So, Ed Week is even reporting on the RIDICULOUS event Fenty and Rhee attended in Denver:

It was a cheap shot,” Weingarten told me today, after a joint AFT-National Education Association luncheon honoring woman governors wrapped up. She added that union members weren’t even invited to join the conversation. By contrast, she pointed out that two rising Democratic stars—Govs. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas and Janet Napolitano of Arizona—used their speeches at today’s luncheon to talk about the importance of partnerships between policymakers and teachers and their unions.

“This was a couple of mayors, and I very much appreciate their efforts. But they’re tearing down the people who they need to lift up,” Weingarten said.

I wish she could mention this in her speech, but I'm also hoping she doesn't. I'd rather simply replace Fenty when he decides to run for re-election.

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I’ve been over on the Washington City Paper discussing union issues. Sometimes, you have to bring the discussion to where the anti-union folks are.

In Loose Lips latest installment of the saga that is the Fenty administrations’ snubbing of all things union, we have this little ditty about a panel Fenty and Rhee participated:

Rhee told the crowd that she expects to have negotiations on the reform contract concluded within two weeks and ready for a vote by the Washington Teachers’ Union membership, LL has been told.

Her comments came during a panel discussion on education reform here in Denver with Michael Bennet, superintendent of Denver’s public schools, and other public education reform leaders. On a separate panel, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty spoke about his takeover of DCPS with New York City schools chief Joel I. Klein, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, former Colorado Gov. Roy Romer, and others. The event was sponsored by a coalition of more than three dozen education reform and charter school organizations.

So in reading this little snippet, did you notice anything missing?

I did. Teachers and their unions.

So, me being the meek, mild mannered, and quiet unionist that I am asked Loose Lips if there were any unions there, here’s his response:

Mike DeBonis Says:
August 25th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Nope, no union folks on the panel, and didn’t seem to be any union folks there at all, from what I was told. BTW, the AFT is a “platinum-level” sponsor of the convention and prez Randi Weingarten will be addressing the floor this evening.

Well, that sort of says a lot about this panel, doesn’t it?

To me, it says that Fenty doesn’t much care about workers, which includes teachers, or the voice of those workers represented by their unions. Oh, yeah, and I said as much in my follow up comment:

Thanks for the update Mike. All workers need a voice, no matter what field. Unions aren’t just for laborers (LiUNA), Electricians (IBEW), writers (WGA) or casino workers (UAW), it’s also for teachers (NEA, AFT, etc…) nurses (SEIU, CNA), Engineers (BLE, IUOE), county child support workers (Teamsters, AFSCME), even actors (SAG). To have an education forum and to not have any unions on the panel ESPECIALLY the very EDUCATION REFORM minded Randi Weingarten is a travesty. But to be an elected Democratic official to sit on such a panel is tantamount to being in your face anti-union. Something Rhee and Fenty seem to be courting as a mantra of theirs.

Perhaps if you're really really good, Fenty will bring his anti-union self to your town, too!!

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So, not too many folks showed up yesterday to rally in front of the WTU. In fact, there were 8, according to the Wire. Didn’t hear about the Demonstration? The Post reported on it:

The rift is playing out in a blizzard of cellphone messages and e-mails, Facebook entries and posts on teacher blogs such as D.C. Teacher Chic and Dee Does the District.

Some of the teachers who want "green tier" salaries plan to demonstrate this morning at teacher union offices on L'Enfant Plaza.

Older teachers aren’t necessarily bad teachers. But Like I’ve said before, blaming teachers for why students perform badly on tests or administrators for why kids aren’t showing up, well, it’s like claiming that no one else matters in this equation, and that’s not true.

A few days ago, I talked about what it’s like being a parent with a child in DCPS. I wrote about other parents who often treated school more like a babysitter than a school. I talked about how, until we can make school the center of community again, firing administrators and teachers, well, it’s like blaming the nails for why the house fell down and not the builder constructing it. Without parents and community, we’re all screwed.

But, I digress. This post is about WTU and communication and for that matter, lack of communication.

So, let’s look at the DC 8 again. Sure, not many showed up, but like all unions, the WTU should be responsive to its membership. So, when the 8 showed up, WTU didn’t turn them away, Parker met with them.

