“These Teacher Unions Are Out Of CONTROL”

The cops? Well yah but they still should be protected from those who want to fire them based on race, shouldn’t they?

 

You have a right to your viewpoint.

 

George F. Will: Public education's two afflictions: COVID-19 ...
greensboro.com › opinion › columnists › george-f-will-p...

Feb 4, 2021 — WASHINGTON — Of course the Chicago Teachers Union blamed ... George F. Will: Public education's two afflictions: COVID-19 and teachers unions ... and secondary schools get about half of local government spending ...

WASHINGTON — Of course the Chicago Teachers Union blamed "sexism, racism and misogyny" for the pressure to open the nation's third-largest public school system. The CTU could have added a fourth grievance: anti-Puerto Rican vacationism. On the same day that a CTU board member tweeted that it's unsafe for teachers to return to the classroom, she posted poolside photos on Instagram of her grinning self, 2,000 miles from Chicago's winter winds.

Teachers unions always justify their aggressions as "for the children," but always are serving only their members. Abundant data — from public and private U.S. schools, many of which have remained open, and from schools worldwide — refutes the proposition that children, or teachers, are seriously endangered in schools that have taken, as in Chicago, precautions including mask wearing, social distancing and increased air ventilation. . . .

 

This is true in regards to violations of employee handbooks or codes of conduct that are incorporated in the employee contracts via the collective bargaining agreement. Violations in the handbooks (ex. Drug use, unexplained absences) usually result in termination, but some agreements provide more protective measures for different public employee unions. The unions usually won’t come to the aid of a public employee if they spit on their co-workers, because come on. I’ve represented non-union employees in certain cases where there was no ‘cause’ for termination per a contract, and/or evidence pointing toward retaliatory motives for termination.

The main issue with teachers working for the public schools is that the procedural steps to fire a teacher is sometimes burdensome, and/or require the school to pay the teacher during the process and pay a substitute teacher. Also, firing a teacher, and some other types of public employees, for performance issues is difficult to evaluate, prosecute and adjudicate due to the collective bargaining agreements. An administrator may feel the teacher is performing below reasonable standards, but these educated opinions are flimsy when there isn’t a concrete standard for teacher performance (e.g. test scores, student improvement).

 

I gave it the attention it deserved. No more cofeve from Beevis or Butthead.

 

No, there most DEFINITELY is not "one side" in public sector union negotiations. In such cases, the union is negotiating with a branch of govrenment designated.

Let's fact it. If there is only one side, it isn't a negotiation. And, public sector unions certainly do not have the authority to allocate our tax dollars.

And, you can't just point to one state expenditure and claim that's the reason that current revenue and expenditures aren't balanced.

 

The maturity as well i see.

 

Let's remember that "seniority" is present in order to make the job more attractive. In many (most?) areas of employment, what gets one ahead is capability.

When change is necessary, such as with policing today, I really do not believe that "seniority" is helpful.

Some of the worst problems come from entrenched attitudes and traditionally defined job functions.

For example, one of the problems we in Seattle notice is that when current police forces are sent in response to reports of someone having a mental breakdown, it all too often turns into the police just shooting the guy. So, one idea is to have units that can better manage this problem. Such units would need skills that the existing force clearly is failing to provide - the whole need for this division. Obviously, "seniortiy" is of no benefit in this change. It's the skill set that is the measure..

And, if there is a problem, how come seniors didn't solve it?

When forces retune to have specialized response units, to reduce racism, to better connect to the community being policed, to have skills in deescalation, or to make other kinds of change that the public sees as required, it can reshape the needs of the force along lines that can be COUNTER to seniority.

In the past, policing was considered something where if you were around longer, that was the best asset.

I'd prefer to look at it as policing growing into a profession more like others where employers are looking for more than time in service.

In my view, that oculd require better compensaion. I think the "cut police funding" is exactly what we DON'T want to do. When corporations decide some division is not performing well enough, they search for people that they have to pay more and those who won't come unless the job description is better. Those already in the division are not retained based on seniority.

