Got this in an e-mail:

Eastern Senior High School

1700 East Capitol St, NE

One Community. One Shared Vision of Success for All Students.

The Chancellor's Office of District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) will host a community meeting on Wednesday, February 4, 2009 from 6:30 pm – 8:00pm to discuss the future of Eastern SHS. This meeting will be the first of a series of discussions about the plans to restructure Eastern's academic programs and to modernize the school building.

All members of the community (past, present, and future fans of Eastern High School) are encouraged to attend. Your input will help shape the overall design of the building and the programs that will be offered when Eastern re-opens to incoming 9th graders in SY 2010-2011.

If you need child care and/or language interpretation services (Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Amharic, French and American Sign Language), please call or email Jennifer Nguyen at (202) 442-5191 (Jennifer.Nguyen@ dc.gov) by January 29, 2009.

So, Rhee has a reputation for trashing adults, so does this mean that she'll be there on Wednesday night? To actually talk to real live adults? I'm betting she'll make a brief appearance, if I were a betting woman.

This weekend, I had the great fortune to be eating at Mr. Henry's after psa105's monthly meeting. It was yummy, as usual. But as we sat there, I started to run through country names with my daughter and our German ex-change student:

Name 3 country's that start with the letter M.

Name 3 country's that start with the letter C.

Name two major African Rivers.

Name 2 mountain ranges in Europe.

okay, you get the picture. At the end of my quizzing, I added, name all 7 continents. My German ex-change student says, there are only 5 and then my kid says

no, there are 7 because Antarctica has land under the ice.

I'm proud, but still, no one has answered my question. That's when I hear the woman next to me say:

Hope you don't mind me interupting, I teach Kindergarten and I teach the kids to remember the 7 using a song that works really well.

She goes on to sing the song and my kid is just beaming. Music, can just make you smile.

Now, not being a shy wilting flower, I decide to ask if she's at DCPS, and as luck would have it, she is. So, I venture further:

What do you think of Rhee?

And she stops herself, trying to come up with the right words.

Teacher: I was filled with great hope when she came on.
Me: Now?
Teacher: I don't know.
Me: It's okay. I don't think much of her. What do you really think?
Teacher: She did have great promise of transforming the schools, making it easier to reach kids, but now, she thinks that teaching is a stop over, a place yuo go for a few years until your career starts. She thinks that the entire school system can be filled with Teach For America folks for 2 to 5 years and she's aiming at teachers like me. She wants to get rid of us because we made teaching our careers. She doesn't think you should or can and doesn't understand that anyone would want to.

When I started out, it took me 2 years before I had good classroom management. It took practice and consistancy and it didn't just happen over night.

I have enough time in to retire, so we'll be fine, but the kids...

Me: She's very short sighted about schools.

Teacher: Yes, it's very short sighted.

This is likely her last year teaching after nearly 30 years. And she's only even considering it because of how badly Rhee is managing the schools. And sitting there, thinking about how she just taught a German exchange student about the 7 continents and made my kid smile, it made me worry about what we will lose as a city and what all of our kids will lose if Adrian Fenty wins re-election.

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Washington CityPaper's Loose Lips did a recent column on Ward 8 Council member Marion Barry's views of Michelle Rhee.

Look at it this way: On her side, Rhee has the mayor, the president of the United States, Capitol Hill, the Washington Post editorial board, high-minded news and policy magazines, the Federal City Council crowd, most liberal education pundits, most conservative education pundits, and middle-class parents. On the other side, you have teachers unions, some local education activists, and a cadre of parents and residents alienated by her “consensus is overrated” style. The only organ they have that can check Rhee is the D.C. Council.

Mike (Loose Lips) nailed the issue with Rhee. So many of the "in" crowd out there cheers her, roots for her, fawns all over what they smell in the air as a win. A win.

The Fawning reminds me of how the talk with Charter Schools and School Vouchers was all about how these schools would solve the crisis in education. Hmm, how's that worked for us so far? Nearly 20 years in and there's little or no difference.

A state-funded study of Indiana’s charter schools has found that “no practical difference” exists between the alternative schools and traditional public schools.

And it's not like we haven't already wasted money on these issues which even the Post noted way back in 2005

In all, Jos-Arz received about $15 million in city funds, of which $2.3 million was used for renovation expenses, former officials from the school say. Although there is sharp debate over who is to blame, everyone involved agrees that the city's investment essentially was wasted

And it's not like DC and Indiana are the only places with these issues. Just last year, former Attorney General of Ohio, Marc Dann filed his 4th suit against a charter school.