All of 8 public school teachers, interested in the sizeable salary increases placed on the table by Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee, turned out at Washington Teachers Union headquarters on L'Enfant Plaza. They met for about 90 minutes with union president George Parker and emerged satisfied that they eventually would get a chance to vote on the pay package, which offers $100,000-plus salaries for tenured teachers willing to risk dismissal by going on probation for a year. Teachers unwilling to relinquish tenure would still get significant raises under the proposal.

"All my questions were answered," said Heather Migdon, a fifth-grade teacher at Nalle Elementary in Southeast. "I feel better about things." Migdon said that she wasn't concerned about the sparse turnout, and that it was to be expected with teachers still scattered on vacation and the last-minute notice (the gathering was called yesterday afternoon).

Instead of getting mad, signing on to nebulous groups like “strong schools,” why not actually approach the union in a more constructive way? They represent teachers. They are the voice of teachers in all negotiations. So, why not be more active and proactive with the union?

I’ve been thinking about this because of comments left on a previous post of mine. What struck me about Peter Poer’s comments wasn’t his support of Strong Schools (he’s a member and listed on their website) or that he’s an alumnus of Teach for America, it was that he noted this:

First, you write that Teacher have a voice in the negotiations -- their union. As a member in good standing with the WTU, I have not once been asked my opinion about the new contract. There have been no surveys, phone polls, emails, or any other means of communication between the WTU and me in which my opinion was asked for. How can the WTU claim to represent me if they don't know my opinion? The teachers who are working for Strong Schools DC are all teachers in DCPS, and therefore their voices are just as important as the voices coming from the unions.

To which I replied:

If "good standing" means that you pay your dues, then your voice isn't being heard because you aren't speaking up.

This holds true for all unions, but it holds doubly true for those of you out there who hate paying dues because you’re anti-union or don’t feel the union represents you, individually. If you feel this way, do something about it, again, from Peter’s comments:

I would also point out that teachers in DC must be represented by the WTU, whether they want to be or not.

Snip

Fundamentally, my problem is that the WTU leadership frequently makes decisions that I disagree with, and I have no other option but to deal with those decisions. If the union operated as an unbiased body that truly reflected the opinions of all of its members, then this would be fine.

Here’s the issue, Peter and perhaps 8 other DCPS teachers feel as if the union is not representing them. If there are more DC teachers out there happy or sad about the way the negotiations are going, they don’t seem to be communicating those feelings to the general public, so I’m assuming (and you know what they say about assumptions) that they are making their concerns and feelings known to the WTU, privately. This includes my forwarding of the exchanges with Peter over to WTU leadership (all of them) currently listed on the staff page. And in an effort to improve communications, if I get a response, I’ll post it here. If I receive no response, then I have to find that Peter’s other comments:

Feeling like I should put more effort into communicating with the union, I went to the website (www.wtulocal6.org). I should mention that, although I have never attended a union meeting, I've also never been asked to attend a union meeting. I have attended the meetings at my school, but these are infrequent and don't tend to discuss much actual union business. Anyway, looking at the website, there is no place to find information about when/where meetings take place. I have never received an email or letter telling me when meetings are.

I’d like to think this is an issue isolated to DC, however, another reader who is also in a teacher’s union in another state said this:

I love your site, especially reading about the DC teachers, Michelle Rhee and DC Voice, and could stay on it all day.

Though I am definitely pro-union, and have been a union member most of my life, I find that my union is unresponsive and undemocratic -- even unethical in certain areas. My main goal is to get the union to institute a list serve or an online bulletin board so that members can communicate with each other. Of course, I have larger goals for unions and our country, in general. But this goal is so basic and so ignored by most people in labor that I want to focus on that. If you have any suggestions and I can get this one little (but huge) thing done, then I will have psychic and other energies freed up to do the bigger stuff.

Is this an issue with AFT or is this a local’s issue? The fact that it’s teachers e-mailing me and leaving comments about this has me thinking that this is isolated to teachers and at this point, the new leadership at AFT has really got its work cut out for it.

To Peter and my other readers, I know it can be frustrating and you can feel like you aren’t being heard, but you are. It might just take more time to move your organizations toward the kind of communications you want to see and have and on that note, let me know how I can help. And WTU, send me a note and I’ll post it. Communication is a two way street and if your site isn’t getting the job done, then drop me a line and we’ll help.

In Solidarity- bendygirl

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“NCLB has outlived whatever usefulness it ever had. Conceived by accountants, drafted by lawyers, and distorted by ideologues, it is too badly broken to be fixed.”