 

Well, to the point here ..

There is this idea we hear from some that the existence of teacher's unions means that teachers can't be fired.

And, that is just plain rubbish.

 

As per my long winded comment above ...

When a department has serious problems, I don't see any reason to believe that those who had the most influence, the seniors, are necessarily the solution. One has to ask, with all that seniority why did they allow the problem to grow?

It's obviously not all on the police. But, regardless of civilian/government side of the problem, the skills needed to fix the police side of the problem are not necessarily found in those most entrenched in the problem.

Thats the case in private enterprise, too. Those who have worked the longest in a failing division are not necessarily the ones around whom you would go to for building success.

 

Then SHOW some of that expertise you claim.

By the way, the issues you point to are not limited to education. And, they are not even limited to the public sector.

 

It's obviously an exaggeration. The issue is with some the termination process in some states, and the ability to fire someone for poor performance that's not expressed in a teacher's contract.

 

I doubt it, layoffs yes, fired no.

 

Well one park worker went to his car and got a gun, and shot one of the pigs in the petting zoo. I guess it was sick. He got fired....

 

First off, Geoge F. Will has consistently been anti-union in a vast vast majority of his writings. That being said its said that teachers always justify their aggression as "for the children" but always are serving only their member may be true but without the teachers to be there for the children, there'd be no one there for the kids. One of the unions jobs is to look after the best interests of the member, after all that's why the teachers pay dues to the union.

 

Some of these protections came about as a defense against teachers doing stuff like telling the truth.

A teacher teaches evolution and gets fired for that. A teacher points out the reasons OBL attacked America and gets fired for that. A teacher presents climatology and gets fired for that. A teacher examines issues of systemic racism, Etc.

One of the problems we have today is that there is no professional heirarchy in education - like there is in almost every other profession.

In most places, we require teachers to get advanced degrees in education and to have subject matter expertise.

But, we use elected school boards and other officials to make the decisions that our teachers have actually studied and experienced.

So, we give teachers a certain degree of protection from political attack, etc., and resort to seniority as a measure for determining compensation!

 

There is only one side. Public sector unions "negotiate" with officials to whom they give contributions. The officials "negotiate" with unions whose support they purchase with lush benefits and pensions. The other side, taxpayers, are nowhere represented.

 

When given the choice, many teachers choose not to belong to the union.
George F. Will: With its Janus decision, the Supreme Court ...
www.sltrib.com › opinion › commentary › 2018/06/30

Jun 30, 2018 — The headline said: “Unions Court Own Members Ahead of Ruling.” Anticipating defeat, government-employee unions had begun resorting to ...

 

You're correct. I built a road for a construction project a few times and it cost me 10-25% of what the city or town paid, but sometimes there was an extra cost if there were utilities. I even took overcharged for roads cause my company build multifamily and medium-sized commercial, but I always came way under the cost according to city inspectors I asked. Paving and resurfacing roads is usually a pretty fixed, but way too overpriced, cost for the government. It costs some places one to two million per mile. In some cities, the price is jacked up to 4-7 million, but there's all kinds of cables, wires, pipes, etc. underneath.

But education costs are a huge chunk just from employee/administrative salaries and benefits. But the money you can make from a government contract to repair or build a school is awesome. The roofing contractor that has a connection with the school administrator could bank a 100k to a 1mil from a school district, and the roof is gonna leak many more times after a very heavy rainfall cause a remodel would blow up a good thing. In every school I attended, I'd always see a bucket in the classrooms and halls after a deluge. It can't be coincidence. But if you receive a high school construction project in a city or suburb, then you've made it my friend. Some school projects can range from 10s-100s of millions depending if its a city or suburb.