Attorney General Marc Dann today filed suit against Harmony Community School in Cincinnati, citing the charter school for "abject academic failure, gross financial mismanagement, ethical lapses, and what amounts to consumer fraud."

I've done it all. Private, public and charter. My daughter has attended urban and suburban school districts in three different states. I get it. And it's not about teachers, it's about students and their parents and all the issues that are involved in all of that. And from most of what Barry says in the CityPaper, it's clear he gets it, I'm not so sure about everyone else.

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I was reading an op-ed in the Detroit News (yeah, I know, a Right-Wing piece of garbage, but I read lots of things that I'd use to wipe shit off my shoes, really, I do). The Op-Ed is by Rev. Edgar Vann, pastor of Second Ebenezer Church.

Washington, D.C. has a transformational leader making great strides in their school system. Michelle Rhee is the appointee of Mayor Adrian Fenty. Her efforts to bring true reform to that school system have drawn acclaim from a wide range of supporters with a minority of usual suspects still stuck in the old paradigm. She has closed underperforming schools, fired more than 30 underperforming principals and given notice to teachers that there will be no lowering of academic standards -- putting the interests of the children first and making radical changes in the classroom.

Eighteen of nineteen high schools in Detroit are on the failure list; the graduation rates are absolutely abysmal, and we change superintendents and CEOs like changing socks. Well, let's ask ourselves some tough questions. Does the school district's leader have to be an educator? Should we take another look at labor issues that may be distractions to the reform process?

The Pastor writes a Faith and Policy column but for some reason, decided to go off the deep end with his fawning for Rhee. This appears to be a common affliction among many lately.

Take the Time Piece of crap last month...

In 11th grade, Allante Rhodes spent 50 minutes a day in a Microsoft Word class at Anacostia Senior High School in Washington. He was determined to go to college, and he figured that knowing Word was a prerequisite. But on a good day, only six of the school's 14 computers worked. He never knew which ones until he sat down and searched for a flicker of life on the screen. "It was like Russian roulette," says Rhodes, a tall young man with an older man's steady gaze. If he picked the wrong computer, the teacher would give him a handout. He would spend the rest of the period learning to use Microsoft Word with a pencil and paper.

The article goes on to talk about how Rhee formed a connection to the student and held a meeting at Anacostia High School. Here's the funny thing...his issue was computers and yet, there's no mention of new usable computers, just bad teachers. Because somehow, these two things are related.

In the year and a half she's been on the job, Rhee has made more changes than most school leaders--even reform-minded ones--make in five years. She has shut 21 schools--15% of the city's total--and fired more than 100 workers from the district's famously bloated 900-person central bureaucracy. She has dismissed 270 teachers. And last spring she removed 36 principals, including the head of the elementary school her two daughters attend in an affluent northwest-D.C. neighborhood.

Yep, she did release all of these folks, and then didn't replace them. So, classes started with no teachers and had random substitutes 5 to 7 weeks into the school year.

Right now, schools assess teachers before they teach--filtering for candidates who are certified, who have a master's degree, who have other pieces of paper that do not predict good teaching. And we pay them the same regardless of their effectiveness.

By comparison, if we wanted to have truly great teachers in our schools, we would assess them after their second year of teaching, when we could identify very strong and very weak performers, according to years of research. Great teachers are in total control. They have clear expectations and rules, and they are consistent with rewards and punishments. Most of all, they are in a hurry. They never feel that there is enough time in the day. They quiz kids on their multiplication tables while they walk to lunch. And they don't give up on their worst students, even when any normal person would.

I read the article, puked a little in my mouth, then re-read it, started this post and then again, puked in my mouth. I've started and stopped and started and stopped and then started again, all because I have this amazing kid who wants to be a teacher. And the manner in which a Rhee and a Fenty will treat her teaching abilities and connection with students gives me great pause and has made me actually disuade her from teaching, despite my brother and sister-in-law being teachers.

I'm afraid of administrators who focus on one aspect of schools without regard for any other. In DCPS, my daughter had a small class size at Green Elementary. 17 students. On any given day, there'd be 5 to 13 but I never recall all the students ever showing up. Most of the students who did come to class had no supplies. No pencils, no notebooks and often, she was not allowed to bring books home with her at the end of the day. The teacher often came in to school early to run packets of materials for the kids who did show up. The books my daughter did use were tattered.

