The VUSD board has voted to end 'at large' voting for school board members starting with the 2012 school board election. This means our school district will be divided into five small voting districts and each of the five board members will be elected from the one smaller voting district that they live in.
School boards and city councils throughout California are being forced to get rid of 'at large' voting for school board and city council candidates as a result of a couple of court decisions which determine that district wide 'at large' voting tends to discriminate against Latino candidates. The court rulings are based on the state of California's Voting Rights Act.
In dozens and dozens of districts across California with a majority of Hispanics in the population, but whose school board or city council members, there has been a threat by a national group with a California office in San Francisco called the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights of expensive lawsuits if the 'at large' system is not dumped.
Madera Unified School District and the City of Modesto chose to fight the lawsuits and both lost. It cost Madera Unified 1.2 million dollars to lose and the City of Modesto three million dollars to lose.
The Los Angeles Times has a wonderful article about this issue of "at large' voting being discriminatory. It is very informative and thorough. Read it here.
Our local VUSD has repeatedly been threatened by Roxy, an infamous North County Times blogger, with similar legal problems like Madera had. In addition our local District English Learner's Advisory Committee (DELAC) has a new president Eduardo Preciado who along with members Alejandro Sanchez and Tina Jillings have also brought up the Madera lawsuit at DELAC meetings and at the school board meetings. The issue is very alive in our district.
Tina Jillings is an out spoken advocate for Hispanic rights. She ran for a City Council seat here in Vista a couple of years ago. The San Diego Minuteman hate her. On that basis alone I like her. She has spark and gumption and I believe if she did get a California Voters Rights lawsuit filed against VUSD, she would win.
Our school board cannot afford to ignore this clear and present danger to our already severely cut back school funds. They have prudently voted to divide our school districts into smaller 'sub' districts as quickly as possible which in our case is the 2012 election cycle. Likely the City of Vista will be doing the same thing soon along with many other school board and cities throughout San Diego County and California.
So who is against the idea? Jim Gibson and his buddy, North County Times editor, Kent Davy.
Gibson was the only VUSD school board member to vote and speak against the idea. Jim quote in the North County Times was something about being afraid that if the 'at large' system for electing school board members were enacted than school board members from the local 'sub' district voting area would actually serve the interest of that area rather than the grander political controversies, Jimmy, likes to advocate for. Remember his Carrie Prejean Day fiasco? In Jim's weird world it is terrible to have all five school board members (instead of only four currently) actually have the education and welfare of our VUSD students as their top priority.
Jim Gibson has taken his views to Kent Davy, the NCTimes editor, and Kent has dutifully written an editorial for Jim in today's North County Times.
Besides Jim Gibson, Kent Davy,and the San Diego Minuteman, the Pacific Legal Foundation is also against the idea of getting rid of 'at large' elections for school board and city councils. The Pacific Legal Foundation is a pro lung cancer, pro pollution group that advocates for and gets it funding from Big Tobacco (Phillip Morris). With enemies like these, I am finding I am more and more in favor of this idea of getting rid of 'at large' elections. Of course no matter how any one feels about the idea, it is going to happen. Either by expensive court action or by a reasonable process organized by our local school board and likely our Vista City Council.
NOTE: However the final plan for dividing up our school district comes out, it will not take effect until it is also approved by the San Diego County of Education and the State of California State Board of Education. I am sure the process of dividing the district will be contentious but with three levels of scrutiny, the final plan should be fair.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Friday, June 11, 2010
Why we fight. What our angry friends say about us and others.
In the last post we saw a letter to the editor by a fine example of VUSD students, Kelsey Munson.
In this post I have taken the comments of a prominent ANTI, who calls himself unlaxx. Over the years he has left many comments on the North County Times about teaching being a part time job and teachers being over paid.
Below is his comment after an article in the North County Times about Escondido Union Elementary Teachers hoping to not have their five furlough days made a PERMANENT part of their contract. They would like the cuts in pay to be temporary say in a Memorandum of Understanding. Sound familiar?
Unlaxx did not quite understand the article but I think you will understand his sentiments.
Here is Unlaxx in his own words:
unlaxx said on: June 11, 2010, 5:22 am
Working five fewer days is not a salary reduction.
A salary is a RATE of pay per TIME worked.
It's like not driving your car for five days, then claiming you got better gas mileage because you didn't use any gas those days. Or claiming that you got worse gas mileage because in those five days your car didn't take you anywhere at all.
Truth is, you got the same gas mileage.
Teacher's salaries are dishonestly portrayed from the start by expressing them as annual pay - as if they worked 8 hour days, 40 hour weeks, 52 day years with nominal vacation and holiday time off.
Teacher's should come to grips with the fact that they have a part-time job. If they want more income, work during their time off instead of complaining.
He and others like him in our district are the enemies of FACT based public education. They are the ones who opposed every school bond for twenty years. The two school board members they elected, Dr. Stephen Guffanti and Jim Gibson managed to delay the start of construction on our third high school from fall of 2002 to spring of 2008 at an increase in projected cost of almost fifty million dollars. The warped world view, of our angry friends, sees FACT based public schools as an 'evil' that must be destroyed.
As you may recall Dr. Stephen Guffanti was a charter member in a nationwide group with the stated goal of the end of all public education in the United States. Guffanti holds anti FACT based views on science and science education and he speaks at conferences that prominently feature science denial.
As you read below what unlaxx wrote about folks who are different than he is, remember he feels the same intolerance for you and the profession you have chosen. Unlaxx and his ilk are why we fight. His hate filled intolerant variation of Christianity that I call the "little god cult" allows no room for anyone different from themselves or better educated than they are.
Unlaxx also posted the following in today's North County Times. Unlaxx is responding to a comment in the letters to the editor section of the North County Times regarding tolerance.
unlaxx said on: June 11, 2010, 6:20 pm
Your racial analogy doesn't work. Blacks had to overcome discrimination on several fronts, and interracial marriage was just one of them. But they didn't have to redefine the term to do so. And the black folks don't appreciate you using their civil rights struggle to make your point. Blacks are even more against same sex marriage than whites.
Homosexuals don't make me feel hatred. Nauseous maybe. Amusement. But not hate.
I'm not against same-sex marriage because of the homosexual angle. If two heterosexual people of the same sex want to marry each other because perhaps, one can transfer their employer's health benefits to the other, or they can get a tax break, or some other logical reason, I'm still against it.
The homosexual lobby WANTS to paint my opposition as homophobic. Too bad for them because I'm not feeling the guilt they're trying to sell. My opposition to same-sex marriage has nothing to do with being anti-homosexual. Marriage is a time-honored institution of husband and wife. Not wife and wife. Not husband and husband. Not "Party 1" and "Party 2".
You play checkers on a checkerboard because it has two different alternating colors.
A light switch is called a switch because it has two different positions: ON and OFF.
The marriage of Steve and Howard next door damages my marriage because now I'm forced to explain what used to be a self-defining term. In your world, you can't buy a light "switch" and know it will turn the lights ON and OFF because you've let some special interest group change the meaning of the word "switch".
Below is a response from PRO-public education blogger, Emerald. She has on many occasions launched a spirited defense of FACT based public education.
Emerald said on: June 11, 2010, 6:36 pm
Response to Unlaxx at 6:20 p.m.:
No Unlaxx, “Steve and Howard next door” does NOTHING to your marriage.
Your problem with defining words is YOUR PROBLEM.
Marriage has always been defined and redefined throughout history, from the time - such as, you know, the Biblical definitions - when most of the world practiced polygamy to women being defined as chattel property with no rights, through all the changes that have always occurred AND ARE STILL OCCURRING.
Your problem with defining words is purely your own and reflects your own rigid inflexibility.
It is not pushed on you by those less rigid who choose to live their lives as who they really are, and don’t need those who HATE FREEDOM AND LIBERTY to stand in their way.
And if you don’t think that gays/lesbians are discriminated in many, may other ways - as blacks were (and are) - in employment, in education, in social ostracism, then you are more naïve than I ever though.
AND her second thoughts on the subject:
Emerald said on: June 11, 2010, 6:54 pm
Further response to Unlaxx at 6:20 p.m.:
Your desperation to resort to “definitions” to justify bigotry actually reinforces Caro’s point.
Definitions of terms are the hallmarks in which bigotry is harbored
Accepting blacks into the definition of “human being” forced some uncomfortable changes in terms for some racial bigots.
Of course, Germans found it convenient to define “religion” in such a way that excluded Jews and then used that to justify treating those defined out of the loop as not deserving to remain in the human race.
“Definitions” are the last resort for those who must rely on words to change what cannot be changed in the reality of objective truth.
In this post I have taken the comments of a prominent ANTI, who calls himself unlaxx. Over the years he has left many comments on the North County Times about teaching being a part time job and teachers being over paid.
Below is his comment after an article in the North County Times about Escondido Union Elementary Teachers hoping to not have their five furlough days made a PERMANENT part of their contract. They would like the cuts in pay to be temporary say in a Memorandum of Understanding. Sound familiar?
Unlaxx did not quite understand the article but I think you will understand his sentiments.
Here is Unlaxx in his own words:
unlaxx said on: June 11, 2010, 5:22 am
Working five fewer days is not a salary reduction.
A salary is a RATE of pay per TIME worked.
It's like not driving your car for five days, then claiming you got better gas mileage because you didn't use any gas those days. Or claiming that you got worse gas mileage because in those five days your car didn't take you anywhere at all.
Truth is, you got the same gas mileage.
Teacher's salaries are dishonestly portrayed from the start by expressing them as annual pay - as if they worked 8 hour days, 40 hour weeks, 52 day years with nominal vacation and holiday time off.
Teacher's should come to grips with the fact that they have a part-time job. If they want more income, work during their time off instead of complaining.
He and others like him in our district are the enemies of FACT based public education. They are the ones who opposed every school bond for twenty years. The two school board members they elected, Dr. Stephen Guffanti and Jim Gibson managed to delay the start of construction on our third high school from fall of 2002 to spring of 2008 at an increase in projected cost of almost fifty million dollars. The warped world view, of our angry friends, sees FACT based public schools as an 'evil' that must be destroyed.
As you may recall Dr. Stephen Guffanti was a charter member in a nationwide group with the stated goal of the end of all public education in the United States. Guffanti holds anti FACT based views on science and science education and he speaks at conferences that prominently feature science denial.
As you read below what unlaxx wrote about folks who are different than he is, remember he feels the same intolerance for you and the profession you have chosen. Unlaxx and his ilk are why we fight. His hate filled intolerant variation of Christianity that I call the "little god cult" allows no room for anyone different from themselves or better educated than they are.
Unlaxx also posted the following in today's North County Times. Unlaxx is responding to a comment in the letters to the editor section of the North County Times regarding tolerance.
unlaxx said on: June 11, 2010, 6:20 pm
Your racial analogy doesn't work. Blacks had to overcome discrimination on several fronts, and interracial marriage was just one of them. But they didn't have to redefine the term to do so. And the black folks don't appreciate you using their civil rights struggle to make your point. Blacks are even more against same sex marriage than whites.
Homosexuals don't make me feel hatred. Nauseous maybe. Amusement. But not hate.
I'm not against same-sex marriage because of the homosexual angle. If two heterosexual people of the same sex want to marry each other because perhaps, one can transfer their employer's health benefits to the other, or they can get a tax break, or some other logical reason, I'm still against it.
The homosexual lobby WANTS to paint my opposition as homophobic. Too bad for them because I'm not feeling the guilt they're trying to sell. My opposition to same-sex marriage has nothing to do with being anti-homosexual. Marriage is a time-honored institution of husband and wife. Not wife and wife. Not husband and husband. Not "Party 1" and "Party 2".
You play checkers on a checkerboard because it has two different alternating colors.
A light switch is called a switch because it has two different positions: ON and OFF.
The marriage of Steve and Howard next door damages my marriage because now I'm forced to explain what used to be a self-defining term. In your world, you can't buy a light "switch" and know it will turn the lights ON and OFF because you've let some special interest group change the meaning of the word "switch".
Below is a response from PRO-public education blogger, Emerald. She has on many occasions launched a spirited defense of FACT based public education.
Emerald said on: June 11, 2010, 6:36 pm
Response to Unlaxx at 6:20 p.m.:
No Unlaxx, “Steve and Howard next door” does NOTHING to your marriage.
Your problem with defining words is YOUR PROBLEM.
Marriage has always been defined and redefined throughout history, from the time - such as, you know, the Biblical definitions - when most of the world practiced polygamy to women being defined as chattel property with no rights, through all the changes that have always occurred AND ARE STILL OCCURRING.
Your problem with defining words is purely your own and reflects your own rigid inflexibility.
It is not pushed on you by those less rigid who choose to live their lives as who they really are, and don’t need those who HATE FREEDOM AND LIBERTY to stand in their way.
And if you don’t think that gays/lesbians are discriminated in many, may other ways - as blacks were (and are) - in employment, in education, in social ostracism, then you are more naïve than I ever though.
AND her second thoughts on the subject:
Emerald said on: June 11, 2010, 6:54 pm
Further response to Unlaxx at 6:20 p.m.:
Your desperation to resort to “definitions” to justify bigotry actually reinforces Caro’s point.
Definitions of terms are the hallmarks in which bigotry is harbored
Accepting blacks into the definition of “human being” forced some uncomfortable changes in terms for some racial bigots.
Of course, Germans found it convenient to define “religion” in such a way that excluded Jews and then used that to justify treating those defined out of the loop as not deserving to remain in the human race.
“Definitions” are the last resort for those who must rely on words to change what cannot be changed in the reality of objective truth.
Kelly Munson, a fine example of VUSD education
Kelsey Munson wrote a letter to the editor today published in the North County Times with the kind of benficial community sentiments that make our world a better place if we all had them. Every educator in our district should be proud that wonderful students like Kelsey come from our VUSD schools. Kelsey and thousands of others make our jobs worthwhile. We are touching the future. Chista McAuliffe was right.
See the letter below:
The environment we are creating
Recently, I have been walking the streets of Vista and Oceanside, collecting the trash encountered along the way. Some friends have asked me why I am doing this, and my answer is simple: It needs to be done, and no one else will do it.
There is a downward cycle creating a negative environment that appears to be caused by two mentalities. First, many believe that there will always be someone else to clean up after them, or who will compensate for a person's negative contributions. Second, people do not have pride in their communities. Without pride in a community, why does it matter if the streets are lined with trash?
People complain about the sort of environments we live in with gangs, violence and filth, yet few are willing to do something about it. If everyone were to do their small part, I believe it would have an immense impact on the attitudes of everyone and reflect through the community.
There is an Indian saying that states, "We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children." The actions of today will have a permanent effect on tomorrow.
I would like to challenge people to do their part in order for the next generation to have a better future, because who does not want a better world for their children?
Kelsey Munson
student, Vista High School
Oceanside
http://www.nctimes.com/news/opinion/letters/article_84de4a76-5764-5449-ae3d-3548696745f0.html
See the letter below:
The environment we are creating
Recently, I have been walking the streets of Vista and Oceanside, collecting the trash encountered along the way. Some friends have asked me why I am doing this, and my answer is simple: It needs to be done, and no one else will do it.
There is a downward cycle creating a negative environment that appears to be caused by two mentalities. First, many believe that there will always be someone else to clean up after them, or who will compensate for a person's negative contributions. Second, people do not have pride in their communities. Without pride in a community, why does it matter if the streets are lined with trash?
People complain about the sort of environments we live in with gangs, violence and filth, yet few are willing to do something about it. If everyone were to do their small part, I believe it would have an immense impact on the attitudes of everyone and reflect through the community.
There is an Indian saying that states, "We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children." The actions of today will have a permanent effect on tomorrow.
I would like to challenge people to do their part in order for the next generation to have a better future, because who does not want a better world for their children?
Kelsey Munson
student, Vista High School
Oceanside
http://www.nctimes.com/news/opinion/letters/article_84de4a76-5764-5449-ae3d-3548696745f0.html
Monday, June 7, 2010
Majority Vote Budget Initiative--Rescuing California from the Tyranny of Sacramento Republicans
Found the opinion piece below in La Prensa site. It's the kind of editorial that the North County Times would never publish, even though it is provided at no cost to the NCTimes and other papers. Yet for some reason it is not published in the North County Times.
Is it not published because it is poorly written or has bad grammar? No, I could not find any problem with grammar or punctuation. So why wouldn't the NCTimes publish it?
