Teacher Unionism: Standing Up for Children and the Teaching Profession

Teachers and educational workers throughout the country are standing up for children and the teaching profession.

How we do so varies from state to state, locale to locale.

In Chicago, teachers are engaged in a struggle against privatization, gentrification and an attack on basic working conditions. Recently the leadership of the Chicago Teachers Union held a strike authorization vote and nearly 90% of the teachers voted yes.

In Milwaukee educators and many other public and private sector workers and community members got out the vote and registered voters in unprecedented numbers for the recall election of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. Even though the grassroots organizing was unprecedented, Walker and his financial backers from around the country, survived the recall attempt.

For us in the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association the recall election means a recommitment to our work to reimagine and reinvent our union around the following principles:

• Move from collective bargaining to collective action
• Reclaim our classrooms and reclaim our profession
• Build collaborative public schools that serve all students
• Work with parents and community to promote democracy and justice
• Improve our union’s internal communication, public relations, and capacity to organize and mobilize our members

We are moving forward on these fronts.

The MTEA has taken up the issue of reclaiming our classrooms and our profession. We are opening the MTEA Center for Teaching, Learning, and Public Education. We have launched a new e-newsletter “Re-imagine: the MTEA Teaching and Learning newsletter.” (Click here to see a copy. ) We have started a campaign to ensure that developmentally appropriate practices are used in early childhood classrooms. We are partnering with the MPS administration to improve professional development and teacher evaluation.

In our continuing work to support democracy and social justice, the MTEA Executive Board voted to donate $350 to the strike support fund of the Palermo's Pizza workers who are struggling for union recognition and safe working conditions. Our members have joined their picket lines.

Conditions (and collective bargaining laws) differ in Chicago and Milwaukee. Yet the the activism in both teacher unions flows from a belief that teacher unions need to be more than just service unions focusing on narrow workplace issues. We must move from a “service model” to an organizing model. We have to not only be concerned about issues of wages, hours and benefits, but also issues of teaching and learning, professionalism, our community and justice. Put simply, we must put children first.

A recent article describing the work of  the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE) and their leadership within the Chicago Teachers Union sums up some of this new perspective. James Cersonsky writes:

“While the city shutters, charterizes, segregates, gentrifies, intimidates, and fires, the union has created a member organizing department where one didn’t exist before, trained over 200 shop stewards, held countless public meetings and protests against school closings, and organized in hand with parents, students, community groups, and other unions-altogether, a new vision for twenty-first century teacher unionism.”

A similar vision is taking take root in the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association. The MTEA is Reimagining and Reinventing itself, moving from a service to an organizing model.

This year saw an unprecedented level of activism among MTEA members. Hundreds mobilized for the recall campaign, including groups of teachers and educational assistants who canvassed the neighborhoods around their schools in the evenings and on weekends.

This year the MTEA also more systematically trained building leaders and expanded member involvement through school-based advocate positions including Teaching and Learning, Parent/Community, Social Justice, and Democracy Advocates.

In 1998 as a rank-and-file union activist I wrote an article "Survival and Justice: Rethinking Teacher Union Strategy" in the magazine Rethinking Schools, "Never in the history of our nation have public schools been under such relentless attack. Never in the history of teacher unionism has there been a greater urgency to rethink strategy."

Fourteen years later those words are now more true than ever.

Gov. Walker Transfers $100,000 More into Criminal Defense Fund

According to campaign finance reports released Tuesday night, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker transferred an additional $100,000 to his criminal defense fund.


Why?


Milwaukee Co. District Attorney John Chisholm is conducting a John Doe investigation into illegal activities by Walker's aides while Walker was Milwaukee County Executive. So far the investigation has led to the filing of criminal charges against three of Walker's county aides, one former appointee and a major campaign contributor. 

• On April 13, Walker transferred $60,000 from his campaign war chest to his criminal defense fund.
• On May 3, Walker transferred $70,000 more.
• On May 17, Walker transferred $30,000 more.

Walker is the only standing Governor in the United States with a legal defense fund.


Why does he need a $160,000 defense fund? 


Walker has hired criminal defense lawyers, including former US Attorney Steven Biskupic. 


Walker says he is not under investigation, but according to state regulations state officeholders may set up legal defense funds only if they or an agent of their campaign have been charged with or are under investigation for election or campaign violations.


Who?


State law requires that Walker get permission from his campaign contributors to move their money to his criminal legal defense fund. Walker has refused repeated requests to make public which of his rich donors have agreed to fund his defense fund. He has a lot of rich patrons to ask.


According to Walker's campaign finance report Christy Walton, a Walmart heiress active in the school voucher movement, gave Walker $50,000, the report shows. Forbes lists Walton as the richest woman in the world, with a net worth of $25.3 billion. Perhaps he asked her.


Why?


Why doesn't Walker come clean? Why doesn't he release the secret emails? Why doesn't tell the public who is financing his legal defense fund?


What can you do?


Vote June 5. Make history.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Endorses Wrong Candidate

Few people were surprised with the May 20 endorsement of Gov. Scott Walker by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Many people, however, were upset and know it's not in the best interest of the people of Wisconsin.

I encourage you to read the following statement of Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate:

"It saddens, but does not surprise, that the state's largest newspaper would continue to support the most divisive, and possibly most corrupt, governor in Wisconsin history.

"The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has supported Scott Walker in its editorial and news pages for years, has seriously underplayed the scandals of his various administrations, has treated the historic recall movement with small-minded contempt and will, therefore be judged harshly if remembered at all, in Wisconsin's history.

"One need only read the Milwaukee Sentinel editorials AGAINST the Civil Rights Movement and FOR Joe McCarthy to remember how silly and reactionary a news organization can look in the hindsight of the ages.

"And so it will be with Scott Walker, who has been treated with the embarrassing kindnesses of the Journal Communications empire, which props up the Walker agenda with a daily and unrelenting stream of propaganda via right-wing extremists Charlie Sykes and Jeff Wagner.

"But it is not merely the editorial support that is so troubling.

"Scott Walker not only owns the back editorial pages of the paper — he also owns the front pages of the paper with what is is supposed to remain a neutral forum for actual news. In this case, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has practiced repeated journalistic lapses, underplaying the shocking criminal corruption scandal in Walker's midst, downplaying the enormity of the division and dishonesty emanating from this administration and hyping up and adopting a shocking re-engineering of the truth by Walker on everything from jobs numbers to government transparency.

"This endorsement is also troubling given that it is a blatant about-face to their previous editorial policy of not endorsing in recall elections, having not endorsed in any of the recall elections of last summer.

"In the end, time will tell whether the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's snide and small support for Scott Walker and against the average citizens of Wisconsin will make the difference on June 5th. But by turning such a blind eye to facts in the service of an ideology so extreme and an administration so corrupt, the paper has made yet another backward stand against history."

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Also check out how a conservative Milwaukee group has brazenly attacked teachers in Janesville, WI, especially those who signed the Recall Walker petition. 

Bullies, Lies, and Videotape

A quarter century ago, director Steven Soderburgh coupled innovative film-making with a great title: Sex, Lies, and Videotape.

Now, in an era where Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has become the poster boy of a mean-spirited Republican agenda across the country, we have what I call Bullies, Lies and Videotape.

First for the videotape.

In a videotape released on May 10, but filmed 16 months earlier shortly after Gov Scott Walker took office, a Wisconsin billionaire asked Walker what he would do to help make Wisconsin “a completely red state and work on these unions and become a right-to-work?”

Walker’s response? He says that he has planned a “divide and conquer” anti-union strategy with a “first step” of denying collective bargaining right to public sector works. (Wisconsinites are now well aware of the videotape, but unfortunately it failed to make national news. Make sure to check below for more details on this video.)

Second, for the lie.

For the last 18 months, Walker has claimed that while campaigning for governor he made clear his anti-union agenda. It is now common knowledge that the claim is false. Or, as some might say, Walker is lying. He never told Wisconsin voters that if elected he would gut collective bargaining for public workers.

Third, for the bullies.

Here we have not only Walker but the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney.

According to Webster’s dictionary a bully is “a person who hurt, frightens, or tyrannizes over those who are smaller or weaker.”

Put together Walker’s anti-union Act 10, his budget cuts of social services and public education, his corporate tax breaks and his unprecedented out-of-state fundraising from the likes of the Koch brothers and other billionaires, and the “bully” definition is more than apt. (Not to be forgotten, Walker’s threat when he first announced his attack on collective bargaining that he was prepared to call out the National Guard.)

While Walker’s true colors were being exposed by videotape, a report in the Washington Post revealed that Mitt Romney bullied a classmate 50 years ago while at Michigan's prestigious Cranbrook prep school.

Romney targeted a new student with long dyed blond hair presumed to be gay. Leading a group of bullies, he chased the boy, tackled him and while others pinned the blond-haired boy down, Romney forcibly cut his hair with scissors while the student cried and screamed for help.

Five of Romney’s classmates involved in the bullying matured enough to be remorseful, and they told their story to the Washington Post. One of the former bullies called their youthful attack “bullying supreme” and told ABC News: ‘It's a haunting memory, when you see somebody who is simply different taken down that way and is terrified and you see that look in their eye, you never forget it.’”

In an interview on Fox Radio, Romney laughed when asked about the incident. He said he didn’t remember it.

New York Times columnist Gail Collins was one of many commentators who expressed disbelief at Romney’s selective memory, and concluded that Romney “is lying through his teeth.”

Bullies who lie, whether Mitt Romney or Scott Walker, should not be in positions of political leadership. Wisconsin voters will have the chance to throw Walker out of office on June 5. Nationwide, voters will have the chance to thwart Romney’s ambitions on November 6.

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Now, some details on that Walker videotape.

The clip, filmed in January 2011, shows Walker confiding to a billionaire donor about his strategy to attack unions. He kept that plan secret for nearly a month before he announced his “budget repair bill” to eliminate collective bargaining rights for all public sector workers (except the police and firefighter unions that had endorsed him for governor the previous year). His anti-collective bargaining plan spurred the largest workers’ protest in Wisconsin’s history.  

Walker’s comments were in response to billionaire Diane Hendricks asking him if he can help make Wisconsin into “a completely red state and work on these unions and become a right-to-work?” Walker interrupted her saying, “Oh yeah” and then explained his “divide and conquer strategy.”

“Well, we’re going to start in a couple weeks with our budget adjustment bill.” Walker explained. “The first step is we're going to deal with collective bargaining for all public employee unions, because you use divide and conquer,” he told Hendricks, who according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has “given $510,000 to the governor’s campaign – making her Walker’s single-largest donor and the largest known donor to a candidate in state history.”

The video clip is part of a movie trailer for a documentary “As Goes Janesville” that will premiere this summer. The movie, by documentary filmmaker Brad Lichtenstein, depicts the devastating impact of the closing of a massive General Motors plant on a small industrial city in southern Wisconsin.

Honor Teachers, Help Recall Gov. Walker

In 1984 the National PTA designated the first week in May as Teacher Appreciation Week.

A quarter of a century later, voters in Wisconsin will have the chance to help that week actually mean something.

This Tuesday, May 8, voters will decide who will run against Wis. Gov. Scott Walker, the poster child of the conservatives’ anti-teacher agenda.

On June 5, voters will have a chance to expel Walker.

According to the National PTA the appreciation week is a “special time to honor the men and women who lend their passion and skills to educating our children.”

In the past year, Walker has dishonored both teachers and their students.

Walker enacted the largest cuts to public education in the history of the state – nearly $1 billion  – harming hundreds of thousands of children and students.

Walker wrote a blank check for the expansion of the private school voucher program.  In the current 2011-12 school year Wisconsin taxpayers are spending an additional $14.2 million on the expansion of the Milwaukee voucher program, for a total of more than $150 million in that school year.

This contrasts sharply to the cut of approximately $84 million of state aid to the Milwaukee Public Schools during the same school year. That cut led to mushrooming class sizes and the virtual elimination of physical education, art, and music teachers and librarians in MPS elementary and K-8 schools.

Walker’s signature legislation, Act 10, essentially banned collective bargaining by public workers, including teachers and other school staff. This dishonors teachers and our professional as collective bargaining is a basic civil and human right guaranteed by the United Nation’s Declaration of Human Rights.

Most recently Walker ordered the Wisconsin Employee Relations Commission to adopt a rule that the base-salary upon which any future possible raises can be calculated (or bargained) must exclude any compensation for educational attainment, credits or degrees. Act 10 and this new rule, reconfirm that Walker’s intentions were to strip ALL collective bargaining rights from teacher unions.

Walker also pushed through legislation that ties teacher evaluation to test scores. He summed up his intentions during a recent visit by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. Walker said, “We can now hire and fire based on merit. We can pay based on performance. That means we can put the best and the brightest in our classrooms, and we can keep them there.” (Education historian Diane Ravitch has resoundly debunked the myth about merit pay.)

Teachers in Wisconsin are wearing red on Monday to show solidarity with all who wish to Reclaim Wisconsin.

On Tuesday we are voting in the Democratic Primary.

On June 5, we will cast our ballot in the recall election.

We invite anyone from out of state to donate money or volunteer before the June 5 Walker Recall election.

For more details on that, contact: We Are Wisconsin

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 Also check out Charles Blow’s wonderful New York Times column “Teaching Me About Teaching."

From Philadelphia to Oconomowoc – How Not to Reform Public Schools

Two vastly different school districts — Oconomowoc, WI, and Philadelphia, PA — had something in common this week. Both boasted of innovations that, when examined, became examples of how not to improve schools. Both chose to forgo parent and teacher input in developing their plans. Both show a lack of respect for the fundamentals of democracy.

Philadelphia, the 8th largest school district in the country, has 192,089 students. Oconomowoc, with 5,081 students, is 35 miles west of Milwaukee.

The Philadelphia plan centers on an aggressive move toward privatization via charter schools run by management companies. The Oconomowoc plan highlights a top-down, anti-teacher reorganization made possible by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s attack on collective bargaining last year.

In Philadelphia, “Chief Recovery Officer” and former gas industry executive Tom Knudsen wants to close 40 low-performing schools in 2013 and another 24 by 2017 — by which time he hopes that 40 percent of all of Philadelphia’s public school students will be in charter schools. His plan also calls for dismantling much of the Central Office and “modernizing” (read, outsourcing to low-wage subcontractors) custodial services, maintenance, and transportation.

Educational historian Diane Ravitch summed up the plan this way: “Close public schools, open privately managed charter schools, cut the budget.” 

Ravitch went on to say: “I didn’t see anything [in the transition plan] that would cause learning to improve, just a lot of rhetoric that schools would achieve more than they used to because we say so,” she said. “If you really want to improve schools, you have to do something about teaching and learning.”

Helen Gym, a Philadelphia parent activist (and Rethinking Schools editorial associate) wrote an open letter to Mr. Knudsen, who in essence is the district’s superintendent, appointed in January by a non-elected School Reform Commission controlled by the governor. As Gym wrote to Knudsen, “You’re not speaking to me with this brand of disaster capitalism that tries to shock a besieged public with unproven, untested and drastic action couched as ‘solutions.’ You’re not speaking to me when you invoke language like ‘achievement networks,’ ‘portfolio management,’ and right-sizing our schools – and say not a word about lower class sizes or increasing the presence of loving support personnel or enriching our curriculum.”

In Oconomowoc, meanwhile, the school administration proposed “a profound restructuring of its high school, cutting staff and demanding the remaining educators take on more teaching duties,” according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The district laid off 15 (20%) of its 75 high school teachers and told the remaining teachers that those teaching academic subjects would loose all planning time. Instead of teaching three 90-minute blocks, they would now teach four 90-minutes blocks. Even though the remaining teachers would be paid $14,000 more, teachers were not pleased.

Mark Miner, a veteran social studies teacher, wrote in the April 29, 2012 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that the plan was “recipe for burnout” with “a 33% increase in the teaching load while at the same time eliminating prep time.” Miner called for “true education reform, not mandatory overtime that leaves no time to prepare for class, assess student work or provide the individual attention that all students need.”

The Oconomowoc officials were able to push through their plan without input from teachers because Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican-dominated state legislature stripped teachers of collective bargaining rights in 2011. The students and teachers in Oconomowoc – like the rest of the state – are also affected by the state budget, which included the largest cuts to public education in the history of the state.

In Wisconsin, the first step towards true education reform will be on June 5, when Wisconsin voters have the opportunity to recall Gov. Scott Walker. In Philadelphia, concerned parents and community members are organizing, hopeful they can stem the rush toward privatization. (To stay atop of Philadelphia organizing, check out the community-based Philadelphia Public School Notebook.)

Children's Week — Building Community Support for Public Education in Milwaukee

During my 30 years of teaching, people have often asked, “What can I do to help the Milwaukee Public Schools?”

My first response is to encourage them to visit a school. To witness the joys and challenges of teaching today’s students. To begin to understand the complex issues that teachers face every day, and to see first-hand that many stereotypes about our schools and students are just that—stereotypes.

In order to bolster the community’s involvement in MPS, the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association has launched the MPS Children’s Campaign. The effort provides a way for individuals to become involved and to build community support to protect and enrich MPS.

The long-term goal is to develop a children’s agenda that ensures that our public schools, especially those in our most economically depressed and racially segregated areas, serve the needs of all children.

I began working in MPS in 1977. At my first elementary school, there were full-time art, music and physical education teachers, along with a librarian and math and reading specialists. Today, librarians and art, music and gym teachers are endangered species. Class sizes have mushroomed.

As jobs have left Milwaukee, poverty has skyrocketed. Almost 84 percent of MPS students are eligible for free and reduced lunch. This is more than twice the state average. The miracle of MPS is that, despite the odds, amazing things happen every day in its classrooms, which is a tribute to educators, students and families.

However, a quality education system has to be based on more than miracles. The children of Milwaukee deserve strong and sustained community support. They deserve the educational resources and enrichment that are the norm in affluent suburbs.

MPS is the largest school district in the state. It is the only educational institution in Milwaukee that has the capacity, commitment, and legal obligation to serve the needs of all the city’s children.

The future of the metropolitan region is tied to the success of MPS and its students. It’s long past time for all community leaders to help solve the complicated problems confronting MPS. I am tired of exaggerated criticisms from people who have not stepped foot in an MPS school in years.

The MPS Children’s Week, which began on Sunday, is the first initiative of the MPS Children’s Campaign. Milwaukee educators, organized by the union, volunteered at churches on the north and south side to tutor students from 14 MPS high schools for the ACT test that all MPS 11^th graders will take on Tuesday, April 24.

Other activities span a range of issues, from literacy, health and arts programs to career and college readiness. On Monday, MPS educators worked with the Milwaukee Public Library and the Next Door Foundation on a “Books in Kids’ Hands” literacy initiative. On Thursday, activities will focus on health and wellness, and the Wisconsin Vision eyeglass company will provide free screening, exams and eyeglasses for students at Vieau School. The list of activities and organizations involved goes on, including food co-ops, bicycle collectives, faith-based organizations, Growing Power, and prominent business groups such as the Milwaukee Water Council and the Greater Milwaukee Committee. (For more information, visit www.mtea.org.)

The Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association is committed to working with all those who believe in equal opportunity and quality public schools. We ask you to join the MPS Children’s Campaign, whether this week or in the coming months.

It’s easy to be cynical about the prospect for change, but in my more than 30 years of teaching, I have found that commitment, caring and the refusal to give up are far more important values to teach our children.

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This article first appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in the April 24, 2012 print edition. 

For daily updates and background information on the MTEA-initiated MPS Children's Week go to http://mpschildrenscampaign.org/