And I got to contrast the teaching in DC with that of the teaching at Sheridan Hills in Richfield Minnesota. And the teaching was comparable, in fact, her three teachers at Green were better than her 1st grade teacher at Sheridan. But the really big difference is that at Sheridan, we had more than enough home room parents. When we had back to school night, all the parents showed up except my ex-husband who lived in another state. My daughter was the ONLY kid in class with divorced parents and the social worker at the school found that she had a group of single moms whose kids had the same kind of self esteem issues so, she got all of us together and we formed our own support group to help the kids out.

At Sheridan, parents volunteered for evening events, clubs and sports. We had a carnival, the kids made books in 1st grade, my daughter could tell time and was reading and she was behind all her other classmates, in 1st grade, and then we moved to DC. In 2nd grade she was way ahead of everyone and went to class every day. For back to school night, I think there might have been 20 parents in the cafeteria including me and my neighbor, Carol. For my duaghter's class, it was me and a Dad and he was really worried about how far behind his kid was at the time and his behavior problems. He was worried about behavior problems at school and home.

Rhee's approach to the problem of DC public is a one trick pony and the writer of the Time piece isn't much better. The answer to the problems within the schools isn't teachers or principals or Rhee, it's about responsibility and moving forward together, something that Rhee just doesn't seem to understand and clearly something she needs to work because teachers aren't in this alone. We're all in this together.

Perhaps a few words from President Obama can bring this into focus:

Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.

This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions - that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

We can make DCPS better, stronger, faster, but Rhee isn't the answer. It will take all of us and that is something that's been lacking the entire time my daughter attended DCPS. I'm hopeful that my fellow citizens will now rise to this challenge. But I'm also ready for Rhee and fenty to stop blaming workers for the ills of all society. We have to work together to pick ourselves up and help to dust ourselves off. Together, is really the only way.

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No, seriously.

Time? Really? A magazine cover for a woman who really just wants to fire "under performing teachers," oh, please. It's not at all about power and is certainly not about the kids. I've posted before what it's like in DCPS. My kid attended DCPS through Junior High School. Jefferson Junior High School and going there made my bright, articulate, fun and hard working child suicidal. This isn't even an exaggeration. She went to a psychologist; she withdrew; her grades suffered and she was tormented by her classmates.

Teachers can only do so much. Parents who raise kids that like to mentally torture other kids, or who raise kids that are in and out of juvenile hall or in and out of the system, parents who don't parent, bring kids into the world who behave in ways that I can't even begin or care to explain on this blog at this moment. Suffice it to say that in the media's Rheegasma, the media continues to lose site of what's really at stake, kids.

DC has lots and lots of problems.

Extreme poverty in pockets all over the city is just a start of it. Violence, joblessness, drugs, you name it, we've got it here and kids are a microcosm of all of these issues and we don't seem able to deal with any of these issues in a meaningful way, at least, not for the kids.

So, in a comment on another thread, a DCPS (self proclaimed math teacher of 2 years in DCPS) and he writes this about his recent evaluation:

Essentially, the principal has NO idea whether or not good teaching is going on in a classroom based on her observation. In the two years I have worked in my school, my principal has been in my room exactly twice -- both times to observe me in a situation that was totally inorganic. But I digress...

I went in to discuss the observation with my principal, and she basically said she thought everything was perfect. I received "Exceeds Expectations" ratings in every category, and she said that she had no suggestions for improvement. I can't disagree with her rating -- my lesson was very good and my kids were extremely well behaved. But as a teacher, I know I am not outstanding. I'm solidly good, but definitely not great. I'm relatively new at this, and there are lots of days where I really struggle. I'm happy to have the excellent ratings, but this type of observation and discussion doesn't help student achievement and it doesn't help improve teacher quality.

What I find interesting about what he says is that he hasn't been around very long. Evaluations like this are Arbitrary. It's something that Rhee supports, ARBITRARY evaluations.

What the union has been fighting for is the ability of teachers to be fairly evaluated. He's right, what he went through was a bit of a dog and pony show, combining that with say testing results and parent statements should help craft a better overall view of the teacher's performance. But, the arbitrary nature of testing (what tests? what results?) to the lack of discussion about holding parents accountable and actually failing poorly performing students...there's more to this discussion, but Rhee wants to focus only on Principals and Teachers.

From EdWize:

There is an old, tired trope of the education deformer crowd that fawns over Michelle Rhee like star struck 1960s teeny-boppers swooning at the feet of Paul McCartney: they care about the children, while everybody else [read: teachers and their unions] only care about the adults connected to education. Here is the latest rendition at The Quick and The Ed.

