Zarelli's Bad Week

Budget expert? Not this week.

I'm watching the Senate Ways and Means Committee testimony from Wednesday, and the gyrations that Sen. Zarelli is going through to defend crappy, crappy proposals like average daily attendance (ADA) and a 3% cut to salaries is absolutely fascinating.

Why is ADA a loser? Look just east to Idaho, where a study reported that ADA "may occasionally create unexpected and inequitable results in funding for smaller districts and charters." If you're Benge with 6 kids, and one has an unexcused absence, you're screwed in a way that the Seattle School District never will be. On top of that, imagine the next swine flu epidemic and what a legion amount of unexcused absences could do.

The 3% pay cut was blasted by everyone from the Governor to the Superintendent on down. It looks like some of the blame for this falls on the shoulders of Sen. Rosemary McAuliffe, who needs better researchers. It's chicken to say that the local districts can figure out how to make that cut work--if you want to cut salaries 3%, do it in the salary schedule.

But you know you can't, because that's a cut to basic education. I'll give them praise for a bipartisan budget, as well as to the House GOP for turning out a budget as well and helping the conversation along, but at the end of the day Murray and Zarelli screwed up to the tune of $350 million dollars, and that doesn't reflect well on either of them.

Read more here, if any.

The Budget Proposals and Education

The fun thing to watch last week was the rollout of the budget proposals from the 5 corners (House and Senate Democrats, House and Senate Republicans, plus the Governor) as efforts to deal with the current $1.1 billon dollar budget shortfall start to ramp up. With Legislative Assembly Days going on this week there's going to be a ton of discussion, and maybe a special session if things can get settled; what could that mean for the schools?

The Governor's Budget Proposal

Governor Gregoire rolled out her ideas a couple of weeks ago, which is appropriate in her position as chief executive. The school implications, and they aren't pretty:

• Her proposal take the federal teacher jobs money that was passed in August and directs it into more of a general-fund role. This puts her in good company nationally, sure, but as even the Evergreen Freedom Foundation is pointing out, that's not what that money was for. That said, it's $208 million dollars, so I understand the temptation.
• $51 million dollars in cuts to higher education, including $26.4 million dollars in cuts to the already overflowing community college system. This, sadly, is only a preview of what's likely to come in the next legislative session.
• An $18 million dollar mid-year cut to levy equalization. This is money that school districts have already budgeted; arguably, it's already spent.
• Eliminating the K-4 class size enhancement, another retroactive hit that saves the state $81.5 million by blowing giant holes in school district budgets.
• Eliminating highly capable funding to save $7 million.
• And finally, something that's not really a cut but is the kind of budget sophistry that drives people nuts, the June K-12 apportionment (basically, the money paid out to the school districts) would be moved from June 30th to July 1st. What that does is take it off the books for the 2010-2011 fiscal year (which ends June 30th) and moves it into the 2011-2013 budget, so there's no real savings here--it's simply a matter of where the hole will be. Publicola wrote more about it here.

Senate Republicans Lead by Sen. Joe Zarelli of Ridgefield, the Senate Republicans list is nicely color-coded and differs from the Governor in some interesting ways:

• They also would use the EdJobs money to fill the hole.
• Last year there was a bit of a stink on the Senate floor when a proposal came to use WEA health care money for state purposes. I don't know nearly enough about this to be able to speak to it, but the figure being tossed around is $100 million dollars.
• An item that really jumps out is the proposal to lower the levy equalization percentage from 14% to 12%. It just went up this past year as part of a compromise to raise the levy lid, and now Sen. Zarelli's proposal would undo that gain. This would save the state $21 million immediately and $113 million going forward into the next budget. Even Sen. Zarelli admits this is a tough sell, but these are tough times, especially for LEA.
• The Senate Republicans budget also eliminates funding for all-day kindergarten IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SCHOOL YEAR in order to save $22.6 million dollars. The note with the suggested cut says that there's "very little value to all-day K"; I guess it depends on the research you look at.

The Senate Republicans also concur with many of the other program cuts that the Governor proposed to OSPI, but they raise a point about maintenance of effort that could be troubling.

House Republicans This'll be editorializing on my part, but I have to say that I'm pretty disappointed in what the House Republicans released for their contribution. Where the Senate Repbulicans had four pages with numbers and projections, and the House Democrats (see below) had more detail than anyone, the House Republicans have....a letter from Rep. Gary Alexander that barely gets to two pages. He agrees with suspending "certain K-4 enhancements", and echoes the Senate Republicans in eliminating full-day kindergarten. That's pretty much it. I was disappointed in them last year for not releasing their own budget proposal, and I'm disappointed in them this time around for not really seeming to be engaged. It's troubling, especially when you get down to....

The House Democrats This is what a proposal looks like, and some of it looks oddly familiar. The House Democrats basically when through the entire budget and took the axe to a ton of categorical programs; highlights from an education perspective:

• Their budget makes a much steeper reduction to the State Need Grant, saving a total of $33 million.
• Their version also spares the State Deaf and State Blind schools from the Governor's proposed 6.3% across the board reductions, about an $800,000 difference.
• The Department of Early Learning is also spared, a $1.3 million dollar addition to what the Governor proposed.
• They also take the EdJobs money, which is common to every budget proposal so far.
• In a good news/bad news deal, the House Democrats wouldn't make any cuts to levy equalization. Instead, they completely eliminate the K-4 enhancement money. That may be fairer--a cut to LEA only hurts certain districts, while a cut to K-4 gets everyone--but it's also a bigger pill to swallow.
• They also propose a cut to the salary bonuses for National Board Certified teachers, which is particularly painful when they invest an awful lot of money into the process to begin with. By their math, it saves the state $9,000,000.

