We All Go Down Together.

California released its updated list of districts that cannot meet financial obligations in 11-12 or 12-13 and districts may not meet financial obligations in those years or 13-14.  Needless to say, even more districts are falling into the red.

One hundred and eighty eight school districts are on the latter list, which includes some heavy hitters like LAUSD and Sacramento.  Also included are some districts the state was supposed to have fixed (OUSD and Compton - I guess austerity doesn't work in school funding, either) and some local poor districts (Alum Rock and Ravenswood).  (It also includes Portola, which I assume will have an auction or something to take care of the problem.)

SFUSD is on neither list.  This is positive, particularly for Superintendents who like their paychecks and Boards that like their power.  (I don't say state takeover is good - I think the state bankrupted OUSD permanently, actually - but I think we need to remember that its immediate impacts may affect how one views it.)

On the other hand, barring tax increases passing in November, a whole bunch of these districts will fall into receivership (some will anyway; heck, some of the districts on the list already are).

SFUSD is fond of ruminating on how if its teachers do not agree to big paycuts and ten pencils for the year's supplies, it may end up on one of these lists.  It didn't.  Perhaps it should come up with some other apocalyptic threats for its unions.

It's also worth mentioning that USAF - the administrators' union - has been cheerfully trumpeting its the lack of cuts to its members for quite awhile now.  Apparently state takeover is only a threat for teachers.

And the cash winner is...

"School Reform Consultants", at $2.6 million dollars.

The whole post is a great (and important) read.  I'm not entirely (ok, at all) swayed by the District's claim that you have to spend money only on proven effective programs/people/services: unless the federal government actually outlined a list of allowed contractors*, you can use research to prove just about anything effective.

Moreover, this whole approach: Whee!  Let's throw money at consultants! - stinks of everything I hate about District spending in general: no institutional memory.  Some of these contractors have been working with the District for years: shouldn't the District be able to go it alone by now, or is there never any exit plan?  Some of these contractors are undoubtedly working on a new version of some program the District has already implemented and abandoned (I personally have collected an archive of FOUR different binders, spanning thirty-plus years, all of which implement the same approach to language variation and teaching codeswitching).

This stuff is far more important than principal follies in the District, I have to say, for all that they get less press.

In other news, this time is the most I've spent upright since Saturday afternoon, when the flu I hadn't caught all year caught me.  Alas, I have not yet "checked out" and sure won't be doing so today, since I'm going back to bed.

In final news, the chicks are at this interim ugly stage between feather and down and visibly larger by day.


*They may have done; Reading First sure did.  The research for the Reading First program is remarkably biased, first by setting study requirements so narrow only very few studies qualified, and then by ignoring anything that the committee chairs didn't like.

Seeing as how I declined an all-expenses-included invitation to participate in NBC's 2010 Education Deformation, I figured I would never hear from that particular group of eager reformers.

I was wrong - I received an invitation today to apply to their "Education Champions" Fellowship Program, through which I can meet with "thought leaders" and influence their opinions on topics like "technological tools for teachers and principals" and "the development of plans to incorporate teacher leadership roles in school design".

In other words, I can hang out with Joel Klein and his team at Fox and hear from Michelle Rhee and the gang how bubble tests for Kindergartners should be (expensively, by private concerns) created and administered so that my performance as an educator can be assessed.

What excitement!  Needless to say, I'd be jumping right in to that application were it not for the need to find my very oldest, least-to-be-missed yet still school appropriate clothing for today's physics/abstract expressionism lesson.

Switch

Cory Booker's recent comments on how terrible and unfair it is to criticize private equity firms for doing their job - making money for themselves by gutting companies - irritated me.  I understand that if New Jersey politicians want to run for statewide office, they need to make nice with the financial titans.

However, while Mayor Booker seems to think that investment managers - no matter how badly they harm the global economy - should be above reproach, public school teachers are not.  Indeed, so infested are our ranks with lousy educators that we have a crisis!  Mayor Booker is a big supporter of performance bonuses, too.  Bonuses have been so successful in investment and banking pursuits that they're just what education needs to be destroyed beyond repair and turned over to the private market to increase student achievement.