What could the reason the NCTimes would never publish this free to them editorial piece? I mean they publish Steven Greenhut, the paid propaganda poodle for the Pacific Propaganda Institute. They publish Loofah loving, sex scandal, Bill O'Reilly. They publish George Will. But they do not publish what labor leaders or organizations write and give away for free. How strange.
Please enjoy the piece below. It is gives some very good reasons why we should all be out campaigning for the Majority Vote Budget Initiative on the ballot this November.
Schwarzenegger’s Values on Clear Display in May Revise
Fri, May 21, 2010
By Willie L. Pelote, Sr.
Before unveiling his 2010-2011 budget revision last week, Arnold Schwarzenegger said that he believed the state budget should be “a reflection of what we in California value most and also it should be a representation of what our administration stands for, in good times or in bad.”
By purposely turning a blind eye to the billions of taxpayer dollars being squandered every year to subsidize the activities, high salaries, and pension costs of wealthy executives and multinational corporations in the private sector in favor of reviving a series of discredited proposals to eviscerate the Golden State’s network of social infrastructure, Schwarzenegger has clearly demonstrated the kind of values that he believes in.
Worse, it would seem that he is intent on foisting these values upon the majority of citizens of this state who support public services.
For many decades now, the rich have gotten richer while everybody else has been getting poorer, and the state and nation are worse off for it.
The persistent inequity that flows from this situation is one of the defining characteristics of the Great Depression and the current Great Recession.
With unemployment holding steady at almost 10% nationally and 12% in California alone, the time has come to advance solutions that address some of the central problems in our state.
In California, a two-thirds vote is needed to pass a state budget.
Many have cited this provision as an obstacle to progress and a recipe for perpetual gridlock and crisis, because it confers undeserved power on a recalcitrant minority and to lame duck governors without the wherewithal to pass meaningful legislation, because they can exploit the two-thirds budget rule to extract greater tax cuts for the wealthy in exchange for budgets that wipe out the protections and parity provided by our state’s network of public services.
This imperils the existence of anybody who has to work for a living.
That is why this November citizens across the state should vote for the Majority Vote Budget Initiative.
If passed, the measure would enable a state budget to be passed with a simple majority and penalize lawmakers for failing to pass the budget on time by docking their pay.
It’s a common sense reform that is long overdue.
In the meantime, the state could realize almost $40 billion worth of savings immediately by: (1) eliminating the $35 billion worth of waste and inefficiency associated with the state’s use of private contractors to perform jobs that civil servants could do for half the cost; (2) end the $500 million a year that taxpayers spend to prop up unproductive businesses through the state’s discredited enterprise zone program; (3) repeal the tax breaks given out to millionaires like Schwarzenegger and multinational corporations.
In fact, the tax cuts provided to multinational corporations as a condition for passage of the 2009 state budget have been costing Californians $3 billion a year, while income taxes on the rich have been rolled back to the point where average families who have to work for a living wind up paying more taxes every year than corporations like Exxon.
Together, these practices are bankrupting California to the tune of $39 billion a year.
We need to do what’s right for the people of California now.
Willie L. Pelote, Sr. is an Assistant Director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), AFL-CIO. AFSCME’s 1.6 million members provide the vital services that make America happen.
http://laprensa-sandiego.org/editorial-and-commentary/commentary/schwarzenegger%E2%80%99s-values-on-clear-display-in-may-revise/
Is it not published because it is poorly written or has bad grammar? No, I could not find any problem with grammar or punctuation. So why wouldn't the NCTimes publish it?
What could the reason the NCTimes would never publish this free to them editorial piece? I mean they publish Steven Greenhut, the paid propaganda poodle for the Pacific Propaganda Institute. They publish Loofah loving, sex scandal, Bill O'Reilly. They publish George Will. But they do not publish what labor leaders or organizations write and give away for free. How strange.
Please enjoy the piece below. It is gives some very good reasons why we should all be out campaigning for the Majority Vote Budget Initiative on the ballot this November.
Schwarzenegger’s Values on Clear Display in May Revise
Fri, May 21, 2010
By Willie L. Pelote, Sr.
Before unveiling his 2010-2011 budget revision last week, Arnold Schwarzenegger said that he believed the state budget should be “a reflection of what we in California value most and also it should be a representation of what our administration stands for, in good times or in bad.”
By purposely turning a blind eye to the billions of taxpayer dollars being squandered every year to subsidize the activities, high salaries, and pension costs of wealthy executives and multinational corporations in the private sector in favor of reviving a series of discredited proposals to eviscerate the Golden State’s network of social infrastructure, Schwarzenegger has clearly demonstrated the kind of values that he believes in.
Worse, it would seem that he is intent on foisting these values upon the majority of citizens of this state who support public services.
For many decades now, the rich have gotten richer while everybody else has been getting poorer, and the state and nation are worse off for it.
The persistent inequity that flows from this situation is one of the defining characteristics of the Great Depression and the current Great Recession.
With unemployment holding steady at almost 10% nationally and 12% in California alone, the time has come to advance solutions that address some of the central problems in our state.
In California, a two-thirds vote is needed to pass a state budget.
Many have cited this provision as an obstacle to progress and a recipe for perpetual gridlock and crisis, because it confers undeserved power on a recalcitrant minority and to lame duck governors without the wherewithal to pass meaningful legislation, because they can exploit the two-thirds budget rule to extract greater tax cuts for the wealthy in exchange for budgets that wipe out the protections and parity provided by our state’s network of public services.
This imperils the existence of anybody who has to work for a living.
That is why this November citizens across the state should vote for the Majority Vote Budget Initiative.
If passed, the measure would enable a state budget to be passed with a simple majority and penalize lawmakers for failing to pass the budget on time by docking their pay.
It’s a common sense reform that is long overdue.
In the meantime, the state could realize almost $40 billion worth of savings immediately by: (1) eliminating the $35 billion worth of waste and inefficiency associated with the state’s use of private contractors to perform jobs that civil servants could do for half the cost; (2) end the $500 million a year that taxpayers spend to prop up unproductive businesses through the state’s discredited enterprise zone program; (3) repeal the tax breaks given out to millionaires like Schwarzenegger and multinational corporations.
In fact, the tax cuts provided to multinational corporations as a condition for passage of the 2009 state budget have been costing Californians $3 billion a year, while income taxes on the rich have been rolled back to the point where average families who have to work for a living wind up paying more taxes every year than corporations like Exxon.
Together, these practices are bankrupting California to the tune of $39 billion a year.
We need to do what’s right for the people of California now.
Willie L. Pelote, Sr. is an Assistant Director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), AFL-CIO. AFSCME’s 1.6 million members provide the vital services that make America happen.
http://laprensa-sandiego.org/editorial-and-commentary/commentary/schwarzenegger%E2%80%99s-values-on-clear-display-in-may-revise/
FACT based Sex Education drops California teenage pregnancy rate by over half
Our angry friends took over our district back in 1992 with the election of a three person majority that brought our district chaos and national infamy.
After spending a couple of months on evolution vs their little god creationism creed, the three member extremist majority, then went after our sex ed program. They replaced an award winning program with a racist tinged, simplistic program of abstinence only, called Sex Respect. Sex Respect had stupid insipid mottos, one of which was "Pet your dog, not your date." Abstinence only meant life saving information was stripped from our classroom curriculum. Our students were put in danger by this deprivation of information--from unplanned pregnancy and STDs including AIDS.
It was when they came into our classrooms and took away this life saving information that the Vista Teachers Association for the first time in its history became politically involved in school board elections. The three person extremist majority attempts to deny children factual science information did not launch the VTA into politics. It was the denial of vital classroom information in sex ed that finally got us into the school board politics and to join the recall of these extremists.
Much scientific research has come out since showing how ineffective abstinence only sex education has been. States and school districts that used it exclusively have the highest teenage pregnancy and STD rates in the nation.
The state of California also rejected this extremist attack on sex education state wide. Our state resisted all attempts at the scrubbing of vital information from our classrooms. This courageous decision has saved thousands of unwanted pregnancies in California. See below:
California Teen Pregnancy Rate Steepest decline in United States
Fri, Jun 4, 2010
By Amy Denhart
During election years, we hear candidates complain a lot about wasteful government programs. But a recent study by the nonprofit Guttmacher Institute provides startling news about one California program that has solved 52% of a social problem in just 13 years, and saved the state billions of dollars in the process.
It wasn’t test scores. Nor was it air pollution or traffic congestion. Rather, California was credited with having the steepest rate of decline in teen pregnancy in the United States. Between 1992 and 2005 our state reduced teen pregnancy by 52%, far above the national average of 37%.
The Guttmacher study credits two California policies for playing a critical role in this success.
The first is comprehensive sexuality education that includes both abstinence and birth control. The second is the state’s Family Planning, Access, Care and Treatment Program (FPACT), which provides contraception for low-income residents of California, including teens.
In 1992, California had the dubious distinction of having the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the United States. This was the same year that the state began experimenting with the largest “abstinence-only” program, Education Now and Babies Later (ENABL).
Governor Pete Wilson abruptly ended the ENABL program because it was a failure and a more comprehensive strategy was needed.
When federal grants for abstinence-only programs were introduced in 1997, California was wisely the only state to refuse the funds. Twenty-one states eventually followed California’s lead. Why? Because nearly all experts agree that abstinence-only programs ultimately have the opposite effect they intend. Instead of discouraging teens from having sex, abstinence-only programs merely discourage teens from using condoms, thereby increasing their chances of getting pregnant.
The same year the state rejected abstinence-only dollars, Governor Wilson introduced the highly successful FPACT program. Teens, as well as adults, can enroll in this program based on their individual income and access confidential contraceptive services.
The Guttmacher study notes that the FPACT program is the largest state family planning program in the United States and it credits much of our success in reducing teen pregnancy to California’s widespread access to contraceptives.
Before comprehensive sexuality education was required in schools, and before the FPACT program was enacted, California led the nation in teen pregnancy. With these two changes in public policy, we’ve reversed this alarming trend, and reduced our teen pregnancy rate by a dramatic 52% in just 13 years.
With success like that, you would think the current Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, would be an enthusiastic supporter of FPACT. But he has instead proposed serious cuts to the program. Such cuts would not only increase teen pregnancies, unintended pregnancies in general and the number of abortions, but it would cost the state far more money than it would save.
A recent University of California study concluded that for every dollar the state invests in family planning, it saves more than $9.25 in health care and social service costs.
Comprehensive sexuality education in schools and affordable, accessible birth control are clearly proven effective at reducing the rate of teen pregnancy.
At Planned Parenthood, we are proud of the success of FPACT and comprehensive sex ed. We hope Governor Schwarzenegger pays close attention to the recent study and recommits himself to the success of these two programs.
Amy Denhart is the Director of Public Affairs for Planned Parenthood of San Diego & Riverside Counties
After spending a couple of months on evolution vs their little god creationism creed, the three member extremist majority, then went after our sex ed program. They replaced an award winning program with a racist tinged, simplistic program of abstinence only, called Sex Respect. Sex Respect had stupid insipid mottos, one of which was "Pet your dog, not your date." Abstinence only meant life saving information was stripped from our classroom curriculum. Our students were put in danger by this deprivation of information--from unplanned pregnancy and STDs including AIDS.
It was when they came into our classrooms and took away this life saving information that the Vista Teachers Association for the first time in its history became politically involved in school board elections. The three person extremist majority attempts to deny children factual science information did not launch the VTA into politics. It was the denial of vital classroom information in sex ed that finally got us into the school board politics and to join the recall of these extremists.
Much scientific research has come out since showing how ineffective abstinence only sex education has been. States and school districts that used it exclusively have the highest teenage pregnancy and STD rates in the nation.
The state of California also rejected this extremist attack on sex education state wide. Our state resisted all attempts at the scrubbing of vital information from our classrooms. This courageous decision has saved thousands of unwanted pregnancies in California. See below:
California Teen Pregnancy Rate Steepest decline in United States
Fri, Jun 4, 2010
By Amy Denhart
During election years, we hear candidates complain a lot about wasteful government programs. But a recent study by the nonprofit Guttmacher Institute provides startling news about one California program that has solved 52% of a social problem in just 13 years, and saved the state billions of dollars in the process.
It wasn’t test scores. Nor was it air pollution or traffic congestion. Rather, California was credited with having the steepest rate of decline in teen pregnancy in the United States. Between 1992 and 2005 our state reduced teen pregnancy by 52%, far above the national average of 37%.
The Guttmacher study credits two California policies for playing a critical role in this success.
The first is comprehensive sexuality education that includes both abstinence and birth control. The second is the state’s Family Planning, Access, Care and Treatment Program (FPACT), which provides contraception for low-income residents of California, including teens.
In 1992, California had the dubious distinction of having the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the United States. This was the same year that the state began experimenting with the largest “abstinence-only” program, Education Now and Babies Later (ENABL).
Governor Pete Wilson abruptly ended the ENABL program because it was a failure and a more comprehensive strategy was needed.
When federal grants for abstinence-only programs were introduced in 1997, California was wisely the only state to refuse the funds. Twenty-one states eventually followed California’s lead. Why? Because nearly all experts agree that abstinence-only programs ultimately have the opposite effect they intend. Instead of discouraging teens from having sex, abstinence-only programs merely discourage teens from using condoms, thereby increasing their chances of getting pregnant.
The same year the state rejected abstinence-only dollars, Governor Wilson introduced the highly successful FPACT program. Teens, as well as adults, can enroll in this program based on their individual income and access confidential contraceptive services.
The Guttmacher study notes that the FPACT program is the largest state family planning program in the United States and it credits much of our success in reducing teen pregnancy to California’s widespread access to contraceptives.
Before comprehensive sexuality education was required in schools, and before the FPACT program was enacted, California led the nation in teen pregnancy. With these two changes in public policy, we’ve reversed this alarming trend, and reduced our teen pregnancy rate by a dramatic 52% in just 13 years.
With success like that, you would think the current Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, would be an enthusiastic supporter of FPACT. But he has instead proposed serious cuts to the program. Such cuts would not only increase teen pregnancies, unintended pregnancies in general and the number of abortions, but it would cost the state far more money than it would save.
A recent University of California study concluded that for every dollar the state invests in family planning, it saves more than $9.25 in health care and social service costs.
Comprehensive sexuality education in schools and affordable, accessible birth control are clearly proven effective at reducing the rate of teen pregnancy.
At Planned Parenthood, we are proud of the success of FPACT and comprehensive sex ed. We hope Governor Schwarzenegger pays close attention to the recent study and recommits himself to the success of these two programs.
Amy Denhart is the Director of Public Affairs for Planned Parenthood of San Diego & Riverside Counties
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Get Rid of Seniority, Really?
The massive lie machine directed at public school teachers has one objective, break the power of teachers unions.
Why? So that there is one less voice for fairness in our fading democracy.
How? Get rid of seniority rights and permanent status or tenure.
How does that break the unions? The same way it has always been done. It allows for the firing of everyone who goes to a union meeting. The firing of all the leadership. The firing of anyone who complains. (Walmart is the most famous example of a corporation regularly using this tactic.)
No seniority means getting rid of older teachers who are more expensive and replacing them with new young hires more easily intimidated. No permanent status or tenure allow a culture of fear to be fostered in districts. No teacher is willing to speak out and risk losing their job and endangering the financial health of his or her family.
It is a clever and cunning plan and it is working. Repetition and the absolute suppression of other points of view means only stories about evil older teachers keeping their jobs at the expense of wonderful young teachers are found in the media.
If I am a young teacher I might think how great! Except when you want to buy a house. What happens in five or six years? Will the now "not so young" anymore teacher still have a job to pay the house payments? Because in a few years young cheap teachers get to be older expensive teachers that need to be laid off. No teachers job is safe. No salary schedule means anything if no teacher can ever teach in a district long enough to get to the top.
Two articles to read below. The first (in blue) by a rational ordinary American defending public school teachers. The second (in red) is a hit piece by a small cog in the massive lie machine attacking teachers. This massive lie machine will attack any group that gets in the way of ever more money taken from average Americans and being transferred to billionaires. This second one was written by "the bought and paid for" Union Tribune editorial staff. If they do not write as they are told, the billionaires do not buy advertising for their corporations in the newspaper. No advertising, no money for salaries for UT editors. So they salute, say yes sir, and write what the billionaires like.
The last quote in red at the end of this post is from the Manhattan Institute is one of the vast foul network of tax free "think tanks" dedicated to writing propaganda against teachers and workers that can be used by 'opinion makers' on AM conman radio, FOXnotNews, and in 'editorials' by local newspapers like the Union Tribune (which busted its own union about twenty years ago).