The Senate Democrats have yet to release their ideas. That's disappointing, too. The trouble with all this legislatively is that while cutting small programs might be easy enough, the real savings comes from the very toughest choices (all-day K, levy equalization) that I don't know they could get done in a special session. The Governor says she doesn't want to call them in if there's not an agreement (a challenge that WashACE says she should accept), but I can't say I blame her--the special session earlier this year took the full 30 days, and I can't see why this one would be any different.

Read more here, if any.

What He Said v. What He Meant

Sen. Zarelli, the Republican state budget expert out of Ridgefield, has been releasing a good series of videos on the state budget crisis. A section from the most recent video (above) that caught my ear:

I believe that we ought to make some change in this area. I believe that it ought to be that the contract that is in place, once declared by the Governor or by the legislature of this particular (time of) financial hardship, that that contract in all its forms ought to become moot and the contract off the table which would then demand and require that the two parties go back and reach an agreement that works within the framework of what we can afford to do given the scenario that we find ourselves in.

One could read that to mean that Sen. Zarelli thinks that, in the event of a financial emergency, the state could tear up any existing agreements and go renegotiate new ones. Not just on compensation--everything would be in play. Later a slide in the video clarifies:

Upon declaration of "significant revenue shortfall", financial provisions of existing agreement are null and void.

....which is a narrower scope, but still worrisome.

Why worry? Look east, to Idaho, where numerous school districts, abetted by the legislature, are playing financial games to unilaterally reopen contracts, lower teacher compensation, and save money. Is it appropriate? Quite possibly, yes, but why not go to your local associations and have an honest conversation instead of turning this into a monologue where the teachers are told they need to give without other options being considered?

Read more here, if any.

The Math is So Simple I Won't Share It With You

Sen. Zarelli out of Ridgefield is the lead Republican on budget issues; his budget tidbits of December 4th floats an idea about how to save the state $2 billion more, by making changes to the 2007-09 budget before it runs out. Try to follow the bouncing ball:

The math is simple. If $500 million in ongoing policy savings are achieved in the final quarter of the current biennium, that translates to a savings of $2 billion in the next biennium. And this can understate the amount in instances where savings from policy changes compound and grow over time.

The math is so simple, in fact, that the Senator doesn't seem to bother to share it anywhere. That makes it really easy for partisan hacks (me) to say that Senator Zarelli is up to something, even though he might actually have a really good idea buried in there.

Specifics, Joe. They're the coin of the realm.

Read more here, if any.

WEWEE #4: Synthesis and Evaluation

Dear Lord, but was this ever a busy week on the legislative front. It was Assembly Days over in Olympia, when the members of the state House and Senate get together to hear what's up for the coming session in January, and the many, many committee meetings meant that the discussion of education policy was moving along fast and furious.

Item #1: The Quality Education Council. The final report that is supposed to be delivered to the legislature is coming together, and the televised meetings on TVW last week were pretty interesting viewing. Coverage from the League of Education voters here (Day 1) and here (Day 2).

The piece that got the most attention came right at the very end, when Sen. Joe Zarelli offered an amendment aimed squarely at collective bargaining:

Examine transferring local collective bargaining to the state, including all matters pertaining to compensation, benefits, and employment terms and conditions.

.....and now you've got the WEA gearing up hardcore to get that removed. The discussion happened during the Basic Ed Finance Task Force meetings, too--I remember having a conversation with Skip Priest about it that year--but it withered on the vine there. I'm fairly confident it won't get any traction here, either, but it sounds like the budget situation is making everyone a little bit nuts, so it's hard to say.

The pieces that I'd push you into reading from the QEC website:

• The discussion document that Rep. Priest and Rep. Sullivan put together guided the discussion, and much like with the Basic Ed Finance Task Force you can bet that the final product will look much like what they have here. It morphs into the revised document (courtesy of the WEA; the QEC hasn't officially posted it yet, that I can see).
  
  
• The Achievement Gap Oversight and Accountability Committee issued their recommendations as well, which I find particularly interesting if only for this:
  
  

  The AGOAC recommends that implementing instructional coaches be further investigated. The Committee questions the effectiveness of instructional coaches in increasing student achievement and closing the achievement gap. Data is needed to justify continued funding for this strategy. If this element is funded, the state needs to provide research-based guidelines for effective implementation.

  So what's the deal? Mentors and instructional coaches were two of the higher-ranked items put forward by the National Board Certified teachers during their policy symposium.
  
  
• Lastly, and read this one again after the Governor's budget comes out, the Funding Formula Working Group put out their final report as well. I personally think that this is the make-or-break piece of the whole QEC--whether the financing comes together or not--and all the proposals in the world aren't going to add up to a warm bucket of spit until the revenue situation gets turned around.