The Rhees and Kleins of the world cared so much about the children that they couldn’t wait to get out of the classroom, and as a consequence learned not a thing about the teaching craft.

Luke Laurie, Santa Barbara County Teacher of the Year in California and a science teacher, had a particularly witty response to this thinking on the listserv of the Teachers’ Network Leadership Institute:

To say that tenure only benefits adults and has no benefit for kids, is like saying that a stable home provides no benefit for children. Why don’t we just go into homes and take out those unqualified parents every few years and replace them with young, smart and motivated “Parents for America” who will raise these kids right?

My daughter attended Jefferson Jr. High and it was awful. Kids there were violent, didn't try, were cruel and those that did try or learned were taunted by a few really bad apples. If the parents can't control these kids and don't get them to be students (or their grandparents, guardians or foster parents), then how are teachers able to do so?

Rhee isn't the answer. She's a diversion and so are her policies from the real issue about students...how do we do better? As communities, parents and schools. Until it all comes together, blaming teachers and schools is really just intended to distract all of us from what's really happening. And what's really happening is worse than most of us even care to talk about and the reason my kid is now at a private school. Without Emerson Prep, I'm not sure where my kid would be now, but I'm certain, it wouldn't be DCPS, and that has nothing to do with the teachers. She never had a bad one, ever.

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And she's found her prey, DC Public School teachers that she thinks are "ineffective"

Among the measures Rhee plans to impose are a new teacher evaluation system based primarily on student test scores and other achievement benchmarks. She also promised more aggressive implementation of legal provisions already in place, including the ability to eliminate teacher jobs -- because of declining enrollment or school closures -- using seniority as only one of several factors taken into consideration.

Rhee said she intended to more intensively use the so-called "90-day plan" that allows administrators to give teachers three months' notice to improve or face dismissal.

The Post seems to think, as does Rhee, that poor performance means bad teaching. I could remind you all about my daughter's experiences in DCPS, or how there's a teacher shortage in the District with hundreds of jobs STILL unfilled after 5 weeks , or that Rhee continues to provide no information about WHAT will be used to measure performance, or that this isn't just completely arbitrary, but, that's just me. I'm just one voice against the Anti-union steam roller that is Fenty-Rhee.

The issue here for teachers and students isn't teacher performance, it's student performance. And until Fenty gets his act together and makes sure that all the other services that parents need are there, we're going to be empowering Rhee to hunt teachers at our kids expense.

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So, Mr. Accountability has hatcheted Child and Family Services, Housing Inspectors and oh,yeah, DC Public Schools. Take this recent WJLA report:

McKinley's not alone. ABC 7/NewsChannel 8 visited Thurgood Marshall Elementary School last week and found classes with only substitute teachers. One classroom with a permanent teacher had 46 students.

Apparently, I qualify to be a substitute teacher in DC, that isn't a good thing. I don't have the technical knowledge (no matter how good at math I am, and I am) of what it takes to be a teacher. It's not just the subject, it's how you teach. Apparently, Mr. Accountability and his side kick, Chancellor Rhee, see nothing wrong with understaffing and putting in non-union substitutes to fill those gaps, gaps they created this summer when they fired 270 teachers for not having their certification. How many substitutes are certified?

This just reminds me of a lock out. Perhaps families at McKinley Tech should weigh in on this:

After millions of dollars in renovations, some parents claim McKinley Tech High School still suffers a critical shortage of teachers.

"We asked what's going on, why there's no teachers," said Monica Lowe. "They made false promises."

Her son is a junior at McKinley. After weeks of school, his Algebra II/Trigonometry class is on its second substitute teacher, she says.

"Parent-teacher conference is next Friday, October the third, Mr. Ford, and we have yet to receive a teacher," Lowe told ABC 7/NewsChannel 8 reporter Sam Ford Friday.

No Algebra II teacher? What kind of school system are you running here? Oh wait, Mr Anti-union Michael Brown can probably lend a hand with destroying the schools and getting rid of the dastardly union in support of substitutes, he's just about suggested such in his campaign lit. I suppose he's just another little Adrian. Kind of sad, really.

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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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I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that Rhee and Fenty are anti-union…

oday, she and Mayor Adrian M. Fenty appeared with NYC Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, former Colorado Gov. Roy Romer and the Rev. Al Sharpton for panel discussions on education reform. The panel discussions were heavy on "special interest" bashing (i.e. the teachers' union, special education lawyers and so on), and the panelists mostly hailed each other for being tough, reform-minded mold breakers.