There's such an obvious disconnect here that I do myself blame Mayor Booker's teachers: someone should've pointed out the huge gaps in logic he betrays here.  JP Morgan Chase handed out lavish bonuses in exchange for four billion dollars in losses.  Private equity firms ensure their bottom line by cutting workforces and salaries at the companies they buy.  Given Mayor Booker's comments, I have to assume that this kind of cutthroat behavior that says your loss is my gain is what he wants teachers to pass on to their students.

So we'll stop encouraging sharing, empathy, and problem solving.  Students will battle for the last orange, and push each other down on the yard to get to the playground first.  They will get Unsatisfactory marks for respecting themselves and others unless they cheat, and no one wins unless everyone else loses.

If that's not the world Mayor Booker wants, he should stop acting like it is.

Is Your School District High Needs? Then Sue the Teachers' Unions!

It was with great interest that I read news stories with screaming headlines about Alum Rock UESD being sued.  As a former employee of Alum Rock Union, I wondered which Alum Rock exploit was about to be brought before a court of law.  Would it be school board members running over other board members in the DO parking lot?  Or the million dollars embezzled from the District and its foundation?  Or the varied and exciting buyouts offered nearly to an endless supply of Superintendents?  Or some civil suit action around the 1992 arrest of an Alum Rock principal for on-campus drug dealing?

No!  Alum Rock is being sued for being Alum Rock.  Well, for seniority and retention rules.  According to the lawsuit, last-hired-first-fired means that Alum Rock students face ineffective, tenured lifers.  Indeed, a student decided to attend one of the many local charter schools rather than continue at a real public school!


This lawsuit naming Alum Rock is ridiculous.  It's clearly the work of badly-informed deformers, unsurprisingly funded by Eli Broad.  It's not the targeted type of suit attacking equal opportunity at hard-to-staff schools in a big district (although LAUSD is also a named defendant).  It's a big anti-union attack.

First off, I have to point out that anyone attending one of the many Alum Rock-schism charters is going to be getting a lightly-trained newbie, almost certainly a Teach for American.  This is a side point, though.

The obvious problem in this lawsuit is that Alum Rock is Alum Rock.  It is an entirely high-need District. Over 80% of its students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.  Most students are English Language Learners: in my five years, four of my classes were 100% ELL and the other 95%.  Since the District encompasses east San Jose and the surrounding unincorporated area, it has a tiny property tax base (and also gets to spend a lot of money operating the school on Mt. Hamilton).

All of this means Alum Rock is defined by teacher churn.  Five years sent me halfway up the District seniority list (the District being small enough to print one and send a copy to each school).  I got a signing bonus for taking a job there - $4000.  My first classroom was consolidated because there were too few students, so I ended up replacing a teacher who quit two weeks into the year.  Ten days in Alum Rock was too much for many teachers.  In my five years, I met (and interviewed!) many applicants for teaching jobs; few had credentials in hand and few lasted as long as I did (for the record, I left because a year of commuting from San Francisco left me grumpy and shortened from standing in a car-ready crouch).

My Alum Rock classrooms had cockroaches, mice, water beetles, ants, and black widow spiders.  One year, our playground was burnt down (probably by a middle schooler messing around, but the smell of burnt plastic lasted a long time).  Our entire computer lab was stolen within a month of being set up.  I developed a severe health problem due to black mold from a major construction error during school renovation - one so bad my principal filled out the worker's compensation papers for me (in the end, I STILL didn't file: Alum Rock will give you that kind of martyrdom).  I lost over a thousand dollars of personal materials for which I was not compensated when that construction error finally gave way and flooded the Kindergarten storage room.  I once taught during a cold snap in a classroom with no heat and no electricity - for three days.  And all of this was at one of the "cushy" Alum Rock schools.

What I'm saying is that LIFO has next to no impact on Alum Rock classrooms.  Alum Rock has low teacher seniority because it's a challenging place to work and teachers leave for the comparatively easy surrounding districts (San Jose Unified, Evergreen, etc.).  Teacher tenure protections have next to no impact on Alum Rock classrooms: starting a third year (and thereby getting tenure) is about two years too many for lots of teachers who begin their careers in Alum Rock.

So suing Alum Rock - naming them as a defendant - is ridiculous.  If Alum Rock struggles with ineffective teachers, it's because few first year teachers are effective.  It's not tenure or LIFO: if Alum Rock is laying off teachers who want to stay, that really is the state's fault for failing to fund a District that needs more than many others.