Watch it all on TV Washington; it's worth your time.

(Aside: Randy Dorn had some thoughts, too.)

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Item #2: The State Budget. At one point a few weeks ago the terror-inducing news was that the majority of the state budget was off limits to cuts because of either federal law or state commitments, leaving about $9 billion that could be touched. In that amount you'll find things like levy equalization, what's left of I-728, and the basic health plan. During the Ways and Means Committee meetings, though, we found out that the amount of money that could be touched was actually much less: only $7.7 billion out of the $31.4 billion budgeted for the bienium.

That's.......not good.

Coverage from the LEV here, Senator Lisa Brown here, the Washington State Budget and Policy Center here, and Publicola here. The EFF refers back to their 105 Days, 105 Ways project, which is worth a read, and for the most contrarian viewpoint of all, this post from Brainstrom on how there isn't even really a funding crisis.

The Governor is set to release her budget early next week, and she's talking about tax increases so that people don't get their diseased feet cut off, but even with all the talk going on I'm not convinced that these euphamistic "revenue increases" really have a chance of passing.

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In passing:

• Andrew Rotherham talks about the union getting in the way in California; Liv Finne hits the same note, here.
  
  
• Race to the Top? Maybe not.
  
  
• Intercepts on school district consolidation.

Next week: conversation on the House and Senate education committee meetings, plus the Governor's budget roll-out.

Read more here, if any.

WeWee #5: Chris Gregoire Ate My Baby

One big story this week with 100 different facets to it.

#1) The Governor's Budget: As required by law, Governor Gregoire released a balanced budget that really takes the piss out of a ton of sacred cows. General Assistance Unemployable? Gone. The state's Basic Health plan? Eliminated. 3 year olds in ECEAP pre-school? Not any more.

In the K-12 realm specifically, we're looking at the elimination of levy equalization ($142.9 million), the K-4 class size reduction money ($110.6 million), all-day kindergarten ($33.6 million), the Student Achievement Program ($78.5 million), gifted ed funding ($7.4 million), as well as a bunch of the categorical programs I listed here.

I'm having a hard time with this. On one hand, the state revenue forecasts don't lie--we're well below the projections that were set, and that hole has to be closed. On the other, there are still pieces in this budget that are impossible to justify given the hole that we're looking at, and frankly it makes her oft-repeated statement of "We've looked at everything with three zeroes" nothing more than the usual political bloviating.

Do I think this was a hard budget to put together? Absolutely. I refuse to grant, though, that this is the absolute best work she can do, because if this is all that Governor Gregoire and our leadership have, I've made some pretty horrible voting mistakes these past few elections.

#2) But There's Taxes Hope on the Horizon: At the same time she was releasing her budget Governor Gregoire was also saying that she'd be releasing a different budget next month that could bring in more state revenue. This could include closing tax loopholes (Dot Foods comes to mind), ending the sales tax exemption for folks from states like Oregon that don't have the sales tax, and a potential $1 billion plus in taxes from things like securities, detective work, and data processing. The first things to come back, should the money come in? Levy equalization, all-day kindergarten, and the basic health plan.

The response was predictable, with Republicans like Sen. Joe Zarelli and Rep. Gary Alexander blasting the budget as a charade to justify more tax increases, while Democrats like Lisa Brown bemoaned the general situation and said they looked forward to seeing what the Governor proposed come January.

(But not an income tax)

Given the way things are going, it wouldn't shock if the deficit by then was $3 billion.

#3) You Can Blame All of This On Eugene Debs and Joe Hill: There was a good write-up in the Spokesman-Review on how Spokane County officials are pushing for concessions from their union contracts in order to avoid laying off 150 workers. In a similar vein you've got the Fordham Foundation urging Arne Duncan to be more aggressive about challening teachers unions on Race to the Top, and the usual from Mike Antonucci sharing the books that make up his spank bank.

I had a meeting with my staff on Friday morning to talk about the Governor's budget. My district could be on the hook for about $1.5 million in cuts if nothing changes; that's about 8% of our budget. The guidance I need from them is pretty simple: jobs, or money? I can protect salaries as per the contract, but that'll mean a lot of our members are pushed out the door. I can save jobs, but it'll be at the cost of per diem money, supplies reimbursements, and other pieces that I've talked about here and here.

I'm a proud union guy because I've seen the difference that collective action can make, and I make absolutely no apologies for that fact. At the end of the day, though, there's always going to be that tension between the needs of the individual against the needs of the body, and it's finding that balance that is the absolute hardest challenge in my work.

#4) And Moses Walked Through the Palouse and Said, "Lo, Let There Be LEA": Goldy over at Horse's Ass points out that the money that funds levy equalization tends to come from property-rich districts that happily vote for taxes (Seattle, Bellevue, Mercer Island) and goes to support school districts in some of the most conservative bailiwicks in the state, notably around Spokane, the Tri-Cities, and Vancouver.

It bugs me that levy equalization could be political--those districts need that money, sometimes quite desparately--but (and this is a point I've been trying to get across in my WEAPAC work) school funding is based off the state, and it all comes to us through a political process. I'm working with a lot of my small school districts even now on how to get the right things said to the right legislators, and it's quite an adventure.