Juniority Rights
By Claus von Zastrow on May 25, 2010
Is teaching a young person's game? That seems to be the prevailing belief in some quarters.
Teachers with lots of experience cost more, and that makes them easy targets in a deep recession. Some pundits have taken this issue well beyond complex debates over seniority rights. They're pushing for something new: Call it juniority rights.
A growing number of bloggers and think tank folk are arguing that we should let older teachers go because they're older. Teachers with juniority don't merely cost less than their more experienced peers. They also have that Teach for America (TFA) cachet. An ideal school system, it seems, would regularly push the old-timers out.
Some are suggesting that we let teachers stay in their jobs for 5-10 years, max.
And just how would we sustain this brave new world? I'm not seeing many answers. Some industries do just fine with a steady stream of younger workers.
(Entertainment, marketing, and summer amusements come to mind.) But teaching, a job held by some four million people? Please.
So can we blame experienced teachers for feeling a bit insecure? When the number of years on your resume or the amount of gray in your hair becomes your chief liability, you may have reasons to worry. The debate over seniority rights is complicated, and it has a long history. Those who advocate layoffs merely on the basis of age aren't helping matters.
And what happens to the soul of a profession like teaching if experience becomes a dirty word? What message do we send to people who want to commit their lives to teaching and to children? TFA suffers from the mostly unfair charge that their recruits are using schools as a pit stop on the way to more remunerative work. Do the champions of juniority rights want to add fuel to that fire? As it is, far too few people see teaching as a career on par with other careers.
So let's not muddy the debate over seniority with calls for juniority rights. It's wise to remember that we'll all be older someday.
http://www.publicschoolinsights.org/juniority-rights
Now for a word from the Massive Lie Machine:
UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL
Keep the best teachers Battles in Sacramento, Washington over seniority
By Union-Tribune Editorial Board,
Wednesday, May 26, 2010 at 12:04 a.m.
Teachers unions know how to fight on multiple battlefields at once. When they’re not trying to kill education reform at the state level, they’re looking to Washington and trying to stifle it in Congress.
The new front in the reform movement is teacher seniority, and the role it plays in deciding which educators are laid off during severe budget cuts. Currently, seniority plays a big role in such decisions. Young teachers with less experience lose out to older teachers who’ve been on the job longer.
In Sacramento, the California Teachers Association is working overtime to kill Senate Bill 955, proposed by Sen. Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar, which would remove the handcuffs from districts and allow them to consider teacher effectiveness as well as tenure in making decisions about layoffs. The bill gives younger teachers who work their hearts out a fighting chance to keep their jobs, despite the best efforts of powerful unions to ensure otherwise as they try to save older teachers with more experience.
Meanwhile, the issue of teacher seniority is rearing its head in the U.S. Senate. That’s because of the arrival on the scene of a proposed piece of federal legislation called The Keep Our Educators Working Act. Proposed by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa , and Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the bill would provide $23 billion to school districts to avert hundreds of thousands of teacher layoffs.
Think of it as a government bailout for teachers and the unions that look out for their interests. The debate in Congress isn’t just about whether we should spend that money. It’s also about whether there should be strings attached, and whether one of the strings should be a requirement that those districts that still have to make cuts to disregard teacher seniority and just try to retain the best teachers. That sounds like common sense, which explains why some members of Congress are having so much trouble grasping the concept.
Harkin has rejected the idea of inserting that condition in the legislation. That might have something to do with the fact that the nation’s two largest teachers unions oppose bringing teacher seniority into this discussion. They like the system the way it is and want to preserve it.
It’s never easy for school districts to decide which teachers to let go and which to keep. And it only makes the process more difficult when we strip administrators of the discretion to weigh a variety of factors in making such decisions. It shouldn’t automatically come down to seniority. Performance, enthusiasm, creativity and energy all have to count for something. Administrators should have the power to consider those factors.
Harkin should reconsider his position and allow the language on seniority to come into the funding bill. And lawmakers in both Sacramento and Washington should keep as their top priority not simply the preservation of some jobs over others, but reform of the entire system.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/may/26/keep-the-best-teachers/
Here is more from the Massive Lie Machine about Seniority:
In Teacher Layoffs, Seniority Rules. But Should It?
http://www.wbur.org/npr/127373157
------------------------------------------
Charter backers Education Reform Now's ads blast seniority-based layoffs
BY Rachel Monahan
DAILY NEWS WRITER
Wednesday, May 12th 2010, 4:00 AM
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2010/05/12/2010-05-12_charter_backers_ads_blast_senioritybased_layoffs.html
-------------------------------
Schwarzenegger Backs Bill to End Seniority-Based Layoffs
Civil Rights Groups Argue Current System Harms Poor, Minority Students
By The Associated Press
http://www.edweek.org/login.html?source=http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/04/28/30california.h29.html&destination=http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/04
/28/30california.h29.html&levelId=2100
------------------------------
Teacher Seniority Rules Challenged
With Tens of Thousands of Layoffs Looming, Government Officials and Parents Want to Change the 'Last in, First out' System
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703315004575073561669221720.html
-----------------------------
Mass Teacher Layoffs + Seniority Rules = Bad News For Kids
February 04, 2009
By Marcus A. Winters
"Contrary to what you may hear from experienced teachers' representatives, however, there is basically no relationship between seniority and teaching ability. A wide and scarcely disputed body of research finds that teachers' additional experience stops paying off after about year three."
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/miarticle.htm?id=3868
Why? So that there is one less voice for fairness in our fading democracy.
How? Get rid of seniority rights and permanent status or tenure.
How does that break the unions? The same way it has always been done. It allows for the firing of everyone who goes to a union meeting. The firing of all the leadership. The firing of anyone who complains. (Walmart is the most famous example of a corporation regularly using this tactic.)
No seniority means getting rid of older teachers who are more expensive and replacing them with new young hires more easily intimidated. No permanent status or tenure allow a culture of fear to be fostered in districts. No teacher is willing to speak out and risk losing their job and endangering the financial health of his or her family.
It is a clever and cunning plan and it is working. Repetition and the absolute suppression of other points of view means only stories about evil older teachers keeping their jobs at the expense of wonderful young teachers are found in the media.
If I am a young teacher I might think how great! Except when you want to buy a house. What happens in five or six years? Will the now "not so young" anymore teacher still have a job to pay the house payments? Because in a few years young cheap teachers get to be older expensive teachers that need to be laid off. No teachers job is safe. No salary schedule means anything if no teacher can ever teach in a district long enough to get to the top.
Two articles to read below. The first (in blue) by a rational ordinary American defending public school teachers. The second (in red) is a hit piece by a small cog in the massive lie machine attacking teachers. This massive lie machine will attack any group that gets in the way of ever more money taken from average Americans and being transferred to billionaires. This second one was written by "the bought and paid for" Union Tribune editorial staff. If they do not write as they are told, the billionaires do not buy advertising for their corporations in the newspaper. No advertising, no money for salaries for UT editors. So they salute, say yes sir, and write what the billionaires like.
The last quote in red at the end of this post is from the Manhattan Institute is one of the vast foul network of tax free "think tanks" dedicated to writing propaganda against teachers and workers that can be used by 'opinion makers' on AM conman radio, FOXnotNews, and in 'editorials' by local newspapers like the Union Tribune (which busted its own union about twenty years ago).
Juniority Rights
By Claus von Zastrow on May 25, 2010
Is teaching a young person's game? That seems to be the prevailing belief in some quarters.
Teachers with lots of experience cost more, and that makes them easy targets in a deep recession. Some pundits have taken this issue well beyond complex debates over seniority rights. They're pushing for something new: Call it juniority rights.
A growing number of bloggers and think tank folk are arguing that we should let older teachers go because they're older. Teachers with juniority don't merely cost less than their more experienced peers. They also have that Teach for America (TFA) cachet. An ideal school system, it seems, would regularly push the old-timers out.
Some are suggesting that we let teachers stay in their jobs for 5-10 years, max.
And just how would we sustain this brave new world? I'm not seeing many answers. Some industries do just fine with a steady stream of younger workers.
(Entertainment, marketing, and summer amusements come to mind.) But teaching, a job held by some four million people? Please.
So can we blame experienced teachers for feeling a bit insecure? When the number of years on your resume or the amount of gray in your hair becomes your chief liability, you may have reasons to worry. The debate over seniority rights is complicated, and it has a long history. Those who advocate layoffs merely on the basis of age aren't helping matters.
And what happens to the soul of a profession like teaching if experience becomes a dirty word? What message do we send to people who want to commit their lives to teaching and to children? TFA suffers from the mostly unfair charge that their recruits are using schools as a pit stop on the way to more remunerative work. Do the champions of juniority rights want to add fuel to that fire? As it is, far too few people see teaching as a career on par with other careers.
So let's not muddy the debate over seniority with calls for juniority rights. It's wise to remember that we'll all be older someday.
http://www.publicschoolinsights.org/juniority-rights
Now for a word from the Massive Lie Machine:
UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL
Keep the best teachers Battles in Sacramento, Washington over seniority
By Union-Tribune Editorial Board,
Wednesday, May 26, 2010 at 12:04 a.m.
Teachers unions know how to fight on multiple battlefields at once. When they’re not trying to kill education reform at the state level, they’re looking to Washington and trying to stifle it in Congress.
The new front in the reform movement is teacher seniority, and the role it plays in deciding which educators are laid off during severe budget cuts. Currently, seniority plays a big role in such decisions. Young teachers with less experience lose out to older teachers who’ve been on the job longer.
In Sacramento, the California Teachers Association is working overtime to kill Senate Bill 955, proposed by Sen. Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar, which would remove the handcuffs from districts and allow them to consider teacher effectiveness as well as tenure in making decisions about layoffs. The bill gives younger teachers who work their hearts out a fighting chance to keep their jobs, despite the best efforts of powerful unions to ensure otherwise as they try to save older teachers with more experience.
Meanwhile, the issue of teacher seniority is rearing its head in the U.S. Senate. That’s because of the arrival on the scene of a proposed piece of federal legislation called The Keep Our Educators Working Act. Proposed by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa , and Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the bill would provide $23 billion to school districts to avert hundreds of thousands of teacher layoffs.
Think of it as a government bailout for teachers and the unions that look out for their interests. The debate in Congress isn’t just about whether we should spend that money. It’s also about whether there should be strings attached, and whether one of the strings should be a requirement that those districts that still have to make cuts to disregard teacher seniority and just try to retain the best teachers. That sounds like common sense, which explains why some members of Congress are having so much trouble grasping the concept.
Harkin has rejected the idea of inserting that condition in the legislation. That might have something to do with the fact that the nation’s two largest teachers unions oppose bringing teacher seniority into this discussion. They like the system the way it is and want to preserve it.
It’s never easy for school districts to decide which teachers to let go and which to keep. And it only makes the process more difficult when we strip administrators of the discretion to weigh a variety of factors in making such decisions. It shouldn’t automatically come down to seniority. Performance, enthusiasm, creativity and energy all have to count for something. Administrators should have the power to consider those factors.
Harkin should reconsider his position and allow the language on seniority to come into the funding bill. And lawmakers in both Sacramento and Washington should keep as their top priority not simply the preservation of some jobs over others, but reform of the entire system.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/may/26/keep-the-best-teachers/
Here is more from the Massive Lie Machine about Seniority:
In Teacher Layoffs, Seniority Rules. But Should It?
http://www.wbur.org/npr/127373157
------------------------------------------
Charter backers Education Reform Now's ads blast seniority-based layoffs
BY Rachel Monahan
DAILY NEWS WRITER
Wednesday, May 12th 2010, 4:00 AM
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2010/05/12/2010-05-12_charter_backers_ads_blast_senioritybased_layoffs.html
-------------------------------
Schwarzenegger Backs Bill to End Seniority-Based Layoffs
Civil Rights Groups Argue Current System Harms Poor, Minority Students
By The Associated Press
http://www.edweek.org/login.html?source=http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/04/28/30california.h29.html&destination=http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/04
/28/30california.h29.html&levelId=2100
------------------------------
Teacher Seniority Rules Challenged
With Tens of Thousands of Layoffs Looming, Government Officials and Parents Want to Change the 'Last in, First out' System
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703315004575073561669221720.html
-----------------------------
Mass Teacher Layoffs + Seniority Rules = Bad News For Kids
February 04, 2009
By Marcus A. Winters
"Contrary to what you may hear from experienced teachers' representatives, however, there is basically no relationship between seniority and teaching ability. A wide and scarcely disputed body of research finds that teachers' additional experience stops paying off after about year three."
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/miarticle.htm?id=3868
California's wealthiest one percent doubled their wealth while paying less in taxes
All we hear from the CON echo machine funded by billionaires is that taxes are bad. Their hired gun, "paid to lie" con men on the AM radio dial and FOX have one mantra they are paid to say over and over, "Cut taxes. Cut services. Lay off teachers."
Never do we hear how much less the billionaires pay, than they used to pay just a decade or so ago; nor how much greater a percent of the wealth of California is now in their pockets. Neither the FOX propaganda network nor the AM radio conmen will ever give you any of the facts written in the article below. In today's world of hired gun "opinion makers" there is no fairness nor any balance. There is only one message, destroy, destroy, destroy America and its values governmental infrastructure, so the rich can have more and more.
In less than two decades, the one percenters have almost doubled the amount of California wealth they control from 13% of all wealth in the state to 25% of all wealth in California. Meanwhile they have reduced their percentage of income that is taxed to a third less a percentage than the poor in California pay. The poor who need and use every dollar that they have on living expenses. Unlike the super wealthy who do not need more than 90% of their income for living expenses. That 90% is just discretionary spending for luxuries. Mad money.
Amazing what a relatively small tax free gift to a propaganda institute can buy in reduced patriotic taxes, needed to make society function, when you are a selfish billionaire.
Below is a wonderful opinion piece written by the American Federation of Teachers president. The AFT is a sister union to the CTA. Once we competed for districts now we cooperate against our common foes--those who lie about public education.
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_15159927?IADID=Search-www.mercurynews.com-www.mercurynews.com
Opinion: As rising tide of inequality drowns education, don't blame teachers
By Marty Hittelman
Special to the Mercury News
Posted: 05/25/2010 08:00:00 PM PDT
The May revision of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's budget proposal includes an additional $2.5 billion reduction to public school funding, on top of $17 billion in cuts over the past two years.
The human cost of these cuts is staggering. Across the state, the ability of teachers to deliver quality education is being drastically compromised. Many thousands of teachers and support personnel will have to seek other employment. Class sizes are skyrocketing. School librarians and school nurses are becoming scarce. Fewer janitors must rotate classrooms to clean instead of cleaning nightly. Art, music and adult education programs are being eliminated.
Students don't get a second chance at second grade. They should have the attention of a teacher when they need it. But when there are 29 other kids who need attention, instead of 19, that becomes difficult. Any adult who has attempted to take care of this many children knows each additional child matters in the effort to maintain order, let alone ensure that learning can occur.
This spiraling catastrophe's origins predate the recession. The recession has simply provided a tipping point.
California is becoming a much more unequal place. The wealthiest 1 percent of Californians, who earn at least $400,000 per year, now take home one-quarter of the state's income. This compares with 15 years ago, when the same demographic group received 13 percent.
But the poorest one-fifth of California's families pay a higher percent of income (11 percent) in state income, sales and property taxes than the top 1 percent, who pay less than 8 percent.
Even as the rich got richer, they received tax cuts. They no longer pay their fair share for our schools and other public services — to the tune of billions of dollars each year that go into their pockets, not into education.
California's public school system was once the envy of the nation. It helped create a vibrant middle class. After years of financial neglect, it is now barely on life support. Only the extraordinary work of teachers and support staff keep it alive.
Yet the governor and some legislators are attempting to blame teachers for the ills of the schools, in an effort to direct public attention away from the political choices Sacramento made that created this unfolding disaster. The governor and his legislative allies loudly lament the layoffs of young teachers caused by their decisions to keep enormous tax loopholes intact for the rich and corporations, while blaming seniority provisions in teacher union contracts (and by implication, older teachers) for layoffs of the newest teachers.
Any good school needs a mix of younger and older teachers. The youngest teachers have energy and idealism. But they are still learning their craft. We also need experienced teachers to help the new ones become the best teachers by sharing lesson plans, teaching tips and advice about how to maintain discipline. We need to restore funding for programs that mentor the newcomers.