Suing Alum Rock over these things suggests that the plaintiffs were so eager to strike against the dread forces of teacher seniority and tenure - really, against basic union protections - that they couldn't be bothered to do their homework.  This is nothing like suing LAUSD for equal opportunity violations - LAUSD has a mixed socioeconomic and ethnolinguistic student base, and those schools with higher-needs populations do suffer unfairly from teacher layoffs (the whole tenure attack is so ridiculous it's not worth my time: one of the reasons high-needs schools are low seniority sites is because tenured teachers don't generally want to stay in the hardest schools.  In this, they are joined by all workers nationwide, who prefer manageable jobs to endless difficulties in bad conditions).

The entirety of Alum Rock is high-needs.  The District's existence as a badly-funded one in a poor part of town is the problem: those aren't conditions that attract trained workers in demand.

So Students Matter (In the Fight Against Unions) is suing against teacher tenure and LIFO because Alum Rock is poor.  That's so senseless it can only make sense at the Hoover Institute or somewhere equally attracted to bad research for political ends.

Five Days Left

For the most part, I think we're set for the end of the year.  The sashes the kids wear ("Future ") are made, and no further career adjustments are allowed.  The paper people are done, sorted with their brainstorms and drafts, and ready for hanging.  The kids mostly know their song ("If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out"...something different this year), report cards are finished, we plotted out all the end of the year massive messy projects, etc.

The current in-class rage is Pikachu, which the kids might enjoy more if they cheated less.  As it is, it's just a massive excuse for cheek-pinching.

The chicks are alright - well, two of them are growing robustly.  I am here to tell you that whoever said Silkie chicks don't fly was inaccurate.  The third chick is not growing as fast; it's the one I hatched.  It seems generally okay (it eats, drinks, isn't picked on by the others, and is growing wing feathers) but it falls down a lot.  Its feet are smaller and the toes are less splayed.  When they move to my house next Friday, we'll probably splint its weaker leg for awhile.

End of Year Traditions

I've left the chicks to the tender mercies of a guest teacher and my Resident to go to the doctor.  This only became possible when I realized I was prioritizing the chicks over my own health and that's probably a sign of fatal Kindergarten Martyrdom Disease.  (This is the disease that drags feverish, puking teachers out of bed for a field trip they must attend.  Sufferers find themselves skipping sleep to cut out twelve thousand laminated shapes for a one-time activity and becoming woozy and lightheaded from spraying a fixer on oil pastel masterpieces after the kids go home.)

Every school and district has their own end of the year traditions.  For instance, SFUSD traditionally sends out pink slips a couple of weeks before school lets out.

I started a new tradition at my school that is now running on its own: passing out superlative awards at the end of the year party.  The first year I did them myself; the second year I had a helper.  This year I wasn't involved at all, except noting that I was only accepting a superlative if it said "Most Likely to Exchange BFF Necklaces with Kevin Truitt".  (It did, either because I'm scary or because the writers could only come up with a superlative involving my varied and exciting wardrobe and everyone's already heard those.)

I have a personal tradition of splitting a night at a fancy hotel with a colleague and then inviting some of our other colleagues to meet us at the Tonga Room, which is perhaps the only bar in town more kitschy than your average Kindergarten.  This is now finalized and I am very happy.

A Quick and Easy Solution

There is one really simple and fast fix for California's endless budget crisis: repeal (or significantly overhaul) Proposition 13.

Proposition 13 is the force that makes it near-impossible to raise taxes in California.  It's also helping major corporations avoid property taxes, and thanks to 13, homeowners pay more in property taxes than businesses.  So while it may have kept the elderly in their homes, it's helping to ensure that no Californian will be able to get the kind of education necessary to support a salary that can cover a mortgage.

I figure that Jerry Brown's personal recollections of Proposition 13 keep him from bold action, but the same need not apply to other elected officials and District administrators.  Rather than opining on the difficult teachers and their desire to be paid in money, our Superintendent should be observing what a simple repeal vote could do to ensure the state's future.

Fun with Numbers is Not That Fun.

So all the stick-waving, press-chatting, and negotiation-ending between the District and the teachers' union is getting serious!  The District has declared (and gotten state agreement for) impasse!  The teachers voted to authorize a strike vote!  I tell you, the exclamation points are flying!

Not that it's not all serious business, but some of it just strikes me as posturing (every quote the Superintendent gives) and some of it is just irritating.

To wit: the numbers.  The District is - as always - looking down the barrel of a loaded Sharpie, and the color?  is RED.  Since the District is against state takeover (the Superintendent would lose his job!), all that red doesn't make the District happy.


But the problem is that the District is always seeing red.  It's like one of the Ksters has gotten to the teacher markers again and miscapped them, because in the end the District is always in the black.  Moreover, the reserves grow.

Some of this is the propensity of districts to plan in cycles so that the farthest year out includes some total catastrophe: it's just good (if somewhat paranoid) sense.  But when you get down to the brass tacks of how the District is planning its budget, geeks like myself see that it's not just tax increase passes/tax increase fails.  The District's worst case scenario budget includes every worse case possible: they get nothing from their various unions, ever, every lousy proposal in the Governor's budget resurrected from the old Governor's budgets passes, the state never makes good on its various IOUs, etc.

Given the last negotiations - wherein teachers gave up a lot, and the District promised an equity report but didn't release one - or even write it - and that upper management would give up even more and they sure didn't, it would be exceptionally naive to believe the numbers they present.

It's similarly true that the union's numbers aren't quite right, either.  The District has to maintain a reserve unless it is courting state takeover (although honestly, if the District's worst case scenario numbers are for real, every District in the state is going under).  Certain other new cash streams are restricted, not General Fund.  And so on.

The entire process would be easier if all parties could agree on one set of numbers.  This is of course impossible, given the lack of firm numbers from the state (well, it's firm that the numbers are gloomy and getting gloomier, but still: the Governor's proposal and his May revise is not a budget passed by the Legislature).  But it would be possible for more realistic numbers - no doomsday scenarios, no counting the transportation money - to be shared.

The onus is on the District, though.  Two years ago, teachers single-handedly closed their (theoretic) budget deficit.  I personally took a five thousand dollar pay cut to help the District.  Our thanks from the District is to be asked to give up all that and more, and to agree to permanent contract changes that will forever reduce our compensation.  That is not sharing the burden - it's glorying in the silver lining of a bad budget.  And it's proof that District administrators are completely removed from the actuality of their mandate to educate the children of San Francisco.  What they want is an even shorter school year with more students and fewer materials in each classroom.  Each classroom is to be led by a teacher who will receive less pay and fewer professional development opportunities while being expected to provide an even greater level of service as paraprofessionals, counselors, nurses and the like are laid off.

What the District lacks is courage.  Hiding behind red numbers doesn't make it okay to destroy that for which you are responsible.

Chicken Impossible II

When I left school last night, I had two chicks and two pipped shells.   I assisted one of these in hatching, but it appears to be fine - it's lively, only a little smaller than the other, and not getting bullied (in fact, it's kind of a little punk).

The kids are extremely impressed by the white puffiness to come if these chicks stay alive and healthy.

Why SFUSD has asked for a declaration of Impasse

ETA: Apparently the budget isn't bad enough that any administrators or central office folk need to be laid off.  Of the one hundred and twenty-three possible layoffs loudly announced back in March, only eight administrative staff members will receive a letter before May 15th.


Also?  Voting for layoffs on the Day of the Teacher?  Stay classy, SFUSD!  Regardless of timelines and judges finding against you, this is just ugly.

Teachers,

We here at the District office do not understand your continued intransigence over your contract.  Really, we're not asking for much: just nine annual furlough days, a few extra kids in each class, and some radical changes to special education.  Why all the complaining?

Besides, we've shown you the numbers!  We are looking toward huge shortfalls and the threat of state takeover!  This is scary, guys!

Okay, okay.  While it's true that classroom teachers and their students took the brunt of the cuts two years ago - the ones you negotiated with us fairly easily, and for which we intend never to thank you - that was two years ago.  And yes, we have in the past shown budget scenarios predicting doom and state takeover.  Indeed, it's true that we tend to do that every year, and yet the apocalypse never occurs.

But this year we're totally serious.  The red numbers are for real this time.  We called a 900 number psychic to be sure.

So anyway, that's why we want impasse and mediation.  Eight meetings is enough.  Your bargaining team is so irritating anyway, refusing to choose cuts for us and wanting all these different scenarios.  Besides, it ends up the court didn't agree that uncredentialed Zone teachers are more important than credentialed senior non-Zone teachers with the same training.  We're still mad at you about that.

Best,

Your employers

...Honestly, the latest letter from our Superintendent was pretty offensive.  I think it was aimed at low-information teachers - the nine furlough day possibility was obscured, some District proposals weren't mentioned at all, and there was a lot of reminding us how good we have it (did you know in other districts they have 30 kids in a class?  The existence of these districts means we should agree to SFUSD moving toward equally problematic class sizes, apparently).

It would help a lot to see what cuts at the District level are going to happen.  I want to know too how many furlough days upper management will take if teachers take nine (the right answer: way more than nine).  How about staff cuts: did any real layoff letters get sent to employees at 555 Franklin?  And if SFUSD wants me to lose another seven thousand dollars this coming year, I want to know what the District will do when (if) the budget is better in future years - and I want that written down and signed.

There is no respite.

Things that must, will, or are expected to happen next week:

• field trip to outside the county
• hatching eggs
• finishing report cards
• off-site PD-type meeting
• class loading for next year
• staff meeting
• class load cards and files
• first week of school book bags prepped
• PTO meeting
• send out all promograduation notes
• complete end of year evaluation of resident teacher

So pretty much, it's a big slog to the end of the year.  The huge event for which I was primarily responsible is, at last, over.  So that's one thing out of the way.

Negotiations Update

Dear Teaching and Similar Staff,

Your union representatives are meeeeeeaaaaan.  They want us to lay off your colleagues.  We know because they won't accept the awesome, balanced, fair contract we think is best.

Seriously, our offer is even more fair and balanced than Fox News.  Here's what we're offering:

• bigger class sizes
• more furlough days
• pay freezes
• less prep time
• fewer substitutes

We're emailing you directly because we know that our teaching staff is smart and will be able to see how great our offer is.  Remember, if you strike you don't get paid at all - so really, losing 10% of your salary is a good deal.  And if you're worried about teaching the same standards to more kids who got less ECE over a shorter year, well, you people always work something out.

So contact your union today and tell them: capitulate!

Best,

SFUSD Labor Relations

To candle or not to candle?

I've gotten way too into candling eggs.  After last year ("They won't hatch...all I see is a big dark thing and then a clear spot."  "Um, that's the chick.  And the air sac.") I thought I'd given up on it, but this year I have developed some skill (I think) and between looking at ag sci university sites I candle the eggs.

According to Poultry Scientist Me, of 8 eggs 6 seem to show development, one isn't clear and the final egg has a blood ring.  I think.

Superintendent Garcia:

When you use the inter-district email to explain to your certificated staff why you absolutely must lay them off and you haven't got any reserves - really, you even searched the couches in the lobby - your certificated staff finds it rather offensive.

Also, you need to decide if you have or have not already budgeted in the $6 million Rainy Day dollars you anticipate from the City, since at least twice you or your functionaries have said that the $6 million was taken into account already, allowing fewer layoff notices to be sent.  It's a little confusing when you keep changing your mind about that, although the weasel words in your email give a lot of leeway.

Given that you take no more furlough days than your certificated teaching staff and have done nothing personally to offer even token support toward the massive budget cuts you visit upon your schools, there is no good reason to believe what you say.

My recommendation?  Go hobnob with the Governor and other Superintendents some more - at least they understand all the terrible pressure the little people want to exert on you.

Us little people will remain leery, angry, and ready to vote to authorize a strike.

Best,

E. Rat

A brief reminder:

California's last major revision of the state content standards for K-12 went hand-in-hand with class size reduction.  Back in the days of social/emotional Kindergarten, class sizes were far higher.

Those in the District ready, willing, and able to demand increased class sizes need to ask themselves how they anticipate teachers meeting standards predicated on smaller classes.  Taking a look at the latest standard adoption - the Common Core standards - should be cause for reflection, too.

Other things schools had in the days of larger classes: school nurses, paraeducators, robust supply budgets...

I understand that our new Superintendent will be taking a much-reduced annual pay than our previous one.  It's good to see that his salary reflects at least some of our financial realities.  But "sharing the pain" of bad state revenues by increasing class sizes and adding ever more furlough days is not equitable or realistic - unless we've decided we really don't care what students learn.

Respite

Last week was hectic, what with the egg-scrounging, the opportunity and need to seriously question a District bigwig face-to-face, site politics, the general antics of overheated five year olds in Spring, and primary responsibility for pulling off the biggest community service/carnival-like event in our school's history.

So on Friday I cleaned the land snail terrarium, made sure the incubator's resevoir was filled, and took myself off to happy hour.

Monday is a District-wide PD day, which schools had planned themselves until being notified that SFUSD's Special Education plans and programs were found...mmm, wanting by auditors, requiring some immediate amelioration via staff training.

I am not sure what this training entails other than a survey, but if it's anything like previous training from student services, Special Education, etc., we will be hearing how we teachers have been doing the District wrong by failing to implement everything they tell us to.  The fact that they neither fund nor explain their mandates is, of course, the fault of front-line educators: if we were better teachers, we would simply intuit the District's needs.


I still have no idea what causes Central Office folk to become so quickly convinced that their teachers are incompetent fools who live only to make the wise, gentle, kind sages at the District Office look bad to outside auditors, but they do.  One would think that explanation by dedicated frontliners about the impossibility of putting certain District mandates into practice would have an effect, but recent experience tells me that they actually just interrupt said educators to talk about how when they were sadly still at school sites, they made it happen so why can't we?  That test score data and the ongoing audit failure suggests that these memories are perhaps rose-colored has no effect.

On the other hand, there are few things as awesome as the upper-level administrator who has realized that appealing to the on-site administration for help corralling an assertive staff into silence will not provide any assistance.  We have the on-site people trained.

Anyway, after Monday my Resident is soloing for two weeks: it will be assessment, prep for next year, and copying for me.  Something of a break, you see?

Egg Match.

This evening I went back to school and set eight white silkie eggs in the incubator for a hatch date of 9 May.

Tomorrow what may be the biggest event ever in the history of my school goes down and I am the co-chief organizer.

This may be more excitement than I can handle.

At our last grade level meeting, I told our IRF that I wanted to move towards having Writers' Workshop but that re-reading all the books on it wasn't enough.  I think it can be hard in Kindergarten to balance student-centered writing with rigorous expectations, and the manuals weren't enough for me to feel comfortable with the balance.

So it was very exciting to get the news today that I got a scholarship to go to Teachers' College and attend the Institute for Writing this summer!

And of course, since this all goes down in New York: it's time to scrimp to make some fabulous new purchases for my wardrobe.

Eggs by Mail.

Haunting the office on all recess and lunch breaks did not cause my eggs to appear.

Plus side, the incubator is all warmed and ready to go.  Still, if I don't set eggs this week we're not attempting hatching magic this year, so I'm off to hunt down more eggs.  (I decided against buying eggs at the Farmers' Market because I don't want bantams and I had a child birthday party to attend.)

Oviparosity.

I spent forty-five minutes giving the incubator a good (including bleach: internet beats manufacturer directions, I think) cleaning, an hour deciding the automatic turner didn't work and clicking my way to "confirm" to buy a new one with overnight shipping before realizing I'd plugged it in to the dud outlet, and making a large, threatening "Do Not Touch" sign for the incubator.

I'm expecting the eggs today.

Lazy Whatever.

Yesterday, I took my class on an active, outdoor field trip requiring a bus ride before going to the doctor to discover what was making my shoulder so painful.

Today, I get to take the x-rays they ordered to the orthopedic surgeon to determine just what vile treatment is necessary for said shoulder.

I'm guessing that in the event that Mike Bloomberg, Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, and the rest of the deformer gang may need rotator cuff surgery, they take the day off to harp about lazy teachers from their beds.

Just saying.

Come the Silkies

...in egg, by mail, for setting next week.

We'll maintain the snails through the whole set/hatch experience at least...and keep the whole incubating rather quiet, so that a failed hatch is not the end of the world.

Pension Problems

The argument that teachers just have it too good with their pensions bothers me.  It's pretty simple: pensions allow workers a chance at a sustainable retirement after years of service.  If you're against that, what are you for?  Unreliable 401(K)s that may or may not be there when you need them?  Social Security, for which teachers are ineligible and which can't support a retiree anyway?  Or just having the peons work until they die?

In all the debate about pensions and public workers, there's little discussion of how pension funds have gotten into trouble.  Regular underfunding - not by those who will receive benefits, but by their employers - is one.  Bad returns and big fees are another.  It's interesting that the anti-pension forces are the same ones making pension funds shrink.