#5) Well, That Could Be Interesting: Part of the Governor's budget plan is to close the juvenile facilities at Green Hill in Chehalis and Maple Lane in Rochester; I had just mentioned them two weeks back. I'm curious to talk to their local presidents, because what do you do with the union members when the state closes the school? It could be an early preview of what will happen with the State Board of Education school reform plan.

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Bits and pieces:

• It's not looking good for job hunters in the Yakima area. On a 1-to-10 scale of surprise, this rates a negative 7.
  
• The EFF has an idea on how the state can save a little scratch. They've clearly picked sides in the War on Christmas, and I'm telling.
  
• It really isn't funny, but a headline like Drug Counselor Arrested for Dealing Drugs does lend itself to some humorous quips, no?
  
• This made me genuinely and sincerely happy as a kid at Christmas. Similarly, this video sums up several hundred hours of my childhood in one easy package.
  
• Pretty interesting thread over at Sound Politics on new legislation from Cathy McMorris-Rogers that would ban certain kinds of restraints used on students. This came up in our own legislature not too long ago, and I'll stick by my same principle: you shouldn't substitute the judgment of an OSPI or DoEd bureaucrat for that of the teacher in the classroom. Not on this, anyhow.

I'm traveling for Christmas next week, so no Washington Education Week until the new year. Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful 2010!

Read more here, if any.

What's Going On in Olympia This Week?

I write these things more for me than anyone else, so that I can know when to turn on TVW, but just in case there's someone else in the state who would find it interesting.....

You'll note that the Senate committees don't start until Wednesday, which I'd guess is a side effect of all the nonsense around the new Majority Caucus.

Monday:

The fun will be in the morning, when we see if any Democrats took Dear Leader Tom's offer to allow them to chair a committee or two.  The Senate is scheduled to convene at 12:00, and it could be one of the funnest thing you've ever seen.

At 1:30 Reuven Carlyle's new House Finance committee meets for the first time, which is immediately followed by....

At 3:30 the House Appropriations Committee will have their first hearing of the year to take a look at the Governor's budget proposal.  Her budget is fairly meaningless, but it's the beginning of the discussion, and it will be interesting to see how splitting the single Ways and Means Committee into Appropriations (chaired by Rep. Hunter) and Finance (chaired by Rep. Carlyle) changes the dynamic.

Tuesday:

The House Higher Education Committee is up at 8:00, followed by a work session of the Early Learning Committee at 1:30, the Education Committee talking about the Quality Education Council report at 1:30, and the Appropriations Committee discussing the education section of Governor Gregoire's budget at 3:30.

At 10:30 Governor Gregoire will give her last State of the State address.

Wednesday:

At 10:30 Jay Inslee gets sworn in, followed by the other new statewide elected officials.

The Senate Early Learning and K-12 Education Committee has their first meeting at 1:30, to talk about McCleary and an interesting agenda item called "Staring at a decade of budget gaps: How can state finance policy drive productivity gains in education?"  The fun will be when old committee chair Rosemary McAuliffe interacts with new committee chair Steve Litzow and it's very literally the WEA Avatar vs. the Stand for Children stand-in.

At the same time the House Higher Education Committee will be meeting in a work session to talk about their policy priorities for 2013.  The unions are on the agenda, so solidarity!

Meeting of the day might be at 3:30, when the Senate Ways and Means Committee meets for the first time.  Two of the big power players, Joe Zarelli and Lisa Brown, are gone, previous committee chair Ed Murray no longer has the gavel, and Republican Senator Andy Hill has the power.  I believe this is the year that the Senate goes first in presenting a budget, and it'll be interesting to see how bipartisan or not their proposal is.

Thursday:

The House Education Committee has a joint meeting at 8:00 with the Early Learning and Human Services Committee to talk about the WaKids kindergarten assessment,  then a regular meeting at 9:00 to have more discussion about data.  Early Learning will also be having a 9:00 work session to get an overview of early learning programs, which are meetings that I've always found interesting for the 10,000 foot overview of what's going on in the state.

Higher Education has another work session to talk about policy at 10:00.

At 3:30 House Appropriations is talking about pensions, and planning for the rest of the session.

Friday:

The Finance Committee has their second meeting at 8:00.  The Early Learning and Education Committees are both meeting at 1:30 (I'm personally interested in something that's being said about military kids during the Education Committee meeting).  That's pretty much it for the day as they break for the MLK Jr. Day Weekend.

Here on day 1 the probability of a special session is 20%, and I'll raise that number up or down as things go along.  It's going to be fun!

Read more here, if any.

Thoughts on the Budget Forecast

2012 has come early! Repent! REPENT!

Last year we had a $9,000,000,000 hole that hurt, but at least we had a lot of options for what we could cut, and we had stimulus money that made things better than they would have been otherwise.

This year we have a $2.5 billion dollar hole, and we’re screwed hardcore.

The thought being expressed by some now is that we have to look at revenue possibilities—a tax increase—because the cuts that are coming are just too much for the system to handle. With regards to the schools I’m 99% sure that levy equalization is dead when the Governor releases her budget next month (she just as much said so on Weekday this morning), because that’s one of the few areas in the education budget that can be cut and because the schools that are impacted by levy equalization are mainly in legislative districts represented by Republicans. Want to put pressure on a Joel Kretz or Joseph Zarelli? Cut their schools.