But Rhee woke up the room when she railed on the "media" for wrecking her collective bargaining agreement with the Washington Teachers' Union. She has offered the union a new merit pay contract that would allow teachers to opt into a plan that could pay them a lot more money if they relinquish their seniority rights. The contract has been extraordinarily controversial with some teachers supporting it, but others angrily denouncing the plan.

Panel moderator Jonathan Alter, a Newsweek columnist, asked Rhee where the negotiations stood.

"We have not rolled out a tenative agreement yet. We were very close to doing so and then the media got in our way a little bit. That caused us some problems," Rhee responded.

Alter looked surprised. "What do you mean by that?" he followed up.

"Well, I do think it's a signficant problem for us," Rhee said firmly. "The media reported incorrect information about the contract and what that did was just raise all these alarm bells among the rank and file who started to put a tremendous amount of pressure on the teachers' union president; when he was ready to roll it out, he took a step back. So it's been a hard road over the last few weeks."

I can’t seem to find any unions represented at this forum, despite the work that the President of the AFT had done to reform NY schools. Wonder if Randi Weingarten or any of the teachers’ unions were invited, at all. I’m thinking, they weren’t. I’d expect to see an anti-union event like this at the Republican convention, but certainly not at a DNC convention, and not attended by so many Democrats.

So, anyone there; can you tell me, were there any unions invited; did any show up for the panel; anyone in the audience? I’m dying to know.

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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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Negotiating as a group isn’t easy. As individuals we often can want things that are in our own bet interest but not necessarily in the interest of the entire union. Case in point are the current negotiations underway with the Washington Teacher’s Union (an AFT member union) and Michelle Rhee.

Rhee is offering some interesting proposals. Currently, teachers are “tenured” after 2 years of service. Tenure means specific grievance rights, priority in new assignments (transferring or staying in specific schools), new assignments or sometimes after school programs (this depends on the school district and I’m not positive this is part of DC’s tenuring), etc..: Basically, what we’re talking about here is that you can’t just be fired if you don’t get along with the principal or if the kids in your class have behavior issues, don’t show up or fail (and there are combinations of these factors). So, here’s what is being reported in the Post about Rhee’s offer:

Under the "red" option offered by Rhee, teachers could retain tenure rights in exchange for a 28 percent raise over five years.

Under the "green" option, the annual salary and bonuses for a teacher with five years of experience could go from $46,500 to as much as $101,000 by 2010. Pay for a teacher with 10 years of service could jump from $56,200 to as much as $122,500.

Okay, that doesn’t really seem all that bad. It’s an interesting approach, however the Post goes on to note this:

But in exchange for a pay schedule that would make D.C. teachers among the best-paid public school instructors in the country, they would have to spend a year on probation, exposing them to the possibility of being fired.

Probation. What she’s looking to do here is removed teachers who are not performing but what does that mean?

- Does it mean that the kids aren’t coming to class?
- That they’re in the school but not in class?
- Does this mean that kids are not meeting their “yearly progress” for No Child Left Behind?
- Does it mean that the teacher who has 30 kids who have good study habits is competing with teachers who have 18 kids with terrible habits? How will kids be assigned to these classes?
-Will they be putting high performing kids in one class while sticking the “under performing” teacher with the under performing students?
-Will classes be co-mingled with excellent students and poor students?

I suppose I have a lot of questions, huh?

I think this really is the crux of the problem, there is no formula.

As a teacher, you don’t have the ability to cherry pick your students. After years of service, in other districts, kids are often tracked to have high performing kids singled out and teachers with more tenure are able to request those classes. If you do not get on with the principal at your school, you may also be saddled with students who come from difficult backgrounds where education is not cared about and where school is treated like a kids dumping ground.

I’m talking from experience here. Not as a teacher but as a parent of a child that grew up in DC public, Cleveland public and Richfield public schools.

I’ve had the very great experience of being a part of my kid's education. A partner with the teachers and administrators in the Cleveland and Minnesota schools, but in DCPS, it felt as if the teachers didn’t get the support they needed, the administrators didn’t get the resources they needed and where children roamed the halls all day, disrespecting the teachers, staff and administrators not to mention all the parents that happened by the school.

Cleveland is an urban district that happened to be in State receivership the year my daughter attended. There were 35 kindergarteners in my daughter’s class. When she went to Green Elementary, she was 1 of 18 students in her 2nd grade class. And yet, her kindergarten class had parent volunteers and an assistant teacher. For a winter program during the day, we filled the auditorium despite the broken seats. At Green in DC, for open house and conference days, I was usually 1 of 2 parents to show up despite night time events as well as day time.