Two Months Left

I still have a lot of content to cover this year:

• -r controlled vowels (ar/or, mostly) and the idea of long vowel sounds
• about 20 more sight words
• summing up all the oviparous animals stuff
• CHICKENS
• landforms
• telling time (to the hour)
• measurement
• estimation
• maps
• building numbers 11-20 (this is a common core standard thing)
• writing numbers to 100

We also have some big projects/events left:

• Read-an-Eggathon (I hide eggs with words in them, the kids hunt them and get a sticker for each correctly read word)
• Paper People Project
• CHICKENS
• massive schoolwide event
• Promograduation
• Self-Portrait Project

I can get this all done, I'm sure.  My Resident also has two back-to-back solo weeks ahead, though, which means I better plot this all out exactly so she knows which of these need to be covered.

Otherwise, I'm just making the standard Kindergarten teacher wishes: May there be limited spilling of paint; may it rain only on weekends; may the cafeteria not serve bagel dogs.

Pointless Anticipation

Having already explained to everyone I know why there's no chance Team Kindergarten will get Fund for Teachers, I'm not sure why I woke up at 4:30 AM to begin checking my email today (Notification Day).

Maybe it's the ADHD.  Whatever the case, I am awfully stressed out by the grant I know I'm not winning.  So perhaps it's a good thing I need to go to my limited-internet classroom and do snail care/prep for Monday.

In other news, I also don't know if I won an art mini-grant.

In further other news, I got nominated for Teacher of the Month, which is nice.  Again, I think it's very unlikely that I'll win, but I'm glad someone noticed me working hard and thinks I'm doing a good job.

Teachers' Unions Protect Students.

According to the education deformers, teachers' unions exist solely to protect our awesome pay and benefits while ensuring that lazy teachers can sleep through the school day, wakening only to demand that students peel grapes faster and to take a nip from a flask.

Scott Walker's Wisconsin wants to protect students from all that and more!  As you can see, students also need to be protected from teachers who want to have personal lives.  6:15 AM - 5:00 PM working hours keep teachers at schools where they belong, not out wasting time grocery shopping or spending time with their children.  And a traffic ticket is not simply an infraction: do you want your child learning from the morally bankrupt individual who speeds?

I find the "no jeans" rule particularly offensive.  Even I pull out the jeans for certain, mud-centric activities and field trips.

Really, what the deformers want is a demoralized workforce that doesn't last too long, ensuring low salaries for new teachers.  Nor are they terribly interested in a healthy workforce, or one that can look forward to a comfortable retirement: if you wanted to retire, they smarm at teachers, maybe you should've gone into business or economics, not hanging out with kids and finger-painting all day.


They haven't done the job, so they don't understand it.  They don't like children, so they don't value the work.  And they think they're smarter than the people who taught them to read.

It's beyond time to flunk them.

Mikey One Percent

Mike Bloomberg, mayor of New York, enjoys regularly pontificating on the coddled school teacher and her undersized classes, her oversized pension, and the generally overfunded budgets making for fat cats at the public schools.

According to his local paper, he really should be addressing these concerns to the city's private schools:


Tuition, more than $40,000 at some schools, typically covers only 80 percent of the cost of educating a student. So schools need additional fund-raising to cover financial aid, maintain and expand facilities and broaden program offerings.


For the record, I just led a certificated staff meeting putting together a budget assuming $5,055 in annual funding for each student.


Maybe Mikey One Percent should take a break from lecturing us poors and look at the real numbers.

Information Is Important

One of the things that makes me the biggest geek ever hard to silence in difficult meetings is that I read many, many boring documents about education policy, funding, legislation, and politics.

I truly recommend this often eye-bleeding dull literature list to my fellow teachers.  It keeps you from being surprised when a new policy comes down or your district decides that the annual teacher layoffs should also challenge the Ed Code.  When principals pushing a point of view claim the school can't afford something the community and staff want, being able to pull out the numbers - and explain how restricted and unrestricted monies work - makes you a fabulous advocate.

Some important state and local information sources:

1. The Governor's Budget Proposal.  Don't make the rookie mistake of assuming this is the budget; this is what the Governor's policy and finance people think sounds good.  The state Legislature and lobbyists never agree in toto.  So following state political news is important.  The Governor must also offer some revisions based on state revenues: this is the May revise.  Some school districts - including SFUSD - are fond of using the prospect of the revise or its contents to explain why they laid you off.  Knowing what the revise actually says helps when drafting one's comment to the Board.
2. The Legislative Analyst's Office Publications.  Mac Taylor and crew crunch the Governor's numbers and provide the Legislature easy-to-read analysis.  Since the Governor's calculations are often suspect, this is an important information source.  It is my opinion that the LAO has an anti-education funding bias.  They also recently came out against tenure - not for equity reasons, but to get on the education reform performance evaluation bandwagon.
3. Publications of the Board of Education.  The agendas - which generally upload after business hours on the Friday before Board meetings - provide all kinds of interesting information (for instance, looks like we'll officially have Superintendent Carranza tomorrow evening).  The minutes and K resos are also of interest; the minutes are uploaded irregularly but following K resos lets you follow the money.
4. Other publications on the District website.  You can also take a look at the annual "sky is falling, cut teachers" analysis of the budget.  It looks like the beyondthetalk.org site (which hosted all the Balanced Scorecards) is dead, but the Data Center still lets you look at a lot of stuff.
5. In fact, I recommend hunting around the SFUSD website - you can find the most interesting projects there.

The Chaos School

Personally, I think that if you are a paid op-ed columnist for a newspaper, one's columns should demonstrate at least a passing familiarity with stories published in that paper.

Apparently David Brooks disagrees, since this week he wrote a very silly column about the New American Academy.  He finds its plan - sixty students per class in an entirely open space, and teachers loop with students - incredibly novel and exciting.

So did his employer, The New York Times.  However, they found it the kind of novel excitement that a trainwreck offers.  What with the overwhelmed, under-experienced teachers, the lack of student work or progress, and the pithy quotes from students ("We don't know what we are supposed to be doing, but we are learning about math"), they seemed less positive that this model was anything but a way to make absolutely certain children learned nothing.

Well, maybe Brooks did skim the piece - he notes that the school's lack of structures "was a problem at first" and notes the principal stating that they had "better control" over the students now.  Brooks is impressed by the "subtle tricks" the school uses - lining students up at transitions, making them enter a new open classroom together, greeting the teacher.

David Brooks had better not be planning to visit any regular public school classes anytime soon, because the "subtle tricks" he finds there are likely to amaze him into cardiac arrest.  Seriously, this kind of stuff is Remedial Classroom Management!  If the New American Academy staff didn't have these procedures down on day one, they have no business working in elementary education.

Mr. Brooks is also impressed by the $120,000 annual salary provided to master teachers.  I'm not: each master teacher is ultimately responsible for sixty kids and training/deploying some number of under-teachers (who aren't paid so well).  Moreover, something tells me that if Brooks were offered a $120,000 annual salary, he would primly refuse such penurious compensation as offensive to a man of his talents.

Of course, Brooks and the New Academy gang share a tendency to casual racism; Brooks notes that the teachers demand "proper diction" (by which I assume he means codeswitching to Mainstream Academic English from AAL or similar).  The school's founder and principal refers to the first graders as coming to the school "in a state of nature...[with] no civilization".  Oh, and many of these kids apparently will have "familylike" relationships for the first time with their looping teachers.  It may come as a surprise to Mr. Brooks, but poor families - even poor families headed by single parents - do not exist in solitude.  There are other family relationships than marriage, and despite Ruby Payne's unresearched nonsense, poverty is not a Hobbesian state.

But mostly the column lauds something disturbing.  Brooks notes the founder was inspired by expensive boarding schools; I am quite certain Phillips Exeter does not have classes of sixty students.  He notes the school serves "poor minority kids"; he neglects to mention that the school took less than a quarter to remove three high needs first graders to "more structured environments" and lost at least seven more to withdrawal.  He admires the master teachers, but fails to mention the rest of the teachers are "novice early childhood teachers".  He's excited by the "interdisciplinary" approach, but that approach includes no art instruction.

The New American Academy is indeed an experiment, but it's one that is presently responsible for "educating" two hundred and forty children this year.  Brooks' "great experiment" is a gamble that sacrifices the education of those kids if (when) it fails.  So amazed is he by the school's "guerilla" leadership and its innovations that he ignores the real problems with the model.  So incapable of basic research is he that he can't even read his own paper before publishing such a PR piece.