That said, I don’t think the political will is going to be there for any democrat to vote for a tax increase. I often think about John Driscoll in the 6th LD, who won his 2008 election against John Ahern by about 100 votes. The intent behind voting to raise taxes doesn’t really matter when it’s drilled down to a soundbite: “JOHN DRISCOLL VOTED TO RAISE YOUR TAXES!” Even someone like Sen. Lisa Brown out of the 3rd LD in Spokane isn’t immune to that pressure, because if she does have her eyes on running for Governor in 2012, does she want the “She voted to raise your taxes during the Great Recession!” tag following her around, even if it is a principled vote?

It gets worse. The community colleges are in line to get pillaged, which is ridiculous right now in a time when unemployment is 10% and the CCs are needed now more than ever. The University system already has choked down 30% tuition hikes; how much more can we ask of the college kids? If we believe that there’s an abiding interest in having a system of public universities in the state, then what level of support do we need to show?

I’m really not looking forward to going to my members and telling them about the hit they’re going to take. It’s going to be brutal.

Read more here, if any.

Sen. Zarelli Says We Need a Special Session in December

And I say sure, why not. The schools are going to take it in the shorts one way or the other; might as well get it over with.

Read more here, if any.

It's On the Internet, So It Must Be True

Area Liquor Store Manager Always Knows When It's Revenue Forecast Week


(Olympia) Fred Graves, the manager of the liquor store located at 417 Plum Street here in the state's capital, reported record profits today as another depressed revenue forecast was released showing a $1.4 billion dollar hole in the state budget.

"Every time Arun Raha has one of those presentations, my sales spike higher than Mount Rainier!" shared a visibly giddy Graves, who has worked at the state-run liqor store since 1988. "If the money keeps flowing in like this, I just might solve the projected deficit all by myself."

Continued the shopkeeper, "After they release the forecast, I can count on the legislators coming in like clockwork. Craig Pridemore heads right for the hard stuff--that rut in the floor you see in front of the scotch? Alex Wood made that, years ago--and I can always count on Joe Zarelli to get a couple bottles of champaign to celebrate."

"Then there's the Governor. Usually sends Mike in for the foo-foo mixes for Daquiris, stuff like that. Back in 2004 she was a teetotaler. Been a hard couple years on her."

When reached for further comment, the Comedy Writers of America said, "The joke you want to tell about Tomiko-Santos? Just don't."

Members of Roadkill Caucus Meet and Congratulate Selves Over Hilarious "Sure, We Might Raise Revenue" Gag They Played on Sen. Ed Murray

(Secret Headquarters, Olympia Brewing Company) The Roadkill Caucus, a group of moderate Democrats in Olympia that exercised near-total control over the Senate last session, held their bi-monthly secret meeting recently in a festive mood as they celebrated the success of their "Revenue Could Be the Answer!" prank pulled on Senator Ed Murray, the chair of the Senate Ways and Means Committee.

"Did you see the look on his face when Craig (Pridemore) was talking about how sad cuts to school funding made him?" chortled Sen. Steve Hobbs, also a candidate for Congress in the seat being vacated by Jay Inslee. "I knew I couldn't make eye contact with Brian (Hatfield), or we'd both lose our shit."

Murray was apparently so excited over a vote count showing the potential to raise revenue that he issued a press release, further adding to the sense of glee in the room.

"God, this is going to be great!" added Sen. Rodney Tom. "I'll allow some stupid loophole worth $50 million to be closed, and in return I'll get right to work laws, charter schools, and merit pay for teachers, and I'll still get to be called a moderate. Hot damn, happy days are here again!"

Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown of Spokane could not be reached for comment, as a year-long problem with electricity has left her powerless.

Rich Semler Drinks Coffee, Reads Newspaper, Enjoys Quiet Day At Home

Rich Semler, a former Superintendent in the Richland School District who was forced to withdraw from the race for Superintendent of Public Instruction in 2008 after a family illness, had a nice day yesterday according to sources close to the Semler family.

"He got up early and took a little walk around the neighborhood, then went home and read the new George R.R. Martin book instead of struggling in vain to try and find a way to preserve levy equalization," reported the source. "Around noon he and Mrs. Semler went out to lunch at a little Mexican place in Pasco instead of attending an Education Appropriations subcommittee meeting, and then they stopped for a dessert at the Cold Stone Creamery instead of giving a minute's worth of thought to the Common Core standards."

"Then last night, instead of getting reamed on a conference call about the achievement gap, he played around on Reddit for a while before going to bed early, since they're driving over to Redmond tomorrow to see their grandkids instead of to Olympia for an emergency cabinet meeting about the revenue forecast."

"Randy Dorn is doing an excellent job," offered Doctor Semler from his easy chair. "I wish him all the success in the world. Job's all yours, Randy!"

Read more here, if any.

Washington Education Week #3: Thanksgiving Turkeys Edition

The Race to the Top: With the lull between budget announcements and Legislative Assembly Days, most of the blog chatter this past week has been looking at how Washington State measures up in the federal Dash for the Cash Race to the Top grant program. The League of "Education" Voters has done a 6 part series on their blog that's worth your time to read; also with several blog posts that boil down to "Teachers suck, change everything" are the Partnership for Learning, here. And, just to clear out my RSS reader: Publicola.

I'm working on my own posts on each of the impacted areas, but one thing I do have to chuckle at is just how earnest some of the folks on the pro-RttT side are. "We have to allow the state to just take over failing schools!" they'll protest, without seeming to make the connection that we have laws regarding school boards and local control that are every bit as ingrained in the people of this state as dams and snowy mountain passes.

You can get an inkling of the fight if you go and look at the Evergreen Freedom Foundation's School Report Cards. Using their metrics, the worst high schools in the state are in places like Toppenish, Walla Walla, Pasco, Aberdeen, Puyallup, and Coulee City--all represented by Republicans, all places where the community will revolt if you try to send in a bunch of "outsiders" from Olympia to run their schools. "It's for the kids!" needs to be overwhelmingly supported by the evidence to make school takeovers work, and I'm not convinced in the slightest that plan that the State Board of Education has in place gets us where the LEV and SFC want to go.

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Randy Dorn Cares for Children/Randy Dorn Hates All Children: The reaction to the recent proposal by Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn to delay the math and science graduation requirements is still bringing in a ton of reaction. Dorn tried to get out in front of the storm, and a hell of a storm it is: when papers like the Walla-Walla Union-Bulletin are saying that you "continue to undercut the effort to reform — and improve — education", you've got a publicity problem.

Personally, I think that the best, most sensible reaction came from Cliff Mass, a meteorologist of some note at the University of Washington. Keeping science and math as graduation requirements punishes the kids for the failures of adults to get the system right, whether it's the 20 different iterations of testing that we've had in the last decade or trying to define exactly what standards we want to hold them to. The failure of the kids is also the failure of the system, and right now we certainly don't have the system in place to get them all where we want them to be. This thread from the Center for Strengthening the Teaching Profession is also quite well written and on point. Check out Crosscut as well.

Also not really working in Dorn's favor: President Obama came out this week with a new initiative on expanding STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education. When the Department of Education is saying higher standards, and the President is saying higher standards, it's pretty clear that Dorn is going against the tide.

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The State Budget: Amber Gunn of the EFF stirred up a hornet's nest over on Crosscut when she echoed Sen. Zarelli's call for a special session to start cutting into the state budget right now. You've got some elected officials in the thread saying pretty incendiary things, and that's always fun!

(Personal aside: You don't hear anyone from any of the professional school organizations talking about a special session, because in a special session there's absolutely nothing good that could happen for schools.)

Publicola has a link to a video that Governor Gregoire put out talking about just how bad things are; consider it the anesthesia before the emergency appendectomy come January. The Capital Record also has the video and some pull-out quotes, here.

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"Merit" Pay in Action, and Inaction: The Superintendent of the Seattle Public Schools, Maria Goodloe-Johnson, met 4 of her 20 performance goals last year. That's a bad batting average, a really bad spelling test, and not exactly anything to write home about on the job.

That's also $5,280 more in her pocket, according to the Seattle Times.

The way that Goodloe-Johnson's contract is strucutred she can earn up to 10% on top of her base salary for meeting her 20 goals; that means that each goal met is worth $1,320. Under the goose/gander school of thought, if the state designed a plan to allow every teacher to earn up to 10% of their salary in incentives, the legislature would have to allocate about another $250,000,000 just to cover the costs.

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Other bits of note from the week:

• Joanne Jacobs on Why Arts Education Isn't a Luxury. The half-time art teacher in my district already knows that she's at risk of getting cut in the budget crunch to come; hopefully, I can use this to help mount a good defense.
  
  
• I love this and want to marry it.
  
  
• The United Faculty of Washington State has put together a great blog on higher education issues here in Washington; you can check it out here.
  
  
• People are flocking to community colleges, which isn't a surprise given high unemployment and a down economy.
  
  
• This commentary on what happens when school levies fail is important, particularly given the current state budget realities.
  
  
• When the teachers take over the schools.

Read more here, if any.

The Good News Will Be a Day When There Is No Bad News

Courtesy of the Seattle Times I share with you The Layoff Ledger, detailing all the jobs lost. For every big story you've heard, there have been 8 smaller ones that matter just as much to the people out in the workforce.

And that list isn't updated to include the stories on the front page of the Seattle Times website RIGHT NOW, like these 374 jobs, or these 165 jobs, or these 50 jobs, or the coming announcement from Microsoft on potential job losses, or the increase in foreclosures doing that much more damage to the housing market, or the fact that I've given up Pepsi in the new year, which is certain to plunge the whole soda market into a morasse from which it might never climb.

Point is, when you've got Ranking Republican Joe Zarelli saying that the state budget hole might reach $7.5 billion, and that estimate looking more and more realistic every day......'taint good.

Read more here, if any.

Watch Kelly Linville Bait Joe Zarelli Into Bashing the WEA!

So Austin Jenkins was all, like, "Hey, schools cost money!" and Joltin' Joe was totally like, "Eh, the WEA is teh suxor", which made Kelli get all up in his bidness and try to nail him down on specifics, but then he started talking about health care and I fell asleep because the Basic Health Plan is both boring and will give you cancer, which is the kind of dichotomy that I should find fascinating but meh.