Seniority provisions in collective bargaining agreements did not cause the layoffs. Seniority provides transparent rules for workplace fairness, benefits younger teachers as they progress and allows them to envision careers in teaching. Before seniority rights existed, layoff decisions were based on arbitrary and inconsistent criteria, like who was closest to the principal.
The public should not be distracted by this blame game, and the state budget crisis should not provide an excuse to erode workplace rights. The real issue is whether we allow our elected officials to continue to enable wealthy individuals and corporations to dodge their fair share of taxes, or instead fund public education and vital social services at the level required for a healthy and prosperous California.
MARTY HITTELMAN is president of the California Federation of Teachers. He wrote this article for this newspaper.
Never do we hear how much less the billionaires pay, than they used to pay just a decade or so ago; nor how much greater a percent of the wealth of California is now in their pockets. Neither the FOX propaganda network nor the AM radio conmen will ever give you any of the facts written in the article below. In today's world of hired gun "opinion makers" there is no fairness nor any balance. There is only one message, destroy, destroy, destroy America and its values governmental infrastructure, so the rich can have more and more.
In less than two decades, the one percenters have almost doubled the amount of California wealth they control from 13% of all wealth in the state to 25% of all wealth in California. Meanwhile they have reduced their percentage of income that is taxed to a third less a percentage than the poor in California pay. The poor who need and use every dollar that they have on living expenses. Unlike the super wealthy who do not need more than 90% of their income for living expenses. That 90% is just discretionary spending for luxuries. Mad money.
Amazing what a relatively small tax free gift to a propaganda institute can buy in reduced patriotic taxes, needed to make society function, when you are a selfish billionaire.
Below is a wonderful opinion piece written by the American Federation of Teachers president. The AFT is a sister union to the CTA. Once we competed for districts now we cooperate against our common foes--those who lie about public education.
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_15159927?IADID=Search-www.mercurynews.com-www.mercurynews.com
Opinion: As rising tide of inequality drowns education, don't blame teachers
By Marty Hittelman
Special to the Mercury News
Posted: 05/25/2010 08:00:00 PM PDT
The May revision of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's budget proposal includes an additional $2.5 billion reduction to public school funding, on top of $17 billion in cuts over the past two years.
The human cost of these cuts is staggering. Across the state, the ability of teachers to deliver quality education is being drastically compromised. Many thousands of teachers and support personnel will have to seek other employment. Class sizes are skyrocketing. School librarians and school nurses are becoming scarce. Fewer janitors must rotate classrooms to clean instead of cleaning nightly. Art, music and adult education programs are being eliminated.
Students don't get a second chance at second grade. They should have the attention of a teacher when they need it. But when there are 29 other kids who need attention, instead of 19, that becomes difficult. Any adult who has attempted to take care of this many children knows each additional child matters in the effort to maintain order, let alone ensure that learning can occur.
This spiraling catastrophe's origins predate the recession. The recession has simply provided a tipping point.
California is becoming a much more unequal place. The wealthiest 1 percent of Californians, who earn at least $400,000 per year, now take home one-quarter of the state's income. This compares with 15 years ago, when the same demographic group received 13 percent.
But the poorest one-fifth of California's families pay a higher percent of income (11 percent) in state income, sales and property taxes than the top 1 percent, who pay less than 8 percent.
Even as the rich got richer, they received tax cuts. They no longer pay their fair share for our schools and other public services — to the tune of billions of dollars each year that go into their pockets, not into education.
California's public school system was once the envy of the nation. It helped create a vibrant middle class. After years of financial neglect, it is now barely on life support. Only the extraordinary work of teachers and support staff keep it alive.
Yet the governor and some legislators are attempting to blame teachers for the ills of the schools, in an effort to direct public attention away from the political choices Sacramento made that created this unfolding disaster. The governor and his legislative allies loudly lament the layoffs of young teachers caused by their decisions to keep enormous tax loopholes intact for the rich and corporations, while blaming seniority provisions in teacher union contracts (and by implication, older teachers) for layoffs of the newest teachers.
Any good school needs a mix of younger and older teachers. The youngest teachers have energy and idealism. But they are still learning their craft. We also need experienced teachers to help the new ones become the best teachers by sharing lesson plans, teaching tips and advice about how to maintain discipline. We need to restore funding for programs that mentor the newcomers.
Seniority provisions in collective bargaining agreements did not cause the layoffs. Seniority provides transparent rules for workplace fairness, benefits younger teachers as they progress and allows them to envision careers in teaching. Before seniority rights existed, layoff decisions were based on arbitrary and inconsistent criteria, like who was closest to the principal.
The public should not be distracted by this blame game, and the state budget crisis should not provide an excuse to erode workplace rights. The real issue is whether we allow our elected officials to continue to enable wealthy individuals and corporations to dodge their fair share of taxes, or instead fund public education and vital social services at the level required for a healthy and prosperous California.
MARTY HITTELMAN is president of the California Federation of Teachers. He wrote this article for this newspaper.
Massive increase in number of homeless students in VUSD
Our angry friends tell us that the teachers and schools in VUSD are not performing. They contend most teachers should be all fired but they don't hate teachers just the union that keeps them from being fired.
Our number one wildest angry friend on the North County Times blogs recently wrote that all the teachers at Crestview should be fired because of low test scores.
I wonder how our angry friends would do in our place in a real life classroom. How do you force children to learn when they have no sure access to food, shelter, or medical help when they are sick? How can kids be interested in learning given their situation? Imagine the stress in a life like that. If only our angry friend had a tenth as much empathy as they have intolerance and rage.
Vista’s Homeless Student Population Skyrockets
By Ana Tintocalis
May 24, 2010
SAN DIEGO — Vista school officials say the number of homeless students in their school district has quadrupled over the past three years.
There are currently more than 2,500 homeless students in the Vista Unified School District. That's about 10 percent of the overall student population in Vista.
The numbers are staggering considering just three years ago there were about 270 homeless students.
District officials say unemployment, home foreclosures and the economy are to blame. They're also doing a much better job at identifying these students and their families.
The district's Rebecca Benner says the majority are doubled-up in other people's homes.
“A lot of immigrant families do the doubling-up as the last measure before ending up on the street,” Benner said. “If (parents) are not here legally, they don't qualify for a lot of the social services.”
Vista Unified received more than half a million dollars in federal funding this year to launch an unprecedented outreach program for a public school district.
Benner says helping these students with food, shelter and transportation can keep them in school and focused on classes.
The district’s new strategy includes placing one homeless student liaison at each of Vista's 34 schools.
“A lot of our families don't have a vehicle. They don't have the money to take the bus. Its very difficult for them to walk to us. By getting the site liasion, we have a direct point of service for each of our sites.”
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2010/may/24/vistas-homeless-student-population-skyrockets/
Our number one wildest angry friend on the North County Times blogs recently wrote that all the teachers at Crestview should be fired because of low test scores.
I wonder how our angry friends would do in our place in a real life classroom. How do you force children to learn when they have no sure access to food, shelter, or medical help when they are sick? How can kids be interested in learning given their situation? Imagine the stress in a life like that. If only our angry friend had a tenth as much empathy as they have intolerance and rage.
Vista’s Homeless Student Population Skyrockets
By Ana Tintocalis
May 24, 2010
SAN DIEGO — Vista school officials say the number of homeless students in their school district has quadrupled over the past three years.
There are currently more than 2,500 homeless students in the Vista Unified School District. That's about 10 percent of the overall student population in Vista.
The numbers are staggering considering just three years ago there were about 270 homeless students.
District officials say unemployment, home foreclosures and the economy are to blame. They're also doing a much better job at identifying these students and their families.
The district's Rebecca Benner says the majority are doubled-up in other people's homes.
“A lot of immigrant families do the doubling-up as the last measure before ending up on the street,” Benner said. “If (parents) are not here legally, they don't qualify for a lot of the social services.”
Vista Unified received more than half a million dollars in federal funding this year to launch an unprecedented outreach program for a public school district.
Benner says helping these students with food, shelter and transportation can keep them in school and focused on classes.
The district’s new strategy includes placing one homeless student liaison at each of Vista's 34 schools.
“A lot of our families don't have a vehicle. They don't have the money to take the bus. Its very difficult for them to walk to us. By getting the site liasion, we have a direct point of service for each of our sites.”
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2010/may/24/vistas-homeless-student-population-skyrockets/
Saturday, June 5, 2010
John Wooden, Wizard of Westwood, public school teacher
Our angry friends tell us we are lazy. We have a easy job. We only work 185 days a year for less than eight hours a day, not like having a real job. They disparage our work ethic and our value to society.
Well, John Wooden legendary basketball coach thought different. You may remember him as the UCLA basketball coach whose teams won more games and more national championships then any other coach in any sport ever. But long before he was a nationally famous college basketball coach he was a high school English teacher in a public school.
You may also know that John Wooden is famous for his short pithy sayings. Here is what he said about public school teachering:
"I think the teaching profession contributes more to the future of our society than any other single profession," he once said. "I'm glad I was a teacher." *
The next time our angry ANTI public education friends, who blog at the North County Times, post some outrageous lie about incredibly dedicated public school teachers, remember what John Wooden said about us. John Wooden had more credibility in is left little finger than all our angry ANTI public education detractors put together.
Do you think that Jim Gibson would ever say anything like John Wooden said that about teachers? or Dr. Stephen Guffanti? or any of their supporters?
Know why we fight these people and never give up the fight for righteous cause of FACT based public education.
*Read that quote and more about John Wooden here:
http://www.nctimes.com/news/national/article_ce48c289-4f7a-5bdc-b9e3-7cfbc39b8930.html
Well, John Wooden legendary basketball coach thought different. You may remember him as the UCLA basketball coach whose teams won more games and more national championships then any other coach in any sport ever. But long before he was a nationally famous college basketball coach he was a high school English teacher in a public school.
You may also know that John Wooden is famous for his short pithy sayings. Here is what he said about public school teachering:
"I think the teaching profession contributes more to the future of our society than any other single profession," he once said. "I'm glad I was a teacher." *
The next time our angry ANTI public education friends, who blog at the North County Times, post some outrageous lie about incredibly dedicated public school teachers, remember what John Wooden said about us. John Wooden had more credibility in is left little finger than all our angry ANTI public education detractors put together.
Do you think that Jim Gibson would ever say anything like John Wooden said that about teachers? or Dr. Stephen Guffanti? or any of their supporters?
Know why we fight these people and never give up the fight for righteous cause of FACT based public education.
*Read that quote and more about John Wooden here:
http://www.nctimes.com/news/national/article_ce48c289-4f7a-5bdc-b9e3-7cfbc39b8930.html
Friday, June 4, 2010
Middle School Anger over Temporary Class Size Increases
Seems there was some chatter from hard working middle school teachers about the TEMPORARY increases in class size.
I certainly understand the anger. I taught in middle school for many years. I never could understand why we had far more student contacts than our high school colleagues or why we had an extra class period to prepare for that high school educators did not. Nor could I understand why VUSD teachers including middle school were teaching for an extra 40 plus minutes a day more than teachers did in my former district in the San Joaquin Valley teachers and for almost identical pay. VUSD daily and yearly minutes were well above California minimums. What happened?
I mean I liked the weather here. It was great returning to the place I was born and raised. I liked the better coastal air with less pollution. All that was good, but housing was twice as expensive as Porterville where I had previously worked.
Most strange was that I was teaching a longer day and the pay salary schedule was no better here. Well actually I had less pay since I lost years of experience because of the change in districts and dropped down on the salary schedule from nine years to four years. Longer days, more teaching time, less pay, yeah I paid a lot to move here.
So I get it. More student contacts especially for middle school teachers just seems like piling on.
However, if the contract is voted down by membership than the Memorandum of Understanding goes away. It is the MOUs that limit the class size increases to three years maximum with automatic provisions for reducing them sooner if state increases its funding. The district's offer before the MOUs which contained PERMANENT increases would be the final offer. We would have to take PERMANENT class size increases or strike. Not a great choice. One that we would stand a very good chance of losing. If we did lose a strike, not only are we permanently out our daily pay for each day of strike we would be forced into having PERMANENT class size increases in our contract. That is what the district offered before the Work To Rule job action got us the MOUs . So think hard before you oppose the tentative contract.
So yes, 213 student contacts, 213 report cards, 213 parents who must ALL be contacted for parent conferences, 213 sets of tests to grade, 213 term papers to correct, 213 students to maintain discipline and control over, so teaching and learning can happen--INSANE! There is no way to do that job well not with such an obscene number of students. Heck, 190 was way too many.
Middle School needs some relief in bargaining the next contract. Why can't middle school have the same number of periods as high school? Couldn't that be a goal of bargaining in the future?
Yes, it could. But it will take middle school teachers to show up for Rep Assembly meetings, to go to Executive Board and present why and how this should happen, to lobby the Bargaining Team, and most important make the school board and parents aware of the burden on middle school and its negative effect on classroom learning.
Just one rejoinder, as bad as middle school is, with the large numbers of kids, wild hormones, student defiance of authority, it is not as bad as elementary is right now. At least in middle school teachers have some control over what is taught and when in their classrooms.
In the pressure cooker that is elementary school, teachers are forced to teach in lock step. Every teacher teaching the same thing on the same day. Forced to follow the Joyce Bales pacing guide, forced to test when Joyce Bales says to test, forced to report those test results to Joyce Bales at her timing and command.
It is a far cry from forty years ago when I taught in self contained third and sixth grade classrooms. Back then THE CLASSROOM TEACHER was responsible for when and how lessons were taught, and if those lessons were sufficiently learned or needed re-teaching. In today's stressed out elementary classroom, the distant superintendent makes those decisions. The pace Bales sets is way too fast for students to learn all the concepts especially in math, yet the teachers are held accountable if the students cannot learn at the Bales required pace.
Elementary report cards in VUSD are a nightmare. They are incredibly time consuming and labor intensive. Worse they don't inform the parents, they CONFUSE the parents. Be thankful middle school teachers for your relatively easy to fill in scan tron ABCDF report cards.
Then there are the hours of free time needed to fill out cum folders put in by the never complaining long suffering elementary teachers. Middle school teachers hardly ever see a cum folder, let alone have to spend wasted hours preparing them for no one ever to really look at again.
At the end of the year there are even more hours needed of elementary teacher time to fill out the pink and blue cards used as a smaller cum folder--one card for each student. These cards make dividing up students into classes for next year's teachers easier Hours and hours of unpaid teacher time above and beyond the 7 and one half hour teaching day.
So yes, middle school teachers you got rooked. 213 is too many. 190 is too many. But lots of teachers in VUSD and California are getting rooked. Read about a teacher in Escondido that really got the shaft here. Be glad you have a job at all.
But if you are still angry and you should be, focus on the authors of your pain, the reason why we will have bigger classes next year for less pay--Martin Garrick and the Sacramento Republicans who used the 2/3rds vote requirement to stop every reasonable fix to the California funding crisis. They voted in lockstep. Always in one hundred percent agreement with no dissent. The votes they took were to block reasonable fixes like a Sarah Palin oil production tax on the filthy rich Big Oil corporations that suck oil from under California soil FOR FREE--no taxes. We, Californians, provide Big Oil with roads, electricity and water, but they pay us back NOTHING. California is the third largest producer of oil in the nation but local politician Martin Garrick will not allow us to tax them. In fact he is positively giddy in his joy and glee at cutting more and more services to our California neighbors who happen to be poor, ill, elderly or school children because he will not allow taxes to be collected.
So middle school teachers and all patriotic Californians get out there and start working to defeat every Sacramento Republican in November most especially the leader of the Republican Rat Pack in Sacramento, MARTIN GARRICK.
Last note: When I was a new teacher in VUSD, I was told that middle school had an extra daily class period added, over most other middle schools in the state and over what our high schools teach, because of a former teacher president. He had recommended this unfavorable contract to the membership which included this increase in periods along with a longer number of teaching minutes at elementary and middle school. Unknown to membership at the time, the president was also negotiating for a sweetheart VUSD administrative job for himself. He took that job after the membership voted to accept the contract he recommended. The traitor worked in our district another year or so, then got a higher paying job as an administrator in a nearby district where he was involved in a scandal and lost his job. He applied to come back to VUSD and neither the admin at the time or any teacher was interested in seeing his sorry butt in VUSD ever again. He then tried his hand, unsuccessfully, at real estate and was never heard from again.
The above happened in the early 1980s before I came to VUSD from the San Joaquin Valley. It was in a time just after collective bargaining was allowed. There was little contention or confrontation in those early days. Informal meetings between district and teachers were arranged with little haggling or disagreement. The district told us what they could offer, we accepted. Every one was still in the Meet and Confer mode where teachers always roll over and gratefully accept what they are offered.
