Running Out the Clock on AB 114

(I do not link to the Huffington Post, which is the source for this quote.)

[SFUSD Superintendent Carlos] Garcia said he thinks AB 114 might end up in court.

"Some people would claim ... that seems like an unfunded mandate by the state," he said. "There will be some legal challenges to that question. If you're not allowed to have some flexibility on laying off people, you could bankrupt a school district."

Oh, cry me a river, Superintendent.  "Flexibility" in SFUSD means "teacher layoffs that disproportionately impact high-needs schools".  If the Superintendent really and truly needed to lay off people to make the budget balance, there are all those administrators who got noticed but not laid off - all but seventeen of them. Not to mention the ever-growing cast of administrators and "teachers on special assignment" and so on cluttering up the Bayview and Superintendents' zones.

I think it's more than fair to read "I think" for "Some people would claim", and as far as "unfunded mandates" go, I'd like to draw the Superintendent's attention to federal and state school budgeting in general.

This is going to be a pretty immediate court case, if it begins at all.  15 August is the hard and final deadline for teacher layoffs - a particularly ugly one for SFUSD, since that means our Superintendent is considering laying off teachers (court battles depending) on the first day of school.

Maybe he can get the Mercury News to do it for him.

Is AB114 an insult to teachers already laid off?

No.


It means that fewer of those of us still employed join you.


I am not a giant fan of the current system of teacher layoffs, because at least for some districts (including SFUSD), it unquestionably impacts high-needs schools more.  Furthermore, I think teacher layoffs are stupid, full stop.  Smaller class sizes work.  Laid off teachers have experience.  Experience is important.  And somehow districts who lay off teachers end up hiring uncredentialed newbies to replace them.


Nor does it impact rehiring.


Besides, anything that has school boards and deformers that riled up can't be that bad.  Sure, it sends them into their brooding, union-hating pits.  But so does everything else.  Let's quote Lance Izumi, who apparently found his union-label pajamas too scratchy years back:


“This is shocking,” said Lance Izumi, Koret Senior Fellow in Education Studies at the Pacific Research Institute, CalWatchdog’s parent think tank. “It’s obvious that unions do not care for the kids at all if they are willing to shorten the school year. This is about protecting teachers’ jobs, whether they deserve it or not.”


That's right.  If you think 40:1 classrooms are worse than a shorter school year, you are scum.  Mr. Izumi does not consider the possibility that teachers might think both of these are bad, and he seems unaware that teachers take pay cuts when school years get shorter.


It's an excellent deformer soundbite, though.  He gets in a "bad teachers" crack, even.

Izumi said that many other states are going in the opposite direction, and implementing more school choice opportunities and teacher evaluation processes, while “California is regressing into 19th century union vogue.”


Yeah, it's true that many states, stuck in an ugly scramble for federal education money, are putting untested and unreliable "effectiveness" schemes in place.  And many school districts are being further defunded by "school choice" scams.  How this is a positive he doesn't explain.  Moreover, he doesn't have an equivalent contradiction to his Naughty California Wobbly Teachers proposition - unless the overall framing is "Unions hate children, hate teaching and are basically giant fascist juggernauts holding knives to the throats of valiant, underfunded, loving education reformers."


Let's not give him that framing assumption for free, shall we?


I hereby make the same offer to Lance I made to Dick Armey years ago (sadly, he never took it up!  I sent a whole position paper and everything!):  Lance!  Come do my job for a year.  I'll do yours.  We can trade salaries or not, your call.  Then you tell me how much I hate children, okay?

The Mercury News is Maaaaaaaad.

Usually, the Mercury News blames school problems on teachers' unions or a lack of adequate charter schools (true fact: I got an obscenity-laden email from one of their ed reporters a few years back after I wrote (calmly and politely) to refute some pro-charter silliness).


Now, Jerry Brown is just as bad.  Let's look at their ire.


Every year, the Legislature passes a budget - perhaps in June, perhaps in October - and the public waits to find out what's actually in it. And every year there are some appalling provisions that should not be allowed to stand. But for pure chutzpah, it's hard to top Assembly Bill 114.


The so-called education trailer bill contains giveaways to teachers unions

Nooooooo!  At least some editorial policies never change.  Remember: teachers' unions are not collective bodies of teachers.  They are unparalleled evil aimed at the heart of corporate reform.

...and outrageous restrictions on school districts' ability to manage their finances, making a mockery of Gov. Jerry Brown's commitment to local control. It was passed in the dark of night with nary a committee hearing - probably because it could not have survived public scrutiny. No wonder voters distrust lawmakers. These provisions must be repealed.

...Because voters would prefer proactive 40:1 classrooms?

AB 114 bars further teacher layoffs in the coming school year due to state budget cuts, and it requires districts to assume funding will remain at its current level next year; they can't cut programs. Yet everyone knows state funding for schools could well be slashed in January, since tax revenue may not meet the optimistic projections in the budget. This bill essentially requires districts to budget recklessly.

Let's be honest.  California's pitiable school funding has required reckless budgeting for years.  It's a different kind of reckless, but reckless all the same.  Is the Mercury News not familiar with the ever-growing watch lists of school districts teetering on the edge?

It also means that if revenue doesn't materialize in January, school officials' hands will be tied. Their only real option for closing a big gap will be up to seven furlough days, but those must be negotiated in each of more than 1,000 districts. With layoffs off the table, districts will have no leverage in those talks. Cuts could instead fall heavily on those who are not teachers.  That, frankly, may be the point.

Because all right-thinking people know that teachers must take the brunt of cuts.  Look at all the cuts we've already refused.  Heck, I've only taken a $2000 annual pay cut (not including the contracted bonus I lose this year on top of my salary cut).  And I didn't even get a pink slip this year!  Indeed, a mere half of the teaching staff at my school did!  Clearly, I am a goldbricking union worker.  I mean, look at all the cuts to the SFUSD Central Office!


...Oh wait, don't.  You won't find any.  A mere seventeen non-renewal notices went out.  The redesign has led to ever-growing administrative forces in the Bayview and Superintendent's zones.  And as always, among the district officials incapable of taking any extra hit in the name of sharing the pain is the Superintendent.


ETA: It's not clear how the Mercury News thinks those negotiations should work, anyway.  The rider closes the late layoff window, which would close anyway on 15 August.  After that date, you can't lay off teachers (unless you pass a rider allowing that).  So is the Mercury advocating districts go into negotiations now?  And where would bargaining power reside in that case?  Or does the paper really think we need another rider, allowing for teacher layoffs...oh, whenever?

This editorial is revolting because of its nasty assumption that union negotiations are always out to destroy school districts with their unreasonable demands and love of striking.  How many teachers' strikes have occurred in San Jose over the last ten years?  I'm pretty sure the answer is zero.

I know this is hard for the Mercury News to understand, but as a union member, I want the best for children and schools.  Unlike the Mercury editorial board, I actually do the job.  And I'm good at it.

I have given up pay, time and resources to make sure my students have what California won't give them.  I've already spent $350 on my classroom this year and school doesn't start for a month.  I spent four days after my contract ended doing the cleaning jobs the District won't pay for and will be in three weeks early for unpaid professional development, carpet cleaning and basic repair.  I have spent time taking my students to the park, library and informal tutoring sessions this summer.  Needless to say, these aren't paid pursuits.

It is beyond offensive of the Mercury News to cast such aspersions on my motivations.  And given that the largest school district in their city has a very specific contract that has required major teacher salary and benefit cuts, I don't know that they even have the basic understanding that having an opinion requires.

I'm in a District that has laid off relatively few teachers.  The state is something like 30,000 teachers short from a couple years back, and there are more students than ever.  Class-size reduction is over.  Furloughs are everywhere.  And teachers keep on trucking to meet those standards.  Shame on you for expecting pay, teachers!

No one, least of all superintendents and school boards, wants to lay off more teachers. But for some districts, it might be preferable to a disruptive furlough or cuts to already decimated libraries or counseling programs.

That's debatable.  We are all entitled to our own opinions, of course.  But opinions should be based on a healthy foundation of facts, and I don't know that the Mercury News can marshal any here.

Moreover, who told the Mercury News how the late window works?  I'm pretty sure it was me, actually.  I had to write repeatedly to their education reporter, who spent lots of ink observing how lucky teachers have to get 15 March letters and man, don't they complain a lot.

Decisions on how to cut costs should be made by districts and communities - not Sacramento. That's what Brown himself touted in his campaign, promising to "return more decision-making to local school districts." Yet he signed this bill Thursday.

But wait. It gets worse. The bill suspends the law requiring county superintendents to ensure district budgets are balanced in the current year and in the future, identifying problems before they become crises. As of mid-June, there were 143 districts on the state's financial watch list, including six in Santa Clara County.

Wait!  They DO know about the watch list!  Do they know how it's grown as the state refuses to fund schools adequately?  No offense, editorial board, but the balanced budget demand has been tossing districts onto the watch list for years now.

Ron Bennett, CEO of School Services, is an adviser to districts. In a letter to Brown, obtained by journalist John Fensterwald of the Silicon Valley Education Foundation, Bennett warns: "Stripping the county superintendents of their oversight responsibilities in 2011-12 will almost certainly bring dozens, if not hundreds, of school districts to the state's door for emergency loans."

Ron, that's happening already.  How nice of John "Charters RAWK" Fensterwald to share with his former employers.  I really should find those emails he sent me, because they are pretty classic.  In the way a train wreck is classic, but classic all the same.

The California School Boards Association on Thursday asked Brown to support repeal of these troubling provisions, saying "the state should not be substituting its judgment for that of those who live in the communities affected."

The communities affected haven't had anyone listening to them in ages.

The California Teachers Association is one of Brown's and the Democrats' biggest backers. But Brown's reputation as a straight shooter is at stake. Having signed the trailer bills in a hurry, he should go back to the Legislature and ask that these provisions be repealed. School officials and good government advocates should keep up the pressure until he does.

So apparently the Mercury News, given their huge fear of what that terrible CTA will do, would prefer to weaken it by mass teacher layoffs right now, effective on the first day of school.  That would certainly be great for education, wouldn't it?

Not that I expect better from a paper that publishes Dan "Bipartisan Man" Walters or has never seen a charter school it didn't like.  I hope that their not-very-august advice goes into the same circular bin as their demands for tax extensions and reasonable GOP members evidently did.

In the unlikely event Mercury News reporters read this, I'd like to ask them to refrain from using bad language in any comments they would like to leave.  I am aware - personally! - of what creative swearing they can do, but I am a Kindergarten teacher.  Assume I am wearing a Pooh Bear jumper and charm bracelet* and respond accordingly.

*Okay, technically I am wearing a sharp little dress from a local designer, heels and earrings I bought at the Met.  But pretend.  Speaking of which: crossing my fingers for fog on the first day of school, because I have the BEST dress to wear on its way to me.

Oh, SERIOUSLY.

Dear My Union Leadership,

While I recognize that official District notification of the Special Board Meeting would have been the right thing for the District to do (and that their failure to do so is offensive to their certificated staff and its collective voice)...

if I knew there was a meeting and by Saturday had already read the agenda, then you could have done the same.  I do not have mystical ESP.  The Superintendent does not update me on his nefarious plans to lay off teachers, yet refuse to share the pain personally.  Human Resources doesn't let me see the memos they send to the administrative officials whose contracts aren't getting renewed until after the teachers are officially out the door.  Etc.

In closing, I find your outreach initiative kind of amusing when I am not assuming best intentions.  Otherwise it's great.  It just strikes me that you might try to increase your outreach to your own members, particularly those at non-active school sites and those schools with young staffs first.

Cordially,

I remain,

E. Rat

P.S.  Please do continue to stand strong against "collaboration".

Christmas List!

Dear Red-Suited Imaginary Arctic Gift Givers,

I may not have been good this year, but definitely I did good things.  Despite epic budget cuts, regular interludes without heat and the daily denigration of my profession, I have successfully taught my students to read, figure, and treat others with a modicum of respect.

Given American capitalism's "pay for breathing" plans for CEOs, I suppose I could demand presents without any work.  However, the same Rand-reading illiterates* receiving bonuses for their ability to take in oxygen seem to think teachers have something to prove.**  Hence the above.  Additionally:

• I did NOT go to New York so that I could be used to denigrate my own profession.
• I voted in all elections.
• I spoke at Board meetings, gave interviews to the press, and had my picture in national publications. In all venues, I observed that equity is not equality.
• I spoke against child-blaming, parent-blaming and teacher-blaming.
• I took responsibility for my students' learning and demanded that the powers that be take responsibility for their inequitable actions.***

I'm worthy.  I demand presents:

1. Math and reading games to fill the backpacks for my students to take home this summer.
2. Bird print funnel neck dress, size 38 or 40 IT.
3. SFUSD cuts administrative paychecks and positions BEFORE cutting teacher jobs.
4. UESF does not capitulate on "No Layoffs".
5. We get the PAC-TIN grant.
6. Magical black tights that do not get ladders.
7. Aga Six-Four stove and range.
8. 20:1 class size reduction K-12 throughout the state.  12:1 reduction at "high needs" schools (say, those with FRLP over 75% and/or those serving a major public housing development).
9. Lots of nifty light fiction.
10. My very own cross trainer and/or elliptical machine.

As you can see, my desires are both many and extravagant.  I figure such an attitude has served Lloyd Blankfein well, so it can't hurt me any.

In anticipation,

E. Rat

*Yes, I meant for that to happen.  You don't really need strong reading comprehension skills to suffer through Ayn Rand.  Her books are all a disturbing amalgamation of bad, mildly sadomasochistic romance novels and repetitive semi-philosophical pablum.
**And the ones who didn't slap some sense into those boys DO.
***Not that they did, of course.  How much you want to bet that Garcia declines to take a solidarity pay cut (beyond furlough days) again this year?

Budget Apocalypse 2011: The Second Coming of Jerry

Last week, the Governor-Elect had one of his charming little summits in Los Angeles.  This one was on education.  The key takeaways were that we need to stop bothering Jerry so much.  I mean, you'd think he'd run for Governor or something on a platform we were expecting him to keep.

...hey, Jerry?  YOU DID.  So can it.

Anyway, he agreed that education had taken the brunt of the cuts, but that was just too bad and to expect more and more miserable cutting in his next budget.  Also, he wants a passed budget in 60 days upon his entry.  Furthermore, Californians aren't willing to pay for the services they want, so that's just tough for school people.  And everyone else, too: the budget he's apparently planning to propose is going to be a big nightmare.  Sez Jerry.

Dan Walters of the Sac Bee thinks this is all part of Jerry's big plan:

1. Propose a truly miserable budget that cuts all services to the bone, particularly popular ones like education.  (Note to Dan: Dude, in the case of education, we'll be on to the marrow now.)
2. Propose special election for a tax hike.  Campaign for tax hike is "This budget or your money".
3. Get state Congress to pass Doom Budget.
4. Taxes win in special election.
5. Have a new, better budget ready to go.

This seems plausible, if stupid.  Among other things, I have lived through several special elections in California.  The Groper's "Pensions for None, Money for Me" special election went down big (even the one good proposal on it: re-regulating utilities).  The "We Passed a Budget that Counts on You to Raise Taxes on Lower and Middle Income People" special election didn't go over so well either.  Moreover, irritants like Dianne Feinstein claimed that the failure was because Californians don't want to pay taxes.  (I dunno about all Californians, but I explained to Dianne that I'm plenty willing to pay taxes and tax corporations and the wealthy.  I'm just not so cool about regressive taxation.  Dianne wrote back to tell me that she knows everything.  Well, more or less that's what it said.  I write to Dianne with some regularity since she's always doing something miserable, and that's pretty much the response I always get.)

So old Jerry's willing to take a pretty big gamble on the photogenic quality of teachers and schools.  Dan Walters observed that he doesn't think the Dems in the state Congress will be so enthusiastic about passing Jerry's Doom Budget.  That's worth crossing one's fingers, I'd say.

It's not that I disagree in principle: we aren't raising state revenues sufficient to what the state needs, and way too many Californians have drunk the Korporate Kool-Aid and think taxes are bad and government takes money just to roll around in piles of it because services are free and those people are the only ones who get any services and those people don't deserve it anyway.  (Gee, sounds like the big old pile of money Jerry sat on until he got 13 for his pains.)

I do disagree in reality.  I look at the news and I note that business interests are praising Austerity Ireland even as it fails...while Iceland refuses austerity and recovers.  I hear whining Rethuglicans bearing giant scissors against the poor.  The interests that don't really care if our schools have enough money to survive have the cash to spend beating a tax proposal.

I don't know what options the state has to fund schools without some kind of revenues deal, and Prop. 26 (dear CTA, CFT: Next time, TAKE A POSITION) will complicate getting the money together.  On the other hand, Perez and the Dems in the Assembly could probably cook up a good scheme to punt this a few years down the road, and frankly?  A few years from down the road can't be as bad as now.

According to Rachel Norton, this sounds like another $25 - 30 million cut for SFUSD.  So I think we teachers can safely assume that we will have to face down our sad, sad BoE and Superintendent as they explain how it's not their fault and that they are far too spineless to refuse to pass a budget and (possibly) go into receivership (along with every other District in the state that's not already there) because if the state takes over, they lose their jobs it's really bad for the children.*  Also, equity only applies in good budget years.  Oh, and those new administrative officials?  Waaaay more necessary than teachers.

More broadly, to both SFUSD and the state, I think we need to start considering the Power of No, the possibility of civil disobedience and the refusal to play by the rules of Pass the Blame and Share the Burden.

And it goes without saying that we should begin planning our protest outfits and colors.  Traditionally, in local protests where schools select a color to identify their contingent, we're big on pink.  This requires some wardrobe arrangement on my part.

*I don't entirely disagree.  I do think that the tender embrace of the educrats and prostisuits at the state isn't worse for my school than the proposal the Board is likely to vote into action.  I've lived through state audit and Reading First: at least we still had teachers.  And I think it is deeply offensive to lecture teachers and communities about The Children without a. taking responsibility for what you are about to do to those children and b. mentioning that state takeover means the state fires the Superintendent and the Board loses its power.  You don't make self-interest dissipate by not mentioning it.

Six Reasons Why Michelle Rhee Isn't the Answer.

(NB: Edited and expanded from something I put on my facebook a couple of years ago.)


1. Ms. Rhee seriously considered voting for John McCain because - get this - she is so afraid of what Obama and the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad Democrats will do to education.

...the hell? "McCAIN: Because underfunded public schools and skeevy for-profit charters are better than the dread teachers' unions."


Dude, isn't the Obama administration's education policy bad enough?  We knew it would be like this before he got elected, too.

2. Ms. Rhee demonstrates a critical lack of understanding culturally responsive education and more broadly of social justice. It is her stated opinion that any arts, music, or otherwise "imaginative" (her words) programming should not be provided to students unless they have mastered reading. Similarly, she is disgusted by classroom meetings, TRIBES and so on.

I missed the part where teaching arts was absolutely entirely antithetical to literacy. One of the key premises of CLRP is that the arts are critical to a powerful and multifaceted literacy, actually.

But that's Ms. Rhee's problem - she sees a teacher's responding to a student's needs as "soft bigotry", if you will. It is evidently beyond her ken that social justice requires that we give students the tools they need to succeed - both by using the most effective strategies and by being absolutely explicit about the strategies we choose (so that students can succeed even in, say, a wretched KIPP school, where blindness to white privilege is required for a hire).

13th Paycheck!

We start so early now that the District and UESF worked out something so that the check I expected in July 2011 came nearly a year in advance.  This is clever on both parts, since the beginning of the school year has got to be prime teacher spending time and flush pockets makes for fun at the teachers' supply store.

In fact, someone should recommend a federal stimulus plan of this nature: hand public school teachers a few hundred bucks and tell them to go to town on classroom materials.

I personally got some science stuff - the materials to do a little unit on magnetism and refills for a unit I did last year on light and color.  I got a prism, which I didn't have last year (just various prismatically finished things), and a pound of Insta-Snow.  Accept no fake snow substitutes: Insta-Snow is where it's at.  Were I more ambitious, I might try to do a whole unit on polymers rather than just explaining how the snow works.  Its purpose is to reinforce color blending.  I let the kids go to town with Insta-Snow and colored water or diluted liquid watercolor in primary colors and have them record their color formulas.  (This is after we've blended primary colors to make secondary colors and talked about complimentary colors and all that - otherwise, I'm guessing you'd get a lot of mix-everything-to-brown.)  It's very engaging and the whole thing made the kids very impressive at MoAD last year because they could explain shading using complimentary colors.

I also picked up some craft stuff - little foam fruits and veggies, wings for the kids to decorate and wear - and a few gender-neutral additions for the dress-up cabinet.  Oh, and three pairs of dress-up shoes.  A few of the kids are quite tall this year and can only wear the largest pair of shoes, so I got some bigger ones.

I also have a birthday coming up, so I figured I deserved a new pair of shoes.  Over the summer I had a conversation with a Neiman Marcus clerk in which we agreed that the utter lack of McQ in San Francisco is a tragedy.  It ends up that if you are willing to wear last season, you too can shop fine diffusion lines at Loehmann's.  I do not buy by season, both because I live in strange weather San Francisco and because I shop by awesomeness of the item.  Anyway, I ended up purchasing another excellent dress at a very good price.  Perhaps the stimulus plan could be slightly more broad; the kids looooove my new shoes (they have big big bows) and I know I teach better when I look fab.

Yawn.  I went to a birthday party for one of the kids at my school today and spent a solid forty minutes in the jumpy.  It calls for an early bedtime, I think.  I need to go to school tomorrow to ready things for next week and possibly give a second coat to the backscratchers the kids sanded and primed on Friday, too, so it  will be an early day!

California Educator Arrives!

Last issue, I learned about QEIA schools. I like the QEIA program - more money and smaller classes are always good - but the school they picked to highlight as a QEIA success was Miraloma Elementary.

Miraloma sure is successful, but I think its overwhelming demographic shift - about 20% of its students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which is way below district averages - may be the determing factor there. The school used to draw heavily from Hunters' Point; it now is hugely oversubscribed so doesn't really pull from its B Zone (that program is over now anyway under the new assignment system).

Worst of all, the article did get into the lower performance at the upper grades...without mentioning that they have the majority of poor children of color (next year, Miraloma will largely be a white school as the last heavily B Zone class has gone on to middle school).

I find that intellectually dishonest.

This month, I was not surprised to find that the CTA doesn't support Steinberg's tenure tweak. That's fine; seniority is an important union tenet. I think it's perhaps not the brightest thing politically: Barr's proposal is poison and I suspect the RTTT districts will not play nice with regards to test performance and pay/tenure. Still, I hold all kinds of unlikely positions and generally shake my fist at political expedience. I find it irksome. And the critical problem is indeed school funding. You can't starve a system into layoffs. We need to layoff no teachers. It really is that simple.

That said, teacher layoffs are an equity issue. We went a big 11 for 15 this year: eleven out of fifteen teachers laid off. Needless to say, when your cuts inequitably hit the hard to staff schools - you know, the ones where the teachers get extra money because you can't find teachers who are willing to work there - you are making your own problem worse. I got into it with my Mighty Union Semi-Progressive Caucus at a Board Meeting because I stated mildly that I strongly feel the union has no coherent racial and class analysis guiding how we work. (The response of our unions VP: "I'm not going to let you race bait me! And the VP for Paras isn't white!" ...yeah, really. That's what she said. Do you think she has black friends? Because I totally do.)

What is killing me on this one, though, is that the CTA is now claiming that the Ed Code allows for tenure skipping for equal protection/equity reasons. This is the current thinking in the UCLA case, but it's generally been the stated non-opinion of the union and the School District (in fact, due to the ongoing advocacy by our staff, SFUSD Legal ended up having to come up with an opinion on that. They found there was no equal opportunity skip allowed, or if there was the class was too big for them to bother, or something. If anyone wanted more information, they'd have to get some consultants off the General Fund as usual. This led to a member of the School Board walking awfully close to calling me a liar, but that's cool. I won in the end, didn't I?).

Also, they're arguing this is a teacher blame thing, and honestly? It's not. We have a system that guarantees constant turnover at high-needs schools. They get fewer resources and less-senior teachers, and the churn is unending. TFA exacerbates this locally, too.

It's not the CTA's position but its framing that's bothering me. After all, I have not yet forgiven the CTA for:

1. Uni-Serv Director to Site Rep Council/Exec Board, ARUSD: "We've decided that while our official position on the recall is NO, it's just not a popular stance so we won't be doing any door-to-door or get out the vote on it."
2. Agreeing to the Groper's "I steal your money with your consent and I promise to pay it back on...oh, let me see here...on the 12th of Never. But I'll totally give you interest when I do!"

However, framing this as an issue of simple tenure is, again, intellectually dishonest. It also has the effect of positioning the union against high-need schools' stability. That does not support union/community relations - and those are important. We're spending far too much energy in Sacramento or capitulating to our own Districts (hi, terrible new contract!) that we could spend working with parents: the working class and the employing class have nothing in common, after all, and to me that means I need to have more allegiance to my school community than to supporting the current system in any way.

The problem with private funding and public schools

I am a repeat offender at Donors Choose - over the years, friends, strangers and foundations have chipped in (conservatively) $12,000 toward my classroom. I like Donors Choose because I pick what I want: sensory integration equipment, novel math manipulatives, art supplies, stuff for my students to take home over the summer, and so on. It's all stuff my school cannot purchase itself and mostly stuff I couldn't supply either. (Well, I could in theory blow the two thousand bucks or so I spend every year on, say, twenty backpacks, a rug and some PeaPods, but I'd rather buy ingredients for cooking and sequins and stuff like that.)

Still, the idea that teachers should rely on the good will and pocketbooks of strangers through personal initiative (mine to write a grant, funders to support it) is problematic on all kinds of levels. Aren't we supposed to be a public system, funded through the pocketbooks of strangers in the form of taxes? Is the system equitable? Are the most critical projects being funded? Do teachers have equal access to the process? Of course, these are all concerns that are ameliorated by the promise of cold, hard cash for the stuff I need. And the vast majority of donors - foundations and individuals - are doing what I consider good in the world.

I imagine that the Koret Foundation believes it is doing good by supporting the Hoover Institution's education wing and its recommendations: charter schools, vouchers, Teach for America, boot camp for Black children (quite literally: they support the OMI and figuratively in the form of KIPP), and so on. I believe that they are funding the destruction of public education and supporting racist ideology, but certainly they'd say the same of me (...do teachers count as "poverty pimps"?).

The California Teachers Empowerment Network, though...well, I'm sure that they believe they are doing great good by supporting opting out of unions. Or at least they are "empowering" teachers. Their biggest stated reason for this need to empower teachers is that the CTA put bucks behind the No on 8 Campaign. Evidently teachers were disempowered by this action. Also, they note darkly, state Superintendent Jack O'Connell helped make No on 8 commercials. So clearly, opting out of a union will tell Superintendent O'Connell and the CTA...what, exactly? That they need to get out of the business of educating voters about ballot initiatives? That de facto discrimination isn't empowering enough and we need some de jure too?

So when these guys get into putting up cash on Donors Choose, it certainly shines a rather nasty spotlight. I am still choosing the things I want for my students, but the people paying for them will use their support to shine up their credentials, then use those credentials to destroy public education.

I wish they'd stick to funding their little charter initiatives and whatnot.

Not really funny.

As part of the Prop A funding, SFUSD and UESF got together and named a list of "hard to staff" schools: schools with high turnover and "challenging" demographics (high poverty, high percentage of English Language Learners, etc.). Teachers at these schools fill out a little form and get an extra $2000 annually. It's a pittance, but it's money.

Anyway, "hard to staff" schools have by nature had heavy recent staff turnover, which means they have a lot of new (overall or to the District) teachers. So their teachers are low seniority.

So their teachers will be laid off this year. So in essence, teachers at hard to staff schools are getting paid to stay and fired all at once. This is counterproductive.

One could argue that this is a short-term, single year counterproductivity. In theory, the fired teachers will be replaced with higher-seniority bumpees, who can collect the Prop A money and won't be subject to layoffs for many years to come.

In actuality, there is no reason to believe that bumped teachers will accept an assignment at a hard to staff school in the first place, nor stay any longer than necessary before transferring. Given these circumstances, SFUSD may resort to TFA teachers. Of course, most of these teachers leave after two years, so the "hard to staff" problem is ongoing.

So the district is throwing several hundred thousand dollars in salary away. We know that staff stability strongly correlates to positive student outcomes, and that trained, experienced teachers get better student achievement results by any measure. The purpose of the "hard to staff" funding stream was to increase teacher retention. So much for that.

In other SFUSD news, the BoE agenda is up and Garcia's merry band of budget cutters remains unwilling to let much sun shine on their financial proposals. They are asking for the union to agree to the District having total freedom over class sizes, which brings the 25:1 ratio into doubt. It also is decent evidence that SFUSD has no intention of ever reducing class size if we give that away (there's nothing in the proposal that puts in writing Garcia's claim that class sizes will be reduced as soon as possible).

Whatever the case, SFUSD is dragging its feet on specifying how and what they plan to cut other than union concessions. Given how quickly they want a union vote and a budget vote by the Board, their pace suggests (to me, at least) that speed is necessary to obscure inequity in cuts: agree to SFUSD's lifeboat now or we all drown.

There appears to be decent support within UESF for an option of 20:1 retention through furlough (it's possible; Garcia said it would be either seven or nine days over two years depending on whether or not he was counting the two days' furlough already in the pipeline. The funding actually works out for it to be no more than six days, but I haven't looked into this so I can't accuse Garcia of trying to throw a potential pro-CSR vote. Yet.) I don't think SFUSD plans to offer this option, though; it doesn't show up on the agenda. What they do want is so sketchily outlined it's hard to tell.

Still, there is a good argument for voting down any contract revision that does not protect students. SFUSD is threatening apocalypse if this happens: no budget, no reserve, state takeover, consultants from Sacramento bearing pitchforks and Open Court, etc.

That's apocalypse for Garcia et al, though, not for the teaching staff. The state is not required to take over districts that fall within the possibility of takeover, and I don't think Sacramento really wants to deal with what they have wrought on school budgets. And even if they did? Garcia's out of a job, but I'm not. Consultants would get the big bucks for stupid programs, but that happens already. Privatization and Eli Broad would come in bearing big bucks for big cuts and corporate philosophy, but again: already happening. San Francisco isn't such a good market for boot camp schooling, anyway: why add another market when it's possible to get more done in Los Angeles and Oakland?

I think the state takeover gambit is a threat of very little interest. Barring a good proposal, UESF should vote it down.