Seriously, though, I've heard this "Make teachers be on the Basic Health Plan" line before, and as a union guy I thank God every time that it comes up because that would be a wonderful gift for anyone trying to do organizing. It's useful, in a "Democrats want to take your guns away!" sort of scheme--it may not be true, but it gets attention.

Edit: Advanced embed, my ass. The good stuff starts at 49:30.

Read more here, if any.

Today's Fake News From Olympia, Holiday Edition

"I've never seen a tax cut put out a fire." -- Barney Frank, This Week With Christiane Amanpour, December 18th 2011

HEROIC TAX CUT TURNS AROUND LOW PERFORMING SCHOOL
Anthropomophized Reduction in Business and Occupation Tax Challenges Kids, Solves Poverty, Erases Achievement Gap

Giddy officials in the Spokane Public Schools announced today that HR509 Section 2148 Regarding Certain Deductions to Capital Investments, recently hired to teach math at Rogers High School as part of the School Improvement Grant process, had completely changed the lives of all the kids lucky enough to be in his/her class.

"We were a little reluctant, frankly, to hire a tax cut to teach, but by God it worked!" said Spokane Schools Superintendent Nancy Stowell. "I look forward to many more tax cuts coming in and making all our schools better, forever."

Future moves suggested by Stowell include having a funding cut restore the art program, and starving the beast to make the school lunch program run in the black.

UNION HATING DEMOCRATS RUSH TO DEFEND THEIR VACATION TIME

With their traditional 3 week Christmas vacation being threatened by Governor Gregoire's special session, a long series of Senate Democrats with absolutely no sense of irony or labor history took to the floor to complain.

"We have a God given right to our vacation time!" thundered Senator Rodney Tom (D-Medina). "The very idea of having to work on a holiday is inhumane, and I am clearly the first person to ever think that!"

"The Gentleman from Medina is correct!" shouted an approving Steve Hobbs. "Not only is this unpaid overtime during what historically would be a break, but I submit to you all--has any worker in history ever been asked to put in so much time during the Holiday season for so little recompense?"

Happily, the electrical supply for all of Snohomish County will now be provided by attaching generators to the bodies of those killed in the Everett Massacre as they roll over in their graves.

RYAN'S POPULARITY IN WEA REACHES AMAZING NEW HEIGHTS
Sets a New Personal Best By Going Three Days Without Being Offensive, Condescending Prick

NOBODY BOTHERS TO TELL PAM ROACH THAT LEGISLATURE ADJOURNED
Confused Senator Only One to Show Up For Cancelled Committee Hearing

"I...I guess I kind of figured that Joe (Zarelli) or Mike (Hewitt) would tell her," said Senator Dan Swecker of Rochester. "I mean, things can kind of get by Pam sometimes, but we were all packing our boxes and talking about driving home...it was sort of understood, right?"

Members of the Olympia Press Corp later found Senator Roach sitting alone in a hearing room in the Cherburg Building holding a passionate debate with herself about the rights of adoptive and foster parents.

TEACHERS ANNOUNCE NEW FOUR TIER RATING SYSTEM FOR GOVERNOR GREGOIRE
"It will be clear. Oh yes, it will be clear," say Enthused Educators

A committee of Washington State teachers today rolled out a new 4 tier evaluation system for Governor Gregoire, a logical accompaniment to the Governor's proposal for teachers.

"We embrace what the Governor is proposing for us, and we hope that she'll feel the same way about what we propose for her," said Joseph Hill, a 3rd grade teacher in the Kent School District. "The purpose of the evaluation system is to improve governing. That's the focus of the evaluation system."

The four proposed ratings for the Governor run the gamut from a high of "Hasn't actively screwed up the state today" down to the lowest rating, "Couldn't find her ass with both hands and a map."

"Currently we've got the Governor at our second lowest rating, "Mike Lowry with TBI". Hopefully, these rigorous new measures will help her improve on up to "Comparisons to Bill Plummer coaching the Mariners are mostly unfair."

Read more here, if any.

Is the State Budget Shovel Ready?

Not in the sense that it's in the grave and should be buried, but ready for a big Obama bailout. From Politico:

A group of Democratic governors warned Friday that without as much as $1 trillion in federal assistance, many states will not be able to pay their bills in the next year.

The $1 trillion the governors are seeking would be spent to prevent cuts in social services and education, as well as “shovel ready” infrastructure projects that could begin with 18 months. The group has presented its plan to the transition team and congressional leaders. The New Jersey governor said both have been receptive to the idea.

Maybe this is where we'll get the money for the viaduct from. Remember too that (As Lisa Brown has pointed out) the Governor's budget counts on getting a billion dollars in federal aid to make DSHS run for the next biennium; maybe that's a part of the trillion-dollar number.

The legislature goes in on January 12th; Obama is sworn in January 20th. Lead GOP budgeteer Joe Zarelli has indicated that he wants to finish the supplemental budget in the first week of the session, which doesn't mean a whole lot since the majority party could kill a puppy on the floor of the Senate and get away with it, but it will be fun to watch what sort of signals come out of the Other Washington regarding any help that we could get here.

Update: Obama Pledges Schools Upgrade in Stimulus Plan, from District Administration Magazine.

Update 2: There's also Flypaper's take on how a stimulus plan could go right to the education budgets. Great post, well worth reading for anyone following ed finance!

Read more here, if any.

You Might Think That Being a Blogger in a Niche Industry with a Readership of 50 Pays the Bills.....

....but, sadly, it does not, even for an eerily prescient man-of-the-future like myself. Some thoughts, then, from the job that pays my bills: teaching first grade!

• I had a biiiiiiiiig blowup earlier this year with the LASER science coordinators from my ESD. I'm getting trained in one of the kits for first graders, on solids and liquids, which requires three days out of the classroom. Given that I had a student teacher at the time, not a big deal.
  
  The big deal comes, though, when the training......is.......ass. The presenter skipped around from unit to unit with little cohesion; instead of getting the "big picture" of what the kit was, we instead got little snapshots of the things that she found cool. It was the exact sort of training that I despise, when someone who hasn't seen the classroom in years is doing a poor, poor job of trying to tell me what to do in the classroom, so before my sarcastic, antagonistic side could take hold and say something regrettable, I left.
  
  The next day my principal gets a phone call. Early on in my career that would have scared me; now, not so much. At the end of the saga the two main science ladies from the ESD ended up coming out and meeting with teachers from my district to talk about why LASER isn't working, and my most fervent hope given our ongoing budget crisis is that I can pull us out of the whole damn co-op entirely.
  
  If your district is considering LASER, run the other way. Madness lies down that path.
  
  
• I've got this kid in my class, L. Energetic, 7 year old boy. The problem is that I've yet to find his soul.
  
  I like my classroom to be a happy place where the kids are engaged. There's a certain amount of noise, but that's OK--I have to look a little askew at those teachers who always manage to keep their classes silent, because that's not the natural state of the primary-age child. The trouble with L, though, is that he can't handle any freedom, at all, and I haven't found his motivator.
  
  We started positive: do the right thing and I'll play a game with you. Do the right thing and you can choose to use the computer during recess. Do the right thing and you'll earn a sticker, and those stickers can be traded for points. Do the right thing and these great things will happen.
  
  He didn't care.
  
  We went negative: do the right thing, or you'll miss recess. Do the right thing, or you'll turn your card. Do the right thing, or you'll have to sit by yourself during lunch. Do the right thing, or I'm taking away everything in your desk.
  
  He still didn't care.
  
  The kids I struggle with the most are the kids who don't respond to anything. Positive, negative, whatever--they're going to do what the hell they want to do, and they don't care what you think. They have great fun at school, because there is no consequence that you can offer that will make them stop and think about what they're doing. That's how L is.
  
  The other problem I have with him is the pervasiveness of his behaviors. There's never a break; he's always up to something. It's kids like him that can ruin a class faster than any other, because when you have a class of 24 and you have to invest 80% of your effort into one child, the rest of the kids aren't getting the attention they need or deserve. For the struggling academic students, they're not getting the one-on-one time they need. For behaviors it's worse, because kids who could be stopped at step one are usually three or four steps down the line before you can catch them, because of the effort you have to put into the one.
  
  I had never done this before in my 8 years of teaching, but I went to my principal and asked her to move the kid out of my room. We don't have a relationship worth salvaging, so there's no concern there, and in a different room with less kids, maybe he can succeed. I hope so, for his sake.
  
  
• The problem with having a tough class is that you can redirect those negative emotions the wrong way, if you're not thoughtful about it. Wednesday morning I had one of those moments; the principal had emailed to tell us all to come to a staff meeting, and that staff meeting was going to start early because there was so much to go over. I leave for work early, thinking about what I'm going to do with the kids the entire way, and set up the room a little bit before heading down to the staff meeting....
  
  ....which turned out to be a surprise breakfast put on by the Social Committee.
  
  "This is it?" I asked. "This is why we're here?"
  
  "Oh yeah!" replied the 6th grade teacher at the door, cheerfully passing out door prize tickets.
  
  I think the look on my face gave her pause.
  
  "....but you don't have to stay if you don't want," she quickly added.
  
  I didn't stay very long.
  
  I think part of it, sometimes, is being the only male staff member in the building. The things that sound really, really great to the girls, all 49 of them, aren't all that interesting, sometimes, to the one guy. Thank God for the custodial staff, at least.
  
  
• I'm kind of obsessed with the state budget. As president of my local I'm at the intersection of a number of different special interests: the Uniserv, the WEA, my principals, the district office, my teachers (all 130 of them), the community writ large, the media, and more. With my district looking at a potential $700,000 hole, I'm worried. My goal is to avoid layoffs at all costs, because any teacher released into this economy isn't getting hired anywhere else anytime soon, but the district budget can only be sliced so many ways before my people get hit.
  
  That's probably going to be my biggest project this spring. The worst thing that could happen--the absolute worst--would be for the legislature to run long, because then the district would almost have to layoff people. At one point Senator Zarelli out of Ridgefield in SW Washington said that he thought there was a chance it could not get done until June, and that would be devastating. Stay tuned.

And for all the readers out there, thank you for sticking with ITAT, and I wish you all a wonderful holiday season!

Read more here, if any.