After the teachers found out that they had been snookered by the district and that traitor president, a whole new set of Executive Board members and VTA officers was elected. Bargaining became a lot more confrontational. We never rolled over again. From then on we always had a CTA help and advice including a CTA accountant to check the VUSD books to make sure there was no hidden money. The VTA has never been "taken" since. We were not taken this time. We did remarkably well.
The VTA has, however' supported the building of new schools which cost us teachers "raise" money. Bond money never covers the full cost of school construction. Some money always has to come from the General Fund, the same fund that pays teachers and provides for their raises. We knew that sad fact to begin with. We supported the bonds anyway. After all we are here about service. No one becomes a teacher to get rich.
Of course had Jim Gibson and Dr. Stephen Guffanti NOT WASTED between 30 and 50 million dollars of our Prop O bond money with their years of expensive and pointless opposition to building the third high school, the hit to our salaries would not have been so bad.
Summary. Yes the middle school gets shafted on student numbers for a limited time. Yes, we deserve a raise, not a pay cut. Yes, we deserve and should earn a lot more money. But it is not the fault of the VTA Bargaining Team or president Jan O'Reilly, this contract is far better than I thought we would get in this time of Sacramento Republican caused budget cuts.
Most other California school districts are making far larger cuts than this proposed contract calls for. Check out Poway, or Capistrano .
You want someone to be angry at? You want to get the folks who caused the problem. Then find a way to hurt Martin Garrick and the Sacramento Republicans in November. Become a volunteer for anyone running against a Sacramento Republican.
Don't forget Jim Gibson and Dr. Stephen Guffanti either. Jim is up for re-election in November and Guffanti is making noises about running again. They wasted more local tax payer money than any other politicians in VUSD history. They are directly responsible for lack of funds over the last ten years that has dropped our salary schedule in VUSD to 32 out of 37 reporting districts in San Diego County. Volunteer the hours to make sure they do not ever have the office of VUSD school board member again.
Get even in November. Start now. Volunteer to help on a political campaign. Stop the selfish evil ones before they do more damage.
I certainly understand the anger. I taught in middle school for many years. I never could understand why we had far more student contacts than our high school colleagues or why we had an extra class period to prepare for that high school educators did not. Nor could I understand why VUSD teachers including middle school were teaching for an extra 40 plus minutes a day more than teachers did in my former district in the San Joaquin Valley teachers and for almost identical pay. VUSD daily and yearly minutes were well above California minimums. What happened?
I mean I liked the weather here. It was great returning to the place I was born and raised. I liked the better coastal air with less pollution. All that was good, but housing was twice as expensive as Porterville where I had previously worked.
Most strange was that I was teaching a longer day and the pay salary schedule was no better here. Well actually I had less pay since I lost years of experience because of the change in districts and dropped down on the salary schedule from nine years to four years. Longer days, more teaching time, less pay, yeah I paid a lot to move here.
So I get it. More student contacts especially for middle school teachers just seems like piling on.
However, if the contract is voted down by membership than the Memorandum of Understanding goes away. It is the MOUs that limit the class size increases to three years maximum with automatic provisions for reducing them sooner if state increases its funding. The district's offer before the MOUs which contained PERMANENT increases would be the final offer. We would have to take PERMANENT class size increases or strike. Not a great choice. One that we would stand a very good chance of losing. If we did lose a strike, not only are we permanently out our daily pay for each day of strike we would be forced into having PERMANENT class size increases in our contract. That is what the district offered before the Work To Rule job action got us the MOUs . So think hard before you oppose the tentative contract.
So yes, 213 student contacts, 213 report cards, 213 parents who must ALL be contacted for parent conferences, 213 sets of tests to grade, 213 term papers to correct, 213 students to maintain discipline and control over, so teaching and learning can happen--INSANE! There is no way to do that job well not with such an obscene number of students. Heck, 190 was way too many.
Middle School needs some relief in bargaining the next contract. Why can't middle school have the same number of periods as high school? Couldn't that be a goal of bargaining in the future?
Yes, it could. But it will take middle school teachers to show up for Rep Assembly meetings, to go to Executive Board and present why and how this should happen, to lobby the Bargaining Team, and most important make the school board and parents aware of the burden on middle school and its negative effect on classroom learning.
Just one rejoinder, as bad as middle school is, with the large numbers of kids, wild hormones, student defiance of authority, it is not as bad as elementary is right now. At least in middle school teachers have some control over what is taught and when in their classrooms.
In the pressure cooker that is elementary school, teachers are forced to teach in lock step. Every teacher teaching the same thing on the same day. Forced to follow the Joyce Bales pacing guide, forced to test when Joyce Bales says to test, forced to report those test results to Joyce Bales at her timing and command.
It is a far cry from forty years ago when I taught in self contained third and sixth grade classrooms. Back then THE CLASSROOM TEACHER was responsible for when and how lessons were taught, and if those lessons were sufficiently learned or needed re-teaching. In today's stressed out elementary classroom, the distant superintendent makes those decisions. The pace Bales sets is way too fast for students to learn all the concepts especially in math, yet the teachers are held accountable if the students cannot learn at the Bales required pace.
Elementary report cards in VUSD are a nightmare. They are incredibly time consuming and labor intensive. Worse they don't inform the parents, they CONFUSE the parents. Be thankful middle school teachers for your relatively easy to fill in scan tron ABCDF report cards.
Then there are the hours of free time needed to fill out cum folders put in by the never complaining long suffering elementary teachers. Middle school teachers hardly ever see a cum folder, let alone have to spend wasted hours preparing them for no one ever to really look at again.
At the end of the year there are even more hours needed of elementary teacher time to fill out the pink and blue cards used as a smaller cum folder--one card for each student. These cards make dividing up students into classes for next year's teachers easier Hours and hours of unpaid teacher time above and beyond the 7 and one half hour teaching day.
So yes, middle school teachers you got rooked. 213 is too many. 190 is too many. But lots of teachers in VUSD and California are getting rooked. Read about a teacher in Escondido that really got the shaft here. Be glad you have a job at all.
But if you are still angry and you should be, focus on the authors of your pain, the reason why we will have bigger classes next year for less pay--Martin Garrick and the Sacramento Republicans who used the 2/3rds vote requirement to stop every reasonable fix to the California funding crisis. They voted in lockstep. Always in one hundred percent agreement with no dissent. The votes they took were to block reasonable fixes like a Sarah Palin oil production tax on the filthy rich Big Oil corporations that suck oil from under California soil FOR FREE--no taxes. We, Californians, provide Big Oil with roads, electricity and water, but they pay us back NOTHING. California is the third largest producer of oil in the nation but local politician Martin Garrick will not allow us to tax them. In fact he is positively giddy in his joy and glee at cutting more and more services to our California neighbors who happen to be poor, ill, elderly or school children because he will not allow taxes to be collected.
So middle school teachers and all patriotic Californians get out there and start working to defeat every Sacramento Republican in November most especially the leader of the Republican Rat Pack in Sacramento, MARTIN GARRICK.
Last note: When I was a new teacher in VUSD, I was told that middle school had an extra daily class period added, over most other middle schools in the state and over what our high schools teach, because of a former teacher president. He had recommended this unfavorable contract to the membership which included this increase in periods along with a longer number of teaching minutes at elementary and middle school. Unknown to membership at the time, the president was also negotiating for a sweetheart VUSD administrative job for himself. He took that job after the membership voted to accept the contract he recommended. The traitor worked in our district another year or so, then got a higher paying job as an administrator in a nearby district where he was involved in a scandal and lost his job. He applied to come back to VUSD and neither the admin at the time or any teacher was interested in seeing his sorry butt in VUSD ever again. He then tried his hand, unsuccessfully, at real estate and was never heard from again.
The above happened in the early 1980s before I came to VUSD from the San Joaquin Valley. It was in a time just after collective bargaining was allowed. There was little contention or confrontation in those early days. Informal meetings between district and teachers were arranged with little haggling or disagreement. The district told us what they could offer, we accepted. Every one was still in the Meet and Confer mode where teachers always roll over and gratefully accept what they are offered.
After the teachers found out that they had been snookered by the district and that traitor president, a whole new set of Executive Board members and VTA officers was elected. Bargaining became a lot more confrontational. We never rolled over again. From then on we always had a CTA help and advice including a CTA accountant to check the VUSD books to make sure there was no hidden money. The VTA has never been "taken" since. We were not taken this time. We did remarkably well.
The VTA has, however' supported the building of new schools which cost us teachers "raise" money. Bond money never covers the full cost of school construction. Some money always has to come from the General Fund, the same fund that pays teachers and provides for their raises. We knew that sad fact to begin with. We supported the bonds anyway. After all we are here about service. No one becomes a teacher to get rich.
Of course had Jim Gibson and Dr. Stephen Guffanti NOT WASTED between 30 and 50 million dollars of our Prop O bond money with their years of expensive and pointless opposition to building the third high school, the hit to our salaries would not have been so bad.
Summary. Yes the middle school gets shafted on student numbers for a limited time. Yes, we deserve a raise, not a pay cut. Yes, we deserve and should earn a lot more money. But it is not the fault of the VTA Bargaining Team or president Jan O'Reilly, this contract is far better than I thought we would get in this time of Sacramento Republican caused budget cuts.
Most other California school districts are making far larger cuts than this proposed contract calls for. Check out Poway, or Capistrano .
You want someone to be angry at? You want to get the folks who caused the problem. Then find a way to hurt Martin Garrick and the Sacramento Republicans in November. Become a volunteer for anyone running against a Sacramento Republican.
Don't forget Jim Gibson and Dr. Stephen Guffanti either. Jim is up for re-election in November and Guffanti is making noises about running again. They wasted more local tax payer money than any other politicians in VUSD history. They are directly responsible for lack of funds over the last ten years that has dropped our salary schedule in VUSD to 32 out of 37 reporting districts in San Diego County. Volunteer the hours to make sure they do not ever have the office of VUSD school board member again.
Get even in November. Start now. Volunteer to help on a political campaign. Stop the selfish evil ones before they do more damage.
Four Day School Week in Your Future?
http://ww2.cox.com/myconnection/sandiego/today/news/national/article.cox?articleId=D9G4FPDG0&moduleType=apNews
US schools switching to 4-day weeks to save money amid sluggish economy
06-04-2010 06:16 AM PDT |By DORIE TURNER, Associated Press Writer
FORT VALLEY, Ga. (Associated Press) --
During the school year, Mondays in this rural Georgia community are for video games, trips to grandma's house and hanging out at the neighborhood community center.
Don't bother showing up for school. The doors are locked and the lights are off.
Peach County is one of more than 120 school districts across the country where students attend school just four days a week, a cost-saving tactic gaining popularity among cash-strapped districts struggling to make ends meet. The 4,000-student district started shaving a day off its weekly school calendar last year to help fill a $1 million budget shortfall.
It was that or lay off 39 teachers the week before school started, said Superintendent Susan Clark.
"We're treading water," Clark said as she stood outside the headquarters of her seven-school district. "There was nothing else for us to do."
On their off day, students who don't have other options attend "Monday care" at area churches and the local Boys & Girls Club, where tutors are also available to help with homework. The programs generally cost a few dollars a day per student.
Experts say research is scant on the effect of a four-day school week on student performance. In fact, there is mostly just anecdotal evidence in reports on the trend with little scientific data to back up what many districts say, said University of Southern Maine researcher Christine Donis-Keller.
"The broadest conclusion you can draw is that it doesn't hurt academics," said Donis-Keller, who is with the university's Center for Education Policy, Applied Research and Evaluation.
Many districts that have the shortened schedule say they've seen students who are less tired and more focused, which has helped raise test scores and attendance. But others say that not only did they not save a substantial amount of money by being off an extra day, they also saw students struggle because they weren't in class enough and didn't have enough contact with teachers.
The school district in Marlow, Okla., is switching back to a five-day week after administrators decided students were not being served well by attending school only four days. The 440-student district tried the shorter week the spring semester this year to save $25,000 in operation costs.
"It was harder on the teachers. We were asking the kids to move at a quicker pace," said district Superintendent Bennie Newton. "We're hoping the four-day week won't come into play next year."
The move by Peach County in Georgia gets mixed reviews.
Parents like Heather Bradshaw worry that their children are getting shortchanged on time with teachers.
"I don't feel like they're having the necessary time in the classroom," said Bradshaw, a single mother with a fourth-grade son at one of the county's three elementary schools. "The schedule has slowed him down."
Other parents prefer the shorter schedule and don't mind the hassle of finding a babysitter one day a week.
"It makes the children's weekend a little better, so they get more rest," said LaKeisha Johnson, who sends her fourth-grade daughter to the Boys & Girls Club on Mondays.
The trend of four-day school weeks started in New Mexico during the oil crisis of the 1970s and has been popular in rural states where students have to commute a long way. Other districts have used it as a way to try to fix schools with a long history of poor student performance by shaking up the schedule and giving children more time to study outside of school.
Georgia, Oklahoma and Maine have changed their laws in the last couple of years to allow districts to count their school year by hours rather than days, allowing for a four-day week if needed. Hawaii schools were off every other Friday this year for schools to save money, giving them the state with the shortest school year in the country.
From California to Minnesota to New York, districts _ mostly small, rural ones with less than 5,000 students _ are following the trend, hoping to rescue their bleeding budgets.
For Peach County, the four-day week was enough of a success that the school district is trying it again next year, Clark said. The move saves $400,000 annually and is popular among teachers and students because they get extra rest, she said
"Teachers tell me they are much more focused because they've had time to prepare. They don't have kids sleeping in class on Tuesday," she said. "Everything has taken on a laser-light focus."
The results? Test scores went up.
So did attendance _ for both students and teachers. The district is spending one-third of what it once did on substitute teachers, Clark said.
And the graduation rate likely will be more than 80 percent for the first time in years, Clark said.
The four days that students are in school are slightly longer and more crowded with classes and activities. After school, students can get tutoring in subjects where they're struggling.
US schools switching to 4-day weeks to save money amid sluggish economy
06-04-2010 06:16 AM PDT |By DORIE TURNER, Associated Press Writer
FORT VALLEY, Ga. (Associated Press) --
During the school year, Mondays in this rural Georgia community are for video games, trips to grandma's house and hanging out at the neighborhood community center.
Don't bother showing up for school. The doors are locked and the lights are off.
Peach County is one of more than 120 school districts across the country where students attend school just four days a week, a cost-saving tactic gaining popularity among cash-strapped districts struggling to make ends meet. The 4,000-student district started shaving a day off its weekly school calendar last year to help fill a $1 million budget shortfall.
It was that or lay off 39 teachers the week before school started, said Superintendent Susan Clark.
"We're treading water," Clark said as she stood outside the headquarters of her seven-school district. "There was nothing else for us to do."
On their off day, students who don't have other options attend "Monday care" at area churches and the local Boys & Girls Club, where tutors are also available to help with homework. The programs generally cost a few dollars a day per student.
Experts say research is scant on the effect of a four-day school week on student performance. In fact, there is mostly just anecdotal evidence in reports on the trend with little scientific data to back up what many districts say, said University of Southern Maine researcher Christine Donis-Keller.
"The broadest conclusion you can draw is that it doesn't hurt academics," said Donis-Keller, who is with the university's Center for Education Policy, Applied Research and Evaluation.
Many districts that have the shortened schedule say they've seen students who are less tired and more focused, which has helped raise test scores and attendance. But others say that not only did they not save a substantial amount of money by being off an extra day, they also saw students struggle because they weren't in class enough and didn't have enough contact with teachers.
The school district in Marlow, Okla., is switching back to a five-day week after administrators decided students were not being served well by attending school only four days. The 440-student district tried the shorter week the spring semester this year to save $25,000 in operation costs.
"It was harder on the teachers. We were asking the kids to move at a quicker pace," said district Superintendent Bennie Newton. "We're hoping the four-day week won't come into play next year."
The move by Peach County in Georgia gets mixed reviews.
Parents like Heather Bradshaw worry that their children are getting shortchanged on time with teachers.
"I don't feel like they're having the necessary time in the classroom," said Bradshaw, a single mother with a fourth-grade son at one of the county's three elementary schools. "The schedule has slowed him down."
Other parents prefer the shorter schedule and don't mind the hassle of finding a babysitter one day a week.
"It makes the children's weekend a little better, so they get more rest," said LaKeisha Johnson, who sends her fourth-grade daughter to the Boys & Girls Club on Mondays.
The trend of four-day school weeks started in New Mexico during the oil crisis of the 1970s and has been popular in rural states where students have to commute a long way. Other districts have used it as a way to try to fix schools with a long history of poor student performance by shaking up the schedule and giving children more time to study outside of school.
Georgia, Oklahoma and Maine have changed their laws in the last couple of years to allow districts to count their school year by hours rather than days, allowing for a four-day week if needed. Hawaii schools were off every other Friday this year for schools to save money, giving them the state with the shortest school year in the country.
From California to Minnesota to New York, districts _ mostly small, rural ones with less than 5,000 students _ are following the trend, hoping to rescue their bleeding budgets.
For Peach County, the four-day week was enough of a success that the school district is trying it again next year, Clark said. The move saves $400,000 annually and is popular among teachers and students because they get extra rest, she said
"Teachers tell me they are much more focused because they've had time to prepare. They don't have kids sleeping in class on Tuesday," she said. "Everything has taken on a laser-light focus."
The results? Test scores went up.
So did attendance _ for both students and teachers. The district is spending one-third of what it once did on substitute teachers, Clark said.
And the graduation rate likely will be more than 80 percent for the first time in years, Clark said.
The four days that students are in school are slightly longer and more crowded with classes and activities. After school, students can get tutoring in subjects where they're struggling.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
How the selfish filthy rich will win the election and ruin America
In the column below, Paul Krugman, the 2008 Nobel Prize winner for economics, talks about the angry corporations and what they will do to those who advocate for American workers' wages, benefits or safety. Krugman uses the word "corporations" in his column, but having been on the SCEET Board of Directors, the VTA Executive Board, CTA State Council, and the nephew of one of six people that ran the biggest corporation in America in the 1970's, I can assure you that in every organization and every corporation, decisions come down to one person. It is really not any Board of Directors making a collective decision. It is one person who drives the agendas.
In major corporations those agendas are made with the interest of the ones who run the corporation as their highest priority. These folks are filthy rich. They hate unions and union benefits. They would do anything to destroy unions or so who advocate for them. These folks are used to ALWAYS having their own way. (My 95 year old uncle still rails against unions. I am dismissed in disgust as the "union guy" by him when we are together. The rest of what he has said to me and others family members is "family only" and I have promised not to reveal who he is, his corporation, or what he did to America until he finally passes away if I should outlive him).
When Krugman writes about corporations he is really talking about one or two selfish, filthy rich, union hating un-American traitors who run those corporations. I know because I am related to one such person.
May 23, 2010
The Old Enemies
By PAUL KRUGMAN
So here’s how it is: They’re as mad as hell, and they’re not going to take this anymore. Am I talking about the Tea Partiers? No, I’m talking about the corporations.
Much reporting on opposition to the Obama administration portrays it as a sort of populist uprising. Yet the antics of the socialism-and-death-panels crowd are only part of the story of anti-Obamaism, and arguably the less important part. If you really want to know what’s going on, watch the corporations.
How can you do that? Follow the money — donations by corporate political action committees.
Look, for example, at the campaign contributions of commercial banks — traditionally Republican-leaning, but only mildly so. So far this year, according to The Washington Post, 63 percent of spending by banks’ corporate PACs has gone to Republicans, up from 53 percent last year. Securities and investment firms, traditionally Democratic-leaning, are now giving more money to Republicans. And oil and gas companies, always Republican-leaning, have gone all out, bestowing 76 percent of their largess on the G.O.P.
These are extraordinary numbers given the normal tendency of corporate money to flow to the party in power. Corporate America, however, really, truly hates the current administration. Wall Street, for example, is in “a state of bitter, seething, hysterical fury” toward the president, writes John Heilemann of New York magazine. What’s going on?
One answer is taxes — not so much on corporations themselves as on the people who run them. The Obama administration plans to raise tax rates on upper brackets back to Clinton-era levels. Furthermore, health reform will in part be paid for with surtaxes on high-income individuals. All this will amount to a significant financial hit to C.E.O.’s, investment bankers and other masters of the universe.
Now, don’t cry for these people: they’ll still be doing extremely well, and by and large they’ll be paying little more as a percentage of their income than they did in the 1990s. Yet the fact that the tax increases they’re facing are reasonable doesn’t stop them from being very, very angry.
Nor are taxes the whole story.
Many Obama supporters have been disappointed by what they see as the administration’s mildness on regulatory issues — its embrace of limited financial reform that doesn’t break up the biggest banks, its support for offshore drilling, and so on. Yet corporate interests are balking at even modest changes from the permissiveness of the Bush era.
From the outside, this rage against regulation seems bizarre. I mean, what did they expect? The financial industry, in particular, ran wild under deregulation, eventually bringing on a crisis that has left 15 million Americans unemployed, and required large-scale taxpayer-financed bailouts to avoid an even worse outcome. Did Wall Street expect to emerge from all that without facing some new restrictions? Apparently it did.
So what President Obama and his party now face isn’t just, or even mainly, an opposition grounded in right-wing populism. For grass-roots anger is being channeled and exploited by corporate interests, which will be the big winners if the G.O.P. does well in November.
If this sounds familiar, it should: it’s the same formula the right has been using for a generation. Use identity politics to whip up the base; then, when the election is over, give priority to the concerns of your corporate donors. Run as the candidate of “real Americans,” not those soft-on-terror East coast liberals; then, once you’ve won, declare that you have a mandate to privatize Social Security. It comes as no surprise to learn that American Crossroads, a new organization whose goal is to deploy large amounts of corporate cash on behalf of Republican candidates, is the brainchild of none other than Karl Rove.
But won’t the grass-roots rebel at being used? Don’t count on it. Last week Rand Paul, the Tea Party darling who is now the Republican nominee for senator from Kentucky, declared that the president’s criticism of BP over the disastrous oil spill in the gulf is “un-American,” that “sometimes accidents happen.” The mood on the right may be populist, but it’s a kind of populism that’s remarkably sympathetic to big corporations.
So where does that leave the president and his party? Mr. Obama wanted to transcend partisanship. Instead, however, he finds himself very much in the position Franklin Roosevelt described in a famous 1936 speech, struggling with “the old enemies of peace — business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.”
And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Roosevelt turned corporate opposition into a badge of honor: “I welcome their hatred,” he declared. It’s time for President Obama to find his inner F.D.R., and do the same.
In major corporations those agendas are made with the interest of the ones who run the corporation as their highest priority. These folks are filthy rich. They hate unions and union benefits. They would do anything to destroy unions or so who advocate for them. These folks are used to ALWAYS having their own way. (My 95 year old uncle still rails against unions. I am dismissed in disgust as the "union guy" by him when we are together. The rest of what he has said to me and others family members is "family only" and I have promised not to reveal who he is, his corporation, or what he did to America until he finally passes away if I should outlive him).
When Krugman writes about corporations he is really talking about one or two selfish, filthy rich, union hating un-American traitors who run those corporations. I know because I am related to one such person.
May 23, 2010
The Old Enemies
By PAUL KRUGMAN
So here’s how it is: They’re as mad as hell, and they’re not going to take this anymore. Am I talking about the Tea Partiers? No, I’m talking about the corporations.
Much reporting on opposition to the Obama administration portrays it as a sort of populist uprising. Yet the antics of the socialism-and-death-panels crowd are only part of the story of anti-Obamaism, and arguably the less important part. If you really want to know what’s going on, watch the corporations.
How can you do that? Follow the money — donations by corporate political action committees.
Look, for example, at the campaign contributions of commercial banks — traditionally Republican-leaning, but only mildly so. So far this year, according to The Washington Post, 63 percent of spending by banks’ corporate PACs has gone to Republicans, up from 53 percent last year. Securities and investment firms, traditionally Democratic-leaning, are now giving more money to Republicans. And oil and gas companies, always Republican-leaning, have gone all out, bestowing 76 percent of their largess on the G.O.P.
These are extraordinary numbers given the normal tendency of corporate money to flow to the party in power. Corporate America, however, really, truly hates the current administration. Wall Street, for example, is in “a state of bitter, seething, hysterical fury” toward the president, writes John Heilemann of New York magazine. What’s going on?
One answer is taxes — not so much on corporations themselves as on the people who run them. The Obama administration plans to raise tax rates on upper brackets back to Clinton-era levels. Furthermore, health reform will in part be paid for with surtaxes on high-income individuals. All this will amount to a significant financial hit to C.E.O.’s, investment bankers and other masters of the universe.
Now, don’t cry for these people: they’ll still be doing extremely well, and by and large they’ll be paying little more as a percentage of their income than they did in the 1990s. Yet the fact that the tax increases they’re facing are reasonable doesn’t stop them from being very, very angry.
Nor are taxes the whole story.
Many Obama supporters have been disappointed by what they see as the administration’s mildness on regulatory issues — its embrace of limited financial reform that doesn’t break up the biggest banks, its support for offshore drilling, and so on. Yet corporate interests are balking at even modest changes from the permissiveness of the Bush era.
From the outside, this rage against regulation seems bizarre. I mean, what did they expect? The financial industry, in particular, ran wild under deregulation, eventually bringing on a crisis that has left 15 million Americans unemployed, and required large-scale taxpayer-financed bailouts to avoid an even worse outcome. Did Wall Street expect to emerge from all that without facing some new restrictions? Apparently it did.
So what President Obama and his party now face isn’t just, or even mainly, an opposition grounded in right-wing populism. For grass-roots anger is being channeled and exploited by corporate interests, which will be the big winners if the G.O.P. does well in November.
If this sounds familiar, it should: it’s the same formula the right has been using for a generation. Use identity politics to whip up the base; then, when the election is over, give priority to the concerns of your corporate donors. Run as the candidate of “real Americans,” not those soft-on-terror East coast liberals; then, once you’ve won, declare that you have a mandate to privatize Social Security. It comes as no surprise to learn that American Crossroads, a new organization whose goal is to deploy large amounts of corporate cash on behalf of Republican candidates, is the brainchild of none other than Karl Rove.
But won’t the grass-roots rebel at being used? Don’t count on it. Last week Rand Paul, the Tea Party darling who is now the Republican nominee for senator from Kentucky, declared that the president’s criticism of BP over the disastrous oil spill in the gulf is “un-American,” that “sometimes accidents happen.” The mood on the right may be populist, but it’s a kind of populism that’s remarkably sympathetic to big corporations.
So where does that leave the president and his party? Mr. Obama wanted to transcend partisanship. Instead, however, he finds himself very much in the position Franklin Roosevelt described in a famous 1936 speech, struggling with “the old enemies of peace — business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.”
And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Roosevelt turned corporate opposition into a badge of honor: “I welcome their hatred,” he declared. It’s time for President Obama to find his inner F.D.R., and do the same.
Dr. Stephen Guffanti's Dark Cloud is back
Have you felt cold shivers down your spine recently? Did the smell of a dank rot offend your nose on a bright and beautiful Vista day? Well you are not imagining. The evil that is Dr. Stephen Guffanti has reared its ugly head again. The monster who cost this district more money than any other school board member in the 80 year history of VUSD is back.
There is no change in his behavior. He is sending emails to his 'followers'. The emails are filled with Guffanti's typical slime and dark deceptions. Did you know there is a pedophile scandal in VUSD? I am guessing that you missed that bit of "made up" Guffanti fantasy, I know I did. He blathers on about wonderful, transformational Linda MoodBell Reading program being eliminated. He gets all his facts wrong including cost, how long it was used in our district, who wanted to trim it back, and how useful it was at full Bales implementation. With typical Guffanti ignorance he did not know that LMB is STILL used in our district, in special education curriculum and at some school sites and classrooms, just not exclusively any more.
The evil that walks upright has shown up at recent school board meetings as well. His small "cohort of the confused" surround him giving him the adoring looks and praise usually reserved to cult members for their messiah.
It looks like he is preparing to make a run at the school board again this fall. Just when we thought the educational waters were safe, Guffanti II is back!
I hope to publish the full text of Guffanti's latest email with commentary soon.
There is no change in his behavior. He is sending emails to his 'followers'. The emails are filled with Guffanti's typical slime and dark deceptions. Did you know there is a pedophile scandal in VUSD? I am guessing that you missed that bit of "made up" Guffanti fantasy, I know I did. He blathers on about wonderful, transformational Linda MoodBell Reading program being eliminated. He gets all his facts wrong including cost, how long it was used in our district, who wanted to trim it back, and how useful it was at full Bales implementation. With typical Guffanti ignorance he did not know that LMB is STILL used in our district, in special education curriculum and at some school sites and classrooms, just not exclusively any more.
The evil that walks upright has shown up at recent school board meetings as well. His small "cohort of the confused" surround him giving him the adoring looks and praise usually reserved to cult members for their messiah.
It looks like he is preparing to make a run at the school board again this fall. Just when we thought the educational waters were safe, Guffanti II is back!
I hope to publish the full text of Guffanti's latest email with commentary soon.
California Teachers have it so easy that 18,000 quit each year
Our angry friends like to tell us that our jobs are easy, that we are over paid and that we cannot be fired. They want to do away with permanent status and make all teachers probationary for life. They believe that teachers should be able to be fired for any or no reason at any time in their careers.*
They believe that seniority hurts the good young (cheap) teachers and keeps old (more expensive) flat lining teachers in their jobs. In the words of Joyce Bales older teachers "plateau".
Mature experience teachers tend to move up the salary schedule, so folks like Bales hate having to pay them when there is fresh cheap meat that they could replace them with. Experience and the success it engenders in the classroom are of no import to our angry friends and to our superintendent, Dr. Joyce Bales.
Well, apparently our jobs are not so easy as our angry friends think. It seems that after a few years on the job an awful lot of California teachers decide it is not worth it any more and quit. A study by the California State University Center for Teacher Quality tells the story. Over 18,000 employed California classroom teachers leave teaching each and every year.
Why do they leave? Lack of support from administration, paperwork, discipline problems. It seems our jobs are not the overpaid cushy positions with lots of paid vacations that we cannot be fired from as our angry friends allege. No, rather it seems we are in tough, brutal, thankless jobs that only a very special few can survive in. The few, the proud, the California public school teacher!
Here is an article about this problem in the San Francisco Chronicle:
http://articles.sfgate.com/2007-04-26/bay-area/17240089_1_teacher-quality-planning-time-teachers-teaching
THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION / Surveys show frustration among teachers, parents / WHY EDUCATORS QUIT: Lack of support, too much paperwork
April 26, 2007|By Nanette Asimov, Amr Emam, Chronicle Staff Writers
If working conditions at the middle school where Jim Lammers taught for 11 years had not been "set up to fail," he might have stuck around. But like thousands of other teachers across California, the former Marin County teacher of the year quit the profession in frustration.
"I just finally wore out dealing with it the way it was," said Lammers, who left in 2002 to pursue writing. "Too many kids, and not enough time to feel like I was accomplishing strong academics. To me, the system is almost set up to fail."
At a time when California is short of qualified instructors, the problem of teacher attrition is largely preventable, says a new California State University study of more than 1,900 teachers.
The rest of the article is at the URL above.
-------------
Here is another article along the same lines from Marin California:
http://www.marinij.com/ci_6215932?source=most_emailed
We all know there are teachers who should quit, some of whom don't enjoy teaching. But 18,000 California teachers quit each year and a large number of them are excellent teachers. One of the most critical challenges in public education is this loss of first-rate teachers.
The most obvious reason is pay. Spending time and money on years of education and training, knowing that you are doing excellent work in a socially critical profession, and then making less than most blue collar workers can eat away at your morale. Almost every teacher I know in the Bay Area who has a family and whose spouse is not working full time has a second job. Like Steve Kay, many finally decide they can't do it.
Many good teachers quit for other reasons. They enter the profession despite the pay because they enjoy working with kids, love their subject and want to make a contribution to society.
Read the rest of the article at the URL above.
---------------
*The anti American worker, tax free think tanks aka institutions funded by the selfish super wealthy want all public education worker protections eliminated as the first most crucial step in eliminating public school unions and their tiny influence on making politics a bit more fair for all Americans who are not among the selfish filthy rich one percent of America.
They believe that seniority hurts the good young (cheap) teachers and keeps old (more expensive) flat lining teachers in their jobs. In the words of Joyce Bales older teachers "plateau".
Mature experience teachers tend to move up the salary schedule, so folks like Bales hate having to pay them when there is fresh cheap meat that they could replace them with. Experience and the success it engenders in the classroom are of no import to our angry friends and to our superintendent, Dr. Joyce Bales.
Well, apparently our jobs are not so easy as our angry friends think. It seems that after a few years on the job an awful lot of California teachers decide it is not worth it any more and quit. A study by the California State University Center for Teacher Quality tells the story. Over 18,000 employed California classroom teachers leave teaching each and every year.
Why do they leave? Lack of support from administration, paperwork, discipline problems. It seems our jobs are not the overpaid cushy positions with lots of paid vacations that we cannot be fired from as our angry friends allege. No, rather it seems we are in tough, brutal, thankless jobs that only a very special few can survive in. The few, the proud, the California public school teacher!
Here is an article about this problem in the San Francisco Chronicle:
http://articles.sfgate.com/2007-04-26/bay-area/17240089_1_teacher-quality-planning-time-teachers-teaching
THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION / Surveys show frustration among teachers, parents / WHY EDUCATORS QUIT: Lack of support, too much paperwork
April 26, 2007|By Nanette Asimov, Amr Emam, Chronicle Staff Writers
If working conditions at the middle school where Jim Lammers taught for 11 years had not been "set up to fail," he might have stuck around. But like thousands of other teachers across California, the former Marin County teacher of the year quit the profession in frustration.
"I just finally wore out dealing with it the way it was," said Lammers, who left in 2002 to pursue writing. "Too many kids, and not enough time to feel like I was accomplishing strong academics. To me, the system is almost set up to fail."
At a time when California is short of qualified instructors, the problem of teacher attrition is largely preventable, says a new California State University study of more than 1,900 teachers.
The rest of the article is at the URL above.
-------------
Here is another article along the same lines from Marin California:
http://www.marinij.com/ci_6215932?source=most_emailed
Mark Phillips: Why so many good teachers quit
Posted: 06/23/2007 11:08:44 PM PDT
Mark Phillips
IT'S SUMMER break for teachers but, having read a report on the high dropout rate of California teachers, I've been wondering how many of our best ones won't return this fall. This should concern everyone committed to quality public education.
The best elementary teacher I ever observed was Steve Kay, my son's first-grade teacher in Santa Barbara. His classroom was a glorious six-ring circus, well organized, stimulating, caring and challenging. My son loved every day.
Despite being young, Steve was a legend among educators and parents. He quit teaching two years later. With a wife and two children, he couldn't afford to live in Santa Barbara on a teacher's salary and went into his dad's construction business.
I wasn't nearly as legendary, but I was a good teacher. I, too, left after a few years, in spite of loving the teens with whom I worked. My decision wasn't primarily based on the low salary, although I took a second job at a university and still ran up debts supporting a wife and two children on $29,000. I left because I felt suffocated by having no time between 8 and 4 to even collect my thoughts, frequently using the 38-minute lunch break to meet with students. And, spending hours at night and weekends reading student papers and preparing lessons, I was neglecting my family.
The most obvious reason is pay. Spending time and money on years of education and training, knowing that you are doing excellent work in a socially critical profession, and then making less than most blue collar workers can eat away at your morale. Almost every teacher I know in the Bay Area who has a family and whose spouse is not working full time has a second job. Like Steve Kay, many finally decide they can't do it.
Many good teachers quit for other reasons. They enter the profession despite the pay because they enjoy working with kids, love their subject and want to make a contribution to society.
Read the rest of the article at the URL above.
---------------
*The anti American worker, tax free think tanks aka institutions funded by the selfish super wealthy want all public education worker protections eliminated as the first most crucial step in eliminating public school unions and their tiny influence on making politics a bit more fair for all Americans who are not among the selfish filthy rich one percent of America.
How badly are California Teachers paid? 44th out of 50 states!
We hear from our angry friends over and over that California teachers are the best paid in the nation. They tell us our pay should be cut.
Like with all statistics, figures do lie and liars do figures.
Technically we do have the highest salaries, yet teachers in California have nearly the lowest ability to buy a house and live a comfortable life out of all public school teachers in the nation.
For salary comfort level, California teachers salaries are ranked 44th out of 50 in the country according to a nationwide ranking system.
Read more here:
http://teacherportal.com/salary/California-teacher-salary
Like with all statistics, figures do lie and liars do figures.
Technically we do have the highest salaries, yet teachers in California have nearly the lowest ability to buy a house and live a comfortable life out of all public school teachers in the nation.
For salary comfort level, California teachers salaries are ranked 44th out of 50 in the country according to a nationwide ranking system.
Read more here:
http://teacherportal.com/salary/California-teacher-salary
How bad does California treat public education?--TERRIBLE says lawsuit
How bad does the Republican controlled* state budget process treat California public school children? According to a group of parents and educational organizations, it is so bad that it should be declared unconstitutional. They have filed a lawsuit to get the state to spend the amount of money necessary to accomplish our California educational goals under our State of California Constitution.
http://bayarea.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/20/suing-for-money-for-california-schools/
May 20, 2010, 3:45 pm
Suing for Money for California Schools
By KATHARINE MIESZKOWSKI
California is being sued for violating its Constitution by failing to provide adequate financial support for education.
A group of parents, students, school districts and educational organizations filed the lawsuit on Thursday in Alameda County Superior Court. It charges that California’s system of financing public education fails to provide schools with the resources necessary to meet the educational mandates set by the state.
In Robles-Wong et al. v. State of California, the plaintiffs ask the court to compel the state to align its school finance system with its educational requirements.
“California’s broken school finance system has denied students the education that they deserve for decades,” said Frank Pugh, president of the California School Boards Association, which is one of the plaintiffs, at a news conference in Sacramento.”This lawsuit is a last resort. We cannot sit around idly and wait for the state to act when generation after generation of students are suffering the consequences.”
Accusing the governor and politicians on both sides of the aisle in the Legislature of failing students, Mr. Pugh said, “The system is broken, and something needs to be done about it.”
The San Francisco Unified School District is among the plaintiffs. “Our kids go to a school where the library staff has been let go; the nurse comes once a week, if we’re lucky; there aren’t enough counselors; and summer school is a thing of the past,” Carl Barnes, father of a fourth grader and a sixth grader who attend public schools in the city, said in a statement.
California spends $2,131 less per pupil than the national average, ranking the state 44th in the country in this measurement.
Adjusted for regional cost differences in the price of educational services, that picture looks even worse. By that standard, California spends $2,856 less per pupil than the national average, making it No. 47 on the state rankings, according to the National Education Association.
The state ranks No. 49 in student-teacher ratios and 50th in librarians, according to the Digest of Education Statistics.
Student achievement in the state is similarly dismal with California tied for 47th in the nation in fourth-grade reading and tied for 46th in the nation in eighth-grade math, according to the National Assessment of Education Progress.
The lawsuit contends that the schools’ fiscal problems run much deeper than the current budget crisis. “The matter has become ever more urgent; the time for patience is past,” Jo Loss, president of the California State PTA, said at the news conference. “We cannot wait to fix our school finance system anymore than children can postpone their childhood.”
The suit is unlikely to affect state support for schools for the 2010-2011 school year. The governor’s office declined to comment on the lawsuit Thursday morning, saying it had not yet reviewed it, according to The Los Angeles Times.
*Republicans are not the majority party in either branch of our two California State Legislative branches, the State Assembly or State Senate; yet using the UNIQUE among all 50 states, California 2/3 requirement to pass a budget or tax, and voting in lockstep with no dissent, the evil Sacramento Republicans control what is in (or more crucially NOT in) the state budget and when and if the yearly state budget will pass.
Without a legislatively approved state budget, the state can not spend any money at all. The entire state then would go bankrupt. The Republicans do not care. The Democrats give in to the heartless Republican bullies time and time again.
http://bayarea.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/20/suing-for-money-for-california-schools/
May 20, 2010, 3:45 pm
Suing for Money for California Schools
By KATHARINE MIESZKOWSKI
California is being sued for violating its Constitution by failing to provide adequate financial support for education.
A group of parents, students, school districts and educational organizations filed the lawsuit on Thursday in Alameda County Superior Court. It charges that California’s system of financing public education fails to provide schools with the resources necessary to meet the educational mandates set by the state.
In Robles-Wong et al. v. State of California, the plaintiffs ask the court to compel the state to align its school finance system with its educational requirements.
“California’s broken school finance system has denied students the education that they deserve for decades,” said Frank Pugh, president of the California School Boards Association, which is one of the plaintiffs, at a news conference in Sacramento.”This lawsuit is a last resort. We cannot sit around idly and wait for the state to act when generation after generation of students are suffering the consequences.”
Accusing the governor and politicians on both sides of the aisle in the Legislature of failing students, Mr. Pugh said, “The system is broken, and something needs to be done about it.”
The San Francisco Unified School District is among the plaintiffs. “Our kids go to a school where the library staff has been let go; the nurse comes once a week, if we’re lucky; there aren’t enough counselors; and summer school is a thing of the past,” Carl Barnes, father of a fourth grader and a sixth grader who attend public schools in the city, said in a statement.
California spends $2,131 less per pupil than the national average, ranking the state 44th in the country in this measurement.
Adjusted for regional cost differences in the price of educational services, that picture looks even worse. By that standard, California spends $2,856 less per pupil than the national average, making it No. 47 on the state rankings, according to the National Education Association.
The state ranks No. 49 in student-teacher ratios and 50th in librarians, according to the Digest of Education Statistics.
Student achievement in the state is similarly dismal with California tied for 47th in the nation in fourth-grade reading and tied for 46th in the nation in eighth-grade math, according to the National Assessment of Education Progress.
The lawsuit contends that the schools’ fiscal problems run much deeper than the current budget crisis. “The matter has become ever more urgent; the time for patience is past,” Jo Loss, president of the California State PTA, said at the news conference. “We cannot wait to fix our school finance system anymore than children can postpone their childhood.”
The suit is unlikely to affect state support for schools for the 2010-2011 school year. The governor’s office declined to comment on the lawsuit Thursday morning, saying it had not yet reviewed it, according to The Los Angeles Times.
*Republicans are not the majority party in either branch of our two California State Legislative branches, the State Assembly or State Senate; yet using the UNIQUE among all 50 states, California 2/3 requirement to pass a budget or tax, and voting in lockstep with no dissent, the evil Sacramento Republicans control what is in (or more crucially NOT in) the state budget and when and if the yearly state budget will pass.
Without a legislatively approved state budget, the state can not spend any money at all. The entire state then would go bankrupt. The Republicans do not care. The Democrats give in to the heartless Republican bullies time and time again.
No Federal Bailout for States, More Ed Cuts Coming, Thank a Republican Con man
The AM radio conmen and FOXnotNews has been wildly successful in the job they are paid so well to do, convince the gullible to make America safe for the wealthy. There will be no federal bailout of California, or public education.
During a Great Recession/Depression government spending is the only way to keep the economy from crashing. See Nobel Prize winning economic columnist for the New York Times, Paul Krugman views. But spending will not happen. The con men who control public opinion in America will not let it happen. It might mean that their rich patrons might have to pay their fair share of taxes for the opportunities and benefits this country gives to the rich and those who want to become that way.
However, the sucess of the selfish filthy rich and their hired gun mass media con man is bad news for public education. And Bad news for the poor sick and elderly. But worse it is Terrible news for the American economy.
Now that the hired gun public mass media conmen control our daily 24 hour news cycles, they control American opinion and the America. I predict that their total control of all mass media will result in America following an agenda of economic destruction that will benefit the filthy rich puppeteers briefly but in the long run will likely result in a greater financial disaster than the 1930s. Hang on for a wild ride. The November elections are shaping up to be a disaster for the American economy, people, and our Constitution.
Below is the bad news about the end of any chance for a federal bailout. The Republican minority are dancing in the streets as they destroy our federal institutions, and state and local governments and the good work they do on behalf of all of us.
The potential loss of funds is a significant setback for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers, who may not see nearly $2 billion in federal assistance that they intended to use to help bring California out of the red.
The money was to be California's share of $24 billion in proposed assistance, mostly to cover healthcare spending, spread among all states. Budget experts say that is enough to wipe out about one-fourth of the combined state budget shortfalls.
In California and elsewhere, officials thought the funds were a sure thing. The money was one of the few elements of Schwarzenegger's budget plan on which there was bipartisan agreement. But House Democratic leaders last week stripped the money out of legislation amid election-season jitters.
"This is a serious problem," said Jean Ross, executive director of the California Budget Project, a Sacramento-based nonprofit. "The fear of deficits seems to be overtaking Washington. They are not realizing the bigger threat is the economy could slide back into recession as a result of state and local budget cuts."
In California, the governor has already proposed eliminating the state's welfare program, cancelling state-subsidized day care for hundreds of thousands of low-income children, freezing school spending and making a number of other deep cuts to close a $19.1-billion budget gap.
Failure to get the federal money would surely force more drastic proposals. But even if the state eliminated its entire home healthcare program, which serves 440,000 elderly and disabled Californians, it wouldn't make up for the $1.9 billion the state is now scrambling to secure.
The states have launched a frantic lobbying effort to persuade the U.S. Senate to provide the assistance.
"You've got virtually every governor in the country calling on Congress to do this," said H.D. Palmer, deputy director of the California Department of Finance. "This is not just a California issue. It is a national issue."
The states' efforts come as the Democrats who control Congress face resistance to increased spending from fiscally conservative members of their own caucus, many of whom face tough reelection campaigns in districts where they campaigned on pledges of fiscal discipline. Republicans, meanwhile, have highlighted the federal budget deficit, which could reach $1.5 trillion, in this year's mid-term election campaigns.
Michael Bird, federal affairs counsel for the National Conference of State Legislatures, said securing the funds would be a challenge. "We've got our work cut out for us," he said.
Thirty states have been counting on the additional Medicaid money in their budgets, according to the conference. The money was originally provided in last year's economic stimulus bill — but only through the end of this year.
With unemployment still high, a bipartisan group of governors, with President Obama's support, has sought to extend the funding through mid-2011.
The $24 billion was stripped from a package of unemployment aid and tax breaks by House Democratic leaders in response to the demands of fiscally conservative members of their party to reduce the bill's overall cost. The bill was approved by the House last week and is awaiting action in the Senate.
A spokesman for Rep. Chellie Pingree (D- Maine), a leader in pushing for extension of the Medicaid funding, said that the congresswoman has been assured by Democratic leadership that the issue will come back before the House.
Schwarzenegger has aggressively pushed the California congressional delegation to extend the federal aid to states. He expressed confidence in January that Washington would step forward with as much as $7 billion in new federal assistance, which could be used to close more than a third of California's budget gap.
By May, he acknowledged that was unlikely but suggested the state could safely assume it would receive half that amount. Now the state is facing the prospect of getting barely more than $1 billion.
Among those resisting the governor's push for more assistance are his fellow Republicans in the state's Congressional delegation, who say Washington has its own budget problems.
While the loss of Medicaid funds would hit California hard, the House bill does include provisions that would benefit the state.
Among them is an extension of the Build America Bond program that has been used in California to fund infrastructure projects. There is also $400 million in increased Medicare payments to doctors in a wide swath of the state to address longstanding complaints that low reimbursement rates have discouraged them from taking on new patients.
richard.simon@latimes.com
evan.halper@latimes.com
Times staff writer Shane Goldmacher contributed
http://www.latimes.com/news/health/healthcare/la-me-state-budget-20100603,0,332355.story
During a Great Recession/Depression government spending is the only way to keep the economy from crashing. See Nobel Prize winning economic columnist for the New York Times, Paul Krugman views. But spending will not happen. The con men who control public opinion in America will not let it happen. It might mean that their rich patrons might have to pay their fair share of taxes for the opportunities and benefits this country gives to the rich and those who want to become that way.
However, the sucess of the selfish filthy rich and their hired gun mass media con man is bad news for public education. And Bad news for the poor sick and elderly. But worse it is Terrible news for the American economy.
Now that the hired gun public mass media conmen control our daily 24 hour news cycles, they control American opinion and the America. I predict that their total control of all mass media will result in America following an agenda of economic destruction that will benefit the filthy rich puppeteers briefly but in the long run will likely result in a greater financial disaster than the 1930s. Hang on for a wild ride. The November elections are shaping up to be a disaster for the American economy, people, and our Constitution.
Below is the bad news about the end of any chance for a federal bailout. The Republican minority are dancing in the streets as they destroy our federal institutions, and state and local governments and the good work they do on behalf of all of us.
Congress pulls back state aid package, leaving a $2-billion hole in California budget
House Democrats kill a $24-billion fund to help cash-strapped states cover costs. States are lobbying hard to have it restored, warning of further devastating cuts to healthcare and social services
Reporting from Washington and Sacramento —
With the federal deficit a growing political liability, lawmakers in Congress are backing off plans to send more aid to financially strapped states, putting in jeopardy billions of dollars that California and others were counting on to balance their budgets.The potential loss of funds is a significant setback for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers, who may not see nearly $2 billion in federal assistance that they intended to use to help bring California out of the red.
The money was to be California's share of $24 billion in proposed assistance, mostly to cover healthcare spending, spread among all states. Budget experts say that is enough to wipe out about one-fourth of the combined state budget shortfalls.
In California and elsewhere, officials thought the funds were a sure thing. The money was one of the few elements of Schwarzenegger's budget plan on which there was bipartisan agreement. But House Democratic leaders last week stripped the money out of legislation amid election-season jitters.
"This is a serious problem," said Jean Ross, executive director of the California Budget Project, a Sacramento-based nonprofit. "The fear of deficits seems to be overtaking Washington. They are not realizing the bigger threat is the economy could slide back into recession as a result of state and local budget cuts."
In California, the governor has already proposed eliminating the state's welfare program, cancelling state-subsidized day care for hundreds of thousands of low-income children, freezing school spending and making a number of other deep cuts to close a $19.1-billion budget gap.
Failure to get the federal money would surely force more drastic proposals. But even if the state eliminated its entire home healthcare program, which serves 440,000 elderly and disabled Californians, it wouldn't make up for the $1.9 billion the state is now scrambling to secure.
The states have launched a frantic lobbying effort to persuade the U.S. Senate to provide the assistance.
"You've got virtually every governor in the country calling on Congress to do this," said H.D. Palmer, deputy director of the California Department of Finance. "This is not just a California issue. It is a national issue."
The states' efforts come as the Democrats who control Congress face resistance to increased spending from fiscally conservative members of their own caucus, many of whom face tough reelection campaigns in districts where they campaigned on pledges of fiscal discipline. Republicans, meanwhile, have highlighted the federal budget deficit, which could reach $1.5 trillion, in this year's mid-term election campaigns.
Michael Bird, federal affairs counsel for the National Conference of State Legislatures, said securing the funds would be a challenge. "We've got our work cut out for us," he said.
Thirty states have been counting on the additional Medicaid money in their budgets, according to the conference. The money was originally provided in last year's economic stimulus bill — but only through the end of this year.
With unemployment still high, a bipartisan group of governors, with President Obama's support, has sought to extend the funding through mid-2011.
The $24 billion was stripped from a package of unemployment aid and tax breaks by House Democratic leaders in response to the demands of fiscally conservative members of their party to reduce the bill's overall cost. The bill was approved by the House last week and is awaiting action in the Senate.
A spokesman for Rep. Chellie Pingree (D- Maine), a leader in pushing for extension of the Medicaid funding, said that the congresswoman has been assured by Democratic leadership that the issue will come back before the House.
Schwarzenegger has aggressively pushed the California congressional delegation to extend the federal aid to states. He expressed confidence in January that Washington would step forward with as much as $7 billion in new federal assistance, which could be used to close more than a third of California's budget gap.
By May, he acknowledged that was unlikely but suggested the state could safely assume it would receive half that amount. Now the state is facing the prospect of getting barely more than $1 billion.
Among those resisting the governor's push for more assistance are his fellow Republicans in the state's Congressional delegation, who say Washington has its own budget problems.
While the loss of Medicaid funds would hit California hard, the House bill does include provisions that would benefit the state.
Among them is an extension of the Build America Bond program that has been used in California to fund infrastructure projects. There is also $400 million in increased Medicare payments to doctors in a wide swath of the state to address longstanding complaints that low reimbursement rates have discouraged them from taking on new patients.
richard.simon@latimes.com
evan.halper@latimes.com
Times staff writer Shane Goldmacher contributed
http://www.latimes.com/news/health/healthcare/la-me-state-budget-20100603,0,332355.story
New Way to Save Money, Cut Kindergarten
Another idea to cut funds for K-12, raise the age for Kindergarten. What is next? Cutting Kindergarten altogether? Raising the age for start of school to 6 years old on September 1?
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/06/lawmakers-vote-to-raise-kindergarten-age.html
Lawmakers vote to raise kindergarten age
The earliest age at which California children could start kindergarten would go up three months under a measure passed by the state Senate on Wednesday. Youngsters would have to turn 5 by Sept. 1 under the proposal, which would reduce the state’s kindergarten population by 100,000.
The state would save big money by booting all those kids out of kindergarten. But proponents of the legislation say half of the $700 million to be saved would go to helping those same children through expanded public preschool programs. The rest would go toward closing the state deficit.
"Both the research and our classroom teachers are telling us that California kids are starting kindergarten too young,’’ said Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto), the author of SB 1381. "The net result is it’s not good for them educationally and it’s not good for the other kids in the classroom who get a little less attention because the teachers are struggling to deal with those young 4-year-olds.’’
The measure, which next goes to the state Assembly, passed on a 28-4 vote after it was opposed by the California Teachers Assn. "The current state preschool program is not accessible to all children and we do not believe it is appropriate to displace students without access to preschool," the teachers group said in a written protest.
Some parent groups, however, support the age change. -- Patrick McGreevy in Sacramento
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/06/lawmakers-vote-to-raise-kindergarten-age.html
Lawmakers vote to raise kindergarten age
The earliest age at which California children could start kindergarten would go up three months under a measure passed by the state Senate on Wednesday. Youngsters would have to turn 5 by Sept. 1 under the proposal, which would reduce the state’s kindergarten population by 100,000.
The state would save big money by booting all those kids out of kindergarten. But proponents of the legislation say half of the $700 million to be saved would go to helping those same children through expanded public preschool programs. The rest would go toward closing the state deficit.
"Both the research and our classroom teachers are telling us that California kids are starting kindergarten too young,’’ said Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto), the author of SB 1381. "The net result is it’s not good for them educationally and it’s not good for the other kids in the classroom who get a little less attention because the teachers are struggling to deal with those young 4-year-olds.’’
The measure, which next goes to the state Assembly, passed on a 28-4 vote after it was opposed by the California Teachers Assn. "The current state preschool program is not accessible to all children and we do not believe it is appropriate to displace students without access to preschool," the teachers group said in a written protest.
Some parent groups, however, support the age change. -- Patrick McGreevy in Sacramento
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Unanimous Vote by Rep. Assembly sends TA and MOU to membership for final vote
Below is a copy of the email sent by President Jan O'Reilly to the membership though district email. You should have a copy in your email inbox. Notice that Jan posted the message at 8:56PM. A president's day is never done. To find out more details of the TA and MOU go to the VTA website, www.vistata.org. At the website is a photo copy of the original signed document. http://www.vistata.org/tamoa2010.html
The vote at the emergency Representative Assembly meeting yesterday was unanimous. Send the TAs and MOUs to the membership for a vote for approval of our new contract. There was no dissent. No one abstained. The relatively short meeting ended on wild Rep Assembly applause for Jan O'Reilly and our VTA Bargaining Team. It was truly a great victory for education in VUSD. How awful if huge class sizes had become a permanent part of our contract! Thank you Jan and Team for saving our students from that fate.
The TAs are Tentative Agreements which if approved both by a vote of the membership of the Vista Teacher's Association and the Vista Unified School Board will become permanent changes in the contract between the VTA and VUSD.
The MOUs are Memorandum of Understanding. These MOUs are only TEMPORARY. The MOUs will be end on July 1, 2013. The MOUs have to do with increases in class size and in decreases in number of days teachers will teach and will be paid for.
Nice to have the class size increases TEMPORARY rather than permanently enshrined in the contract. Having them as a MOU instead of a TA accomplishes that noble goal. Good job, Jan, Bargaining team, and to all the teachers that wore black and participated in Work to Rule. Your efforts made a major impression on those who needed to be impressed.
Joyce Bales was scared. So many teachers wearing black. She felt you guys might really would do what Capistrano and Oakland teachers did in April, go on strike.
With large numbers of teachers participating in "Work To Rule" job action and the huge number of teachers wearing black, she finally believed the teachers of our district were serious. She was so concerned that there would be a strike that she convened an emergency meeting of all site administration to discuss plans for dealing with a strike.
Sadly not all good news, the five furlough days in the MOUs means a 2.7% cut in pay for every teacher in the district. Bad. But not as bad as the original proposal of a full five percent cut in pay. Also much better than many other districts in California where teachers were forced into as much as a ten percent cut as well as class size increases and benefits cuts and increases in teacher contributions (San Juan Capistrano).
Never forget it who did this to you and all California public education. It was our local Republicans in the Sacramento who are cheering for this cut in your pay. They and they alone bear direct responsibility for your pay cuts and the budget mess in Sacramento.
By using the evil two thirds requirement and voting in lockstep, with no dissent allowed by the party bosses, they made sure that there would be no equitable or rational fixes to the California Budget Crisis.
There were plenty of easy solutions including reinstating recently reduced taxes on the wealthy (Reductions demanded by Sacramento Repubs), a Sarah Palin type tax on California oil production among other easy painless fixes. Read more about pain free fixes to our California Budget Crisis here.
You can also see for yourself what our local Sacramento Republicans gleefully did to you, California education, and our California neighbors who happen to be poor, disabled, or elderly here and here.
For your voting edification, the list of our local Sacramento villains:
(1) Martin Garrick (R) 74th Assembly (Carlsbad, Oceanside, Vista, San Marcos),
(2)Nathan Fletcher (R) 75th Assembly (Escondido, Poway),
(3) Diane Harkey (R) 73rd Assembly (Oceanside, San Clemente) and
(4)Mark Wyland (R) 38th (Oceanside to Bonsall, San Clemente to Solana Beach).
For more information on the TAs and MOUs, please plan to attend one of the five VTA meetings scheduled to explain them. See the reproduced email below for dates and times. Note VMMS gym is the Vista Magnet Middle School gym for old times that was Lincoln Middle School. TH MPR is the Temple Heights Multi Purpose Room.
Congratulations to all for a very successful "almost" resolved contract. The new contract will finally be approved when the vote of the membership and the official school board vote is taken. Special Thanks to the VTA Bargaining Team for their many many many long hours of work on this contract. We should all be very proud of their efforts.
Sent: Tuesday, June 01, 2010 8:56 PM
Colleagues:
As you know on Thursday, May 27th, your VTA negotiating team and VUSD management team met and reached a tentative agreement (TA) with a memorandum of understanding (MOU). The VTA Executive Board voted unanimously to send the proposal the Rep Council for approval. The Rep Council voted unanimously on Tuesday night to send the proposal to the membership for a vote next week.
The TA, MOU, current contract, and a powerpoint presentation will be posted on www.vistata.org late Tuesday evening. We encourage all members to thoroughly read and discuss the proposal with colleagues over the next week. Additionally, we have set up member informational meetings to answer any questions you may have. The schedule is as follows:
*Wednesday, June 2nd VMMS gym 3-4:30 & 4:30-6 PM
*Thursday, June 3rd TH MPR 3-4:30 & 4:30-6 PM
*Friday, June 4th VTA office 4-5:30 PM
Many schools will hold lunchtime meetings with site reps to answer your questions as well. Please let your VTA Rep(s) know if such a meeting would be helpful for your site so they can set it up in the next few days. Our reps are there to help you navigate the complicated language of the proposal.
Please be reminded that voting on the tentative agreement and memorandum of understanding will commence June 9th and end June 14th at 4 PM. Again, we recognize this is a tight timeline but feel it is important to have closure prior to the end of the school year.
Stay Active. Stay Informed.
Respectfully,
Jan O' Reilly
VTA President
The vote at the emergency Representative Assembly meeting yesterday was unanimous. Send the TAs and MOUs to the membership for a vote for approval of our new contract. There was no dissent. No one abstained. The relatively short meeting ended on wild Rep Assembly applause for Jan O'Reilly and our VTA Bargaining Team. It was truly a great victory for education in VUSD. How awful if huge class sizes had become a permanent part of our contract! Thank you Jan and Team for saving our students from that fate.
The TAs are Tentative Agreements which if approved both by a vote of the membership of the Vista Teacher's Association and the Vista Unified School Board will become permanent changes in the contract between the VTA and VUSD.
The MOUs are Memorandum of Understanding. These MOUs are only TEMPORARY. The MOUs will be end on July 1, 2013. The MOUs have to do with increases in class size and in decreases in number of days teachers will teach and will be paid for.
Nice to have the class size increases TEMPORARY rather than permanently enshrined in the contract. Having them as a MOU instead of a TA accomplishes that noble goal. Good job, Jan, Bargaining team, and to all the teachers that wore black and participated in Work to Rule. Your efforts made a major impression on those who needed to be impressed.
Joyce Bales was scared. So many teachers wearing black. She felt you guys might really would do what Capistrano and Oakland teachers did in April, go on strike.
With large numbers of teachers participating in "Work To Rule" job action and the huge number of teachers wearing black, she finally believed the teachers of our district were serious. She was so concerned that there would be a strike that she convened an emergency meeting of all site administration to discuss plans for dealing with a strike.
Sadly not all good news, the five furlough days in the MOUs means a 2.7% cut in pay for every teacher in the district. Bad. But not as bad as the original proposal of a full five percent cut in pay. Also much better than many other districts in California where teachers were forced into as much as a ten percent cut as well as class size increases and benefits cuts and increases in teacher contributions (San Juan Capistrano).
Never forget it who did this to you and all California public education. It was our local Republicans in the Sacramento who are cheering for this cut in your pay. They and they alone bear direct responsibility for your pay cuts and the budget mess in Sacramento.
By using the evil two thirds requirement and voting in lockstep, with no dissent allowed by the party bosses, they made sure that there would be no equitable or rational fixes to the California Budget Crisis.
There were plenty of easy solutions including reinstating recently reduced taxes on the wealthy (Reductions demanded by Sacramento Repubs), a Sarah Palin type tax on California oil production among other easy painless fixes. Read more about pain free fixes to our California Budget Crisis here.
You can also see for yourself what our local Sacramento Republicans gleefully did to you, California education, and our California neighbors who happen to be poor, disabled, or elderly here and here.
For your voting edification, the list of our local Sacramento villains:
(1) Martin Garrick (R) 74th Assembly (Carlsbad, Oceanside, Vista, San Marcos),
(2)Nathan Fletcher (R) 75th Assembly (Escondido, Poway),
(3) Diane Harkey (R) 73rd Assembly (Oceanside, San Clemente) and
(4)Mark Wyland (R) 38th (Oceanside to Bonsall, San Clemente to Solana Beach).
For more information on the TAs and MOUs, please plan to attend one of the five VTA meetings scheduled to explain them. See the reproduced email below for dates and times. Note VMMS gym is the Vista Magnet Middle School gym for old times that was Lincoln Middle School. TH MPR is the Temple Heights Multi Purpose Room.
Congratulations to all for a very successful "almost" resolved contract. The new contract will finally be approved when the vote of the membership and the official school board vote is taken. Special Thanks to the VTA Bargaining Team for their many many many long hours of work on this contract. We should all be very proud of their efforts.
Sent: Tuesday, June 01, 2010 8:56 PM
Colleagues:
As you know on Thursday, May 27th, your VTA negotiating team and VUSD management team met and reached a tentative agreement (TA) with a memorandum of understanding (MOU). The VTA Executive Board voted unanimously to send the proposal the Rep Council for approval. The Rep Council voted unanimously on Tuesday night to send the proposal to the membership for a vote next week.
The TA, MOU, current contract, and a powerpoint presentation will be posted on www.vistata.org late Tuesday evening. We encourage all members to thoroughly read and discuss the proposal with colleagues over the next week. Additionally, we have set up member informational meetings to answer any questions you may have. The schedule is as follows:
*Wednesday, June 2nd VMMS gym 3-4:30 & 4:30-6 PM
*Thursday, June 3rd TH MPR 3-4:30 & 4:30-6 PM
*Friday, June 4th VTA office 4-5:30 PM
Many schools will hold lunchtime meetings with site reps to answer your questions as well. Please let your VTA Rep(s) know if such a meeting would be helpful for your site so they can set it up in the next few days. Our reps are there to help you navigate the complicated language of the proposal.
Please be reminded that voting on the tentative agreement and memorandum of understanding will commence June 9th and end June 14th at 4 PM. Again, we recognize this is a tight timeline but feel it is important to have closure prior to the end of the school year.
Stay Active. Stay Informed.
Respectfully,
Jan O' Reilly
VTA President
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