 

The taxpayers wake up when they're paying 7-15 grand in property taxes in the lower to upper middle-class burbs. I remember landing a job with one of Jon Corzine's Super Pacs helping with his re-election campaign in NJ against Chris Christie. When we went canvassing door-to-door in some of the lean Democrat areas, the subject always turned to taxes and Corzine was running on more taxes to pay for higher teacher wages. Teachers make an average of 70k in NJ, and they wanted more money. NJ doesn't even have enough money to pay the pension fund every year, so they borrow it and pay more interest. Many teachers are in crippling debt cause they took out crazy student loans, so NJ bailed them out.

 

That's certainly not the way it works in WA or OR.

And, I'd be a little surprised if unions in other states could ever negotiate with an entity that could change the state budget.

We have a multi layered system. Teacher's unions may lobby the legislature, of course, but they don't negotiate with the legislature, and it is the legislature that determines the budget for education.

Again, unions do not negotiate with any entity that could increase the state budget for education.

 

I can't get into that level of detail on construction costs and building requirements.

But, I don't believe that involves teacher's unions. I've never heard of teacher's unions being in a position to lobby for building layout, let alone any other level of design for thir work environment.

Thus I can point to cases where science labs had storage for lab equipment way down halls, and high school classrooms were rudimentary, but sports facilities met high standards for colegiate athletics, etc.

Those decisions weren't made by people interested in classroom education.

 

Workers form unions or de facto unions whether you like it or not.

 

Sorry for the ramble. I love education.

The only one of those teachers that resulted in termination was evolution, because religion was a big deal not too long ago. However, the teacher that was fired for teacher her students about white privilege should be fired cause that was tantamount to the original definition of racism and hate speech. Multiple teachers making white students pretend to be slaves is atrocious and disgusting behavior in order to . Honestly, if there are teachers going that far in the classroom, then there's a problem with teacher discussing the topic of race. I'm a white Jewish boy so I find it incredibly disgusting that I have to be subjected to such lessons given that my dad had family that watched their towns completely obliterated at the hands of the communist, and had some relatives wiped out by the Germans.

There can be no hierarchy in a profession where the boss doesn't have discretion to fire you for being grumpy Gus that falls below the standards the school is trying to set. Honestly, I think teachers should have more independence to teach the class in a manner that best plays to the learning style of students. However, they need to be qualified to do the job, and tests have demonstrated that more than half of all teachers fail the teaching exam with less than 50% on math and reading comprehension in states like California, NJ and NY. It used to be over 65% in California before they made it easier. Many teachers in Florida still complain about it, but I found it pretty easy after going through one of the study guides, but this is after I developed learning techniques in law school, which is a very competitive atmosphere. The learning methods and writing techniques are just better for students, because discussing issues engages critical thought about the world. None of this five paragraph BS. It's all about IRAC and CRAC.

In regards to para 3, I don't know who else will be in a better position to make those decisions. I think the officials should make sure teachers can utilize technology to teach students, and provide actual real-world experience to students. Also, they should record all lessons so parents have an opportunity to reinforce lessons, which is not unreasonable the days of camera phones. Where are they going to learn it? Yet their goal is to prepare students for college instead of life, but college is BS unless you pursue a degree in a challenging and useful background. How do they prepare children for adulthood when some teachers are drowning in debt with 70k salaries, and stress drinking a bottle of wine or smoking a joint at 4:30 in the afternoon despite only working half a year.

Okay. So we make the test easier for them, and we give them half a year they don't use to develop new skills, learn about technology, and develop a lesson plan. I just don't see it. Study after study shows that student learning is vastly improved when a child has educated parent/s that provide additional instruction. Unless you want to go the China route, it is the number 1 factor, putting Norway and Poland (25k salary) on top of the charts. I was able to teach children geometry with a few architectural drawings from a construction project and some of my tools, and used the classroom and objects to ground their learning of formulas to solve the math problem. It required long hours during my free time not knowing if it would work, and then I rehearsed it for my cousin. I don't see that kind of dedication, and the ones that did have it have are dinosaurs. I don't know. Just my thoughts. There's a lot that can be done.

 

So let them form unions without bringing legalities into the picture. They shouldn't be forced to pay dues or associate with the organization if they don't wish to do so.