In Minnesota, every parent showed up to the open house and we were reminded that there were a lot of volunteers signed up to be room parents and that maybe we should think of another way to participate in school, they simply had too many to accommodate all of us.

At Green, my daughter was spit on, threatened, kicked, pushed, pulled, hair pulled and all around bullied. She’d tell the teachers and playground monitors, but there were so many of these instances that her best solution was to simply stay near the teachers. She began volunteering for lunch duty so that she wouldn’t have to go outside.

I was forced to pull my child from DCPS and send her over to a charter school when her principal was beaten by 2 fourth graders. They broke an arm and at least one rib of this man in his 50’s. Even when she went back to DCPS for 8th grade (our charter school had no science education and the DCPS school did), I had to fight tooth and nail to get her into Algebra and advanced English courses. At Jefferson, they told me that they didn’t divide kids based on their abilities, however, she was in a class of kids who taunted her, where several had criminal records and would walk out on class in the middle of a lecture. Her history teacher and science teacher strongly suggested that I get her into a different class grouping because she needed to be with better students who were advanced. I was able to only get one of the classes changed, English, and I made arrangements with the teachers to allow her to come in for lunch time tutoring to keep her on grade level.

All of the issues that I’ve experienced at DCPS haven’t been issues related to teaching. Every one of the teachers my daughter had were good, dedicated people. What I ran into were parents who treated the school system like a babysitter, playground or dumping ground. Parents who didn’t come to the school except to register the kids. Until Rhee can come up with a plan to re-invest parents in their kids, I’m not sure how you’re going to be able to make a difference in the lives of these kids. As if stands now, tenure seems like the only thing available to make it worth being a teacher at DCPS and giving it up, just doesn’t seem to be worth the overall cost of losing it.

"The tenure issue is what provides due process, and that's what makes it so important to our members," Parker said.

On this point, I totally agree with Parker.

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I opened my e-mail to find this little ditty from DCLabor:

LABOR IN THE NEWS: Teacher Lobbying by Outside Group Raises Ire of DC Teachers: DC teachers and their union, the Washington Teachers Union (WTU) Local 6, are accusing a newly-created community group of inappropriately interfering in the ongoing teacher contract negotiations, reported Bill Turque in Wednesday’s Washington Post. The group, which has members with past ties to School Chancellor Michelle Rhee, has hired teachers to lobby co-workers to support the Chancellor’s controversial pay-for-performance plan that would end tenure rights for workers who take it. "We think it's inappropriate to interfere with the union's communications with its membership about a future contract," Local 6 President George Parker told the Post. Teachers have also voiced concern that Chancellor Rhee’s ties to the group may indicate she had a role in orchestrating the lobbying campaign.

From the Strong Schools website:

Strong Schools DC is an independent, informal group of individuals who came together last spring to support strong public schools and great teachers in the District. Through community meetings, literature distribution, and outreach to teachers, we have learned what teachers are looking for in a new teaching contract, and we have provided a solid, independent information source for teachers. Our mission is to support the growing movement to make Washington, DC the best place to teach in the country.

We are now eagerly awaiting the completion of negotiations for a new contract. When an agreement is reached, we will be prepared to mobilize support for the contract and to continue our role as a pro-teacher community advocate and source of independent information.

Gee, the way this site is written, it does sort of sound as if they intend to lobby teachers to get them on board instead of involving them in a crocess or collaborating in general. Teachers have a voice in negotiations with the Mayor and Rhee, they have their union. And one of the best things the union can do for them is to protect tenure, not for the scapegoat, "the poorly performing teacher" but for the next generation of teachers to come. But there's more than just tenure involved, there's safety, there's coordination, there's community, all subjects that DCVoice has been advocating for since 1998.

Growing up in rural Ohio, I know what it's like to have community involved in the school. All events centered around the school. From parties to girl and boy scouts to language classes, PTA meetings and plays, just to name a few. Together, we reinforced the idea that we really were all in it together. To organize a lobbying effort during district and teacher's negotiations sens a strong message to me, a DC parent, it tells me that you don't care about the teachers and aren't looking to work with the community. It says that you're willing to spend money to sway opinion, like the oil lobby or the insurance lobby. Is that the message you really want to send Rhee? If that what the entire message is Fenty?

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So, there’s talk in the news about the recent moves in DC concerning DC Public education and the firing of District employees, teachers, and now principals. In the past, Rhee, the school’s chancellor, had offered buyouts to teