Another School District Disbands Their Union

crossposted

The Evergreen Freedom Foundation's Liberty Live blog has the scoop about the St. John's Education Association voting to decertify the union and throw in with the Northwest Professional Educators instead. That makes them the second school district this decade to do so, following the lead of Sprague-Lamont in 2004.

Good for them. If a group of teachers wants to go it alone that's absolutely their right. As a local president I know that I lean on my Uniserv representatives pretty heavily and wouldn't want to fight some of the fights I've had to fight without them (and here's a public thank you to Sally, Pat, and Mike for the work they do).

I think, too, that Sprague-Lamont is an interesting case. If you wander over to the OSPI website and look at the financial data for the district (you'll have to hunt, because Sprague-Lamont is actually Sprague and Lamont until school consolidation happens), but here's some of the information you'll find:

• In 2004 the Lamont School District had a .6 principal and no superintendent. By last year they had budgeted for a .180 superintendent (at a cost of $23,315)
  
• In 2004 "Teaching Activities" accounted for 47.21% of the spending in Lamont. In 2009, that had gone down to 45.53%
  
• In 2004 the salary and benefits package for the .6 FTE principal in Lamont added up to $47,487. The budgeted amount for last year? $57,650. That's a raise of better than $2,000 a year.

In Lamont, then, the percentage of the pie spent on teachers has gone down, while at the same time the principal is making $10,000 a year more (out of a budget of about $811,000) and they have superintendent spending that they didn't 5 years ago.

At the same time, the number of students enrolled full-time at Lamont has dropped from an average of 36.89 in 2004-2005 to an average of 32 last year. Declining enrollment, less money for teachers, but they've added a superintendent and upped the pay for the principal.

But that's only the Lamont part of the school combination, where the kids go for middle school. What about Sprague, the larger district that takes the students for K through 5 and high school?

• In 2008-2009, the principal made $73,416 a year, up from $65,225 in 2004-2005.
  
• In 2004-2005, Sprague had a full time (1.0 FTE) superintendent, but by 2008-2009 that had been cut down to .540. Success!
  
• But wait....in 04-05 that Superintendent made $80,000 a year, but in 08-09 it was $69,944. That's because they raised the base salary that the Superintendent's take-home salary is figured off of, and the practical effect is that a nearly 50% cut in time only amounted to a 12.5% cut in spending. I guarantee you no teacher is getting that deal.
  
• In 04-05 "Teaching" was 51.67% of the budget; "Unit Administration" plus "Central Administration" adds up to 16.8%. In 06-07, the last year for which actual numbers are available right now, "Teaching" had a slight uptick to 51.68%; Administrative costs went up to 17.45% of the district budget. They're holding the line on teaching costs, but not on administration. Why do you suppose that is?

At the same time, Sprague has dropped to an average of 79.39 students in 08-09, down from 92.54 in 04-05

The great hope is that the relationship between the teachers and the administrators isn't adversarial, but the other great hope is that there is two-way accountability. It's a romantic notion that the Northwest Professional Educators puts forward, that "professionalism" can win all in the workplace, but in Sprague-Lamont, with a neutered "professional association", the administration has been lining their pockets while the district is withering on the vine.

It will be interesting to look at St. Johns in 5 years and see what their trends are.

Some Things Shouldn't End Up in the Newspaper

The state Supreme Court made a major ruling on Thursday regarding teachers who are accused of sexual misconduct. From the Seattle Times:

The state Supreme Court issued a ruling Thursday that pitted the fear of stigmatizing an innocent teacher against the threat of allowing sexual predators in the schools to escape detection.

The scenario before the court was this: A teacher is accused of sexually abusing a student. The school decides the allegation is unsubstantiated. Under state law, should the teacher's name be disclosed?

By a 6-3 vote, the court fell on the side of accused teachers. The names of teachers must be disclosed only in cases where sexual misconduct has been found or some form of discipline has taken place, the court ruled. In unsubstantiated cases, the details of any investigation may be disclosed — but with the teacher's name redacted, or blacked out.

A big part of this goes back to the big Coaches Who Prey series that the Times did several years ago. Now they're looking for other predators, but I think they threw their nets way too wide, and the Court made a good decision.

There are already mandatory reporting laws in place; any school official who reasonably suspects abuse must report to the authorities. What the media was asking here was basically for carte blanche access to any allegation, ever--the 7th grade girl who makes up a story and promptly takes it back, the high school student who goes for street cred by manufacturing a liason between himself and the female math teacher, the crazy parent who has accused every teacher their daughter had of some sort of perversion or another.

Imagine a world where all those allegations were put into a nice spreadsheet and published as a table in your local paper. If your name is on that list guilt or innocence don't matter--you're already smeared by association. That's no way to keep teachers in the classroom, it's no way to attract people to the classroom, and it's no way to conduct an investigation.

The papers, of course, are apoplectic. The Times tries to make it sound like a union issue and notes that you have a chance to vote for the judges who wrote on either side of the decision, while Steven Smith of the Spokesman-Review calls it "a stunning ruling" and furthers the anti-union theme. Then there's the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, and commentary from Education Week here.

Doing everything to protect kids doesn't mean exposing their teachers to all the slings and arrows of the newspapers. I like the court's ruling--what do you think?

"Flunked" from the Evergreen Freedom Foundation judged, found....

....to be quite good, according to the Education Gadfly at the Fordham Foundation.

Good for them!

Really?

Took the time to read the EFF's most recent newsletter this morning, and there was an introductory message from their new Director of Labor Policy, Sonya Jones (I've mentioned her before.) She doesn't like unions--that's kind of a prerequisite for the position--but I plain can't relate to the thought process when I read things like this:

I believe that just about the only thing more dangerous
than environmental zealots are labor unions, so it is with
great anticipation that I come to you as the new Director
of the Labor Policy Center at EFF.

The most dangerous things in Sonya's world are labor unions and environmentalists. It must be nice to have lived such a charmed life where those are the biggest concerns you have.

Welcome to the quagmire, Sonya.

Flunked: The Movie, Coming Soon to a Theater Near You!

I've been following this project from the Evergreen Freedom Foundation for a couple of months now, and it's nice to see that the movie premiere is coming to Bellevue on March 18th. You can find more information about the film here; it's also featured prominently on the EFF's website, here.

The trailer is interesting stuff:


I wish I lived on the west side so I could attend.

Steven Maggi: A Couple of Hits, a Couple of Misses

The good Mr. Maggi is an education policy analyst for the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, the loyal opposition to the WEA regarding school policy here in Washington State. In the EFF’s monthly newsletter, Living Liberty, he usually contributes a couple of columns talking about the scene both locally and nationally. Some quotes from the recent issue with my thoughts following, first regarding school choice and vouchers:

The School Choice Demonstration Project report, conducted by the Georgetown Public Policy Institute, indicates that parents in Washington D.C. are extremely pleased with their city’s voucher program....

This is one of those things, though—does parental satisfaction matter? Many parents, especially suburban parents, are pleased as punch with their local schools, which doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem; it just means they’re happy. Satisfaction, especially regarding schools, might not be a useful metric to judge those same schools by.

Later on, in an article about Governor Gregoire’s new P-20 Council:

Most Washingtonians would agree: our school system has needed an overhaul for a long time.

Really? Would they agree to that? Most school levies still get more than 50% of the vote, which seems like a fairly authentic way to judge how the public feels about the schools. When charter schools have been on the ballot, they’ve failed. I’m not sure I see the consensus on a needed overhaul.

However, one of the main hindrances to education reform is the lack of accountability between the schools and the state government.

Here Maggi may have been on to something, but I think he needed to carry the point a lot farther for it to have the punch that it could, and it begs a question: what role should the state play in fixing a failing school? Take it away from the district? Refuse to pay the salary of any staff member who can’t demonstrate their results? Mandate curriculum? Offer more resources (i.e., $) and gentle prompting to get the school on the right track?

It’s good that we have people like Steve thinking about schools and contributing to the dialogue; I just wish he’d been more expansive here.

Big Deal or No Big Deal, Union Dues Lawsuit Edition

The Supreme Court did what everyone thought they would last week and ruled against the WEA in the lawsuit regarding the use of union dues for political purposes.

To our conservative friends, big big deal. SVC Alumnus has been all over it from the very beginning, and his site has a nice overview of comments from op-ed columns around the country.

To the EFF, perhaps the biggest deal they’ve ever had, but clearly not nearly as meaningful since the passage of HB2079. The teachers vs. union blog is still going strong, and there’s some excellent commentary on the EFF homepage.

To Education Week, not a big deal. Not front page news, not front section news. In fact, not until page 29 do you find the article about the decision, and this is the second paragraph:

But the court’s unanimous ruling on June 14 will likely do little harm in the long run to the Washington Education Association or other public-employee unions, legal experts said.

To the WEA, no big deal at all. They’ve barely acknowledged it on their website, most of the rank-and-file couldn’t care less, and the fines might seems steep, but they can be taken care of. There isn’t much here that I can see that would effect change on the WEA, and I’ll leave that to the reader to decide whether that’s a good thing or not.

And it’s also left to you to decide: deal, or no big deal?