I couldn’t agree more with Randi Weingarten in her remarks delivered in Chicago.

Randi Weingarten, the new president of the American Federation of Teachers, declared war on the No Child Left Behind Act in her speech to delegates today, saying it has become, for many members, “a four-letter word.”

Wow, did you catch that? The New president of the American Federation of Teachers at her conference speech.

Did you notice? No?

Randi Weingarten is, well, SHE’S A WOMAN.

It’s TRUE and she’s not the only one, either!!

The top 3 posts at AFT are now held by women, and I love it!! Take the short mini-bio-paragraphs in the Chicago Tribune:

Lorretta Johnson was reading to her kids and others in the library of a mostly black Baltimore elementary school when she decided to ask for a job helping teachers. That was over 40 years ago.

About the same time, Antonia Cortese wasn't sure if she wanted school work. But she gave it a chance, starting out as an elementary school teacher and social worker in a poor rural district near her upstate New York home.

Over 20 years ago Randi Weingarten quit a cushy Wall Street lawyer's job to do legal work for the New York City teachers union. Wanting to know what it was like in the classroom, she took a part-time job teaching social studies at a largely black and Latino high school in Brooklyn.

These are amazing women. Women who wanted to make a difference and in doing so, moved toward the union, not away. In that move toward being unionists, they worked to make the lives of kids and their families better as well as the lives of teachers and teaching para-professionals (often called teaching assistants).

Not only have these women moved toward their roles in the union, including their own personal leadership role, but they are the first to lead a major union. Again, from the Chicago Tribune:

Their election would mark the first time three women will hold top positions in a union whose membership is more than 70 percent female. Similarly, no other major union in the U.S. has such a female-driven leadership, AFT officials point out.

And somehow, we still aren’t done yet. Again, from the Chicago Tribune:

As for the union's future, all three women talk of signing up more early childhood workers, paraprofessionals and charter school workers. They talk of stepping up the union's political activities so that schools get support from state and local lawmakers.

They also want to expand teachers' roles in their own professional groups.

One issue for Weingarten is helping workers deal with discrimination.

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, for example, she felt a drop-off in women serving in top union positions in the New York City area. Her only explanation was that the tragedy triggered a harkening back to "more traditional roles."

She faced her own fears about discrimination when she announced at a public meeting in New York City last October that she was gay.

"I never hid my sexuality, but I never talked about it," she said.

She had hesitated, she explained, because "the things that most people are afraid of, I was afraid of too."

Much to her pleasure, the response, she said, was overwhelmingly supportive.

So, not only do we have these amazing women leading a huge union, but one of them is also an openly gay woman who makes as one of her goals to ensure that workers no longer face discrimination?! OMG!! This is FREAKING AWESOME!

It’s thrilling to see this sort of enthusiasm and excitement about the work of organizing and ensuring the rights of the membership as well as empowering these same workers to establish links in the communities in which they serve along the lines of services that I recall having at school when I was growing up. From the New York Times (login may be required)

Ms. Weingarten >snip< lays out a “new vision of schools for the 21st century.”

“Can you imagine a federal law that promoted community schools — schools that serve the neediest children by bringing together under one roof all the services and activities they and their families need?” Ms. Weingarten is expected to ask in the speech, a copy of which was provided by the union to The New York Times. “Imagine schools that are open all day and offer after-school and evening recreational activities, child care and preschool, tutoring and homework assistance,” the speech reads. “Schools that include dental, medical and counseling clinics”

>snip<

Ms. Weingarten’s speech says, “Sisters and brothers, this is an idea whose time has come.

“Imagine if schools had the educational resources children need to thrive, like smaller classes and individualized instruction, plentiful, up-to-date materials and technology anchored to that rich curriculum, decent facilities, an early start for toddlers and a nurturing atmosphere,” she says.

>snip<

“We all have to work tenaciously to eliminate the achievement gap and to turn around low-performing schools. But the folks who believe that this can all be done on teachers’ shoulders, which is what No Child tries to do, are doing a huge disservice to America.”

Leadership, mission, and the vision to get it done, I think this pretty much sums up Antonia Cortese, Lorretta Johnson and the new AFT President, Randi Weingarten. I’m so excited to see what these accomplished, activist, unionist women can do for AFT, America and the labor movement. Tall order, huh? But these are women with the kind of shoulders to carry this burden and excel at it!!

Congratulations AFT! Congratulations!!

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