CAT Tracks for April 20, 2010
IT'S A MATTER OF TRUST

...and the DC Diva has shown that she is not worthy.


It is the opinion of the New York Times that teachers should ignore the incompetence of DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and ratify "the innovative union contract that Ms. Rhee and union leaders provisionally agreed to earlier this month."

OR...

It is the opinion of the New York Times that teachers should ignore the lies told by DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and ratify "the innovative union contract that Ms. Rhee and union leaders provisionally agreed to earlier this month."

Helluva choice...


For those of you have not been following the career of Michelle Rhee, she is the darling of the "slash and burn" school reform movement...quick to criticize teachers, quick to fire teachers. Michelle proudly posed, with broom in hand, for a picture on the cover of TIME Magazine. I've been told that...the broom was to symbolize her intention of "cleaning up" public education in Washington DC, to sweep out all the incompetent teachers. Personally, after reading many, many quotes of her beliefs and her attitudes, I took the broom to be a symbol of Michelle's witchy persona.

Rhee's latest controversy in a nutshell...

The arrogance of power...


In the sorry state of public education that we find ourselves...Michelle Rhee, the DC Board of Education, the public, and the media all think it unreasonable for the "evil teachers' union" to question the $80 million discrepancy. "Just ratify the damned contract" is their response.

In the further sorry state of public education that we find ourselves, union leadership is evidently trying to get its members to do just that...


Unfortunately, I feel their pain...

The "WOLF" cries of CSD #1 have been well-documented in the pages of CAT Tracks...despite District financial documents that show otherwise.

Many a time, the CAT negotiating team has had to swallow reeeeeeeeeal hard...and encourage the membership to ratify what it knew to be a less-than-fair contract. The negotiating team had "done the math"...knew that CSD #1 had the money to offer a better contract. However, the negotiating team ALSO knew that the District would rather punish teachers and deprive students of an education than turn loose of "its money". (The District PROVED THAT in 2002 when it shut the schools down, forfeiting 17 days of education...17 days of state and federal funding, causing the District to be taken over by a Financial Oversight Panel.)

During our latest round of negotiations (that dragged on for over a year), the Cairo Board of Education lamented the low starting teacher salary in Cairo, claiming difficulty in recruiting. The CAT negotiating team, citing the growth of the District's bank account from $2.5 million to $3.5 million over the previous 3-year period, indicated that this would be the time to do it...and offered a plan for doing so. In the end...the Cairo Board of Education just couldn't do it...could not part with "its money".


And, yet...

As also well-documented in the pages of CAT Tracks, during this same period of time, the District has freely spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawyers to deny employment to James Gibson...trying to convince first an arbitrator, then a judge...that it was a "misunderstanding" when James Gibson and former Superintendent Samuel Harbin signed a document in May 2005 that said "You have been hired as Crisis Classroom Teacher". BOTH the arbitrator (in 2007) and the judge (this month) rejected the arguments of the District's lawyers...ruling unequivocally that James Gibson was and is a teacher in Cairo School District Number One. BOTH the arbitrator and the judge chided the District for ignoring the obvious and "inventing" arguments in an effort to keep from honoring the obvious...that James Gibson was and is a teacher in Cairo School District Number One.


But...

As with Michelle Rhee...

The next time that CAT sits down to negotiate with officials of Cairo School District Number One, CAT will hear that familiar refrain..."Trust Us!"

Got a ton of adages that would work here, but the most tried and true for me...

"Actions speak louder than words."


From the New York Times...


Link to Original Story

Editorial
Do the Math

Last fall, Michelle Rhee, the tough-minded and creative schools chancellor in Washington, laid off 266 teachers, citing a budget crunch. She has since reported finding a budget surplus. The city’s teachers’ union, which challenged the layoffs unsuccessfully last fall, has now asked a judge to review them again. The atmosphere has grown increasingly toxic.

Some of Ms. Rhee’s critics have implausibly suggested that she might have withheld information to justify the layoffs. It would be terrible for the city’s children if the dispute reached a point where it upended the innovative union contract that Ms. Rhee and union leaders provisionally agreed to earlier this month.

The contract, which changes the terms under which teachers are paid and evaluated, could pave the way for better schools for the District of Columbia’s students and could become a model for agreements between school districts and teachers’ unions around the country.

It calls for a salary increase of 20 percent over five years, for which the union has agreed to a teacher evaluation system that takes student performance into account and a differential pay scale that will boost compensation for the most effective teachers. In addition, the city will significantly improve mentoring and professional development programs, with the clear aim of helping teachers learn and master the craft.

Mayor Adrian Fenty needs to get to the bottom of the budget flap as quickly as possible. The situation was further confused when the city’s financial officer issued a statement saying that there is no surplus, as claimed by Ms. Rhee. She says the city is committed to finding the money to pay for the raises in the new contract — although under the law, any proposals she puts forward must be approved by that same chief financial officer.

One bright spot is that the union’s leadership has wisely separated the two issues — last year’s layoffs and the new contract. They need to keep tempers cool so their members make the right choice and ratify the agreement. And Ms. Rhee and the mayor need to quickly and fully disclose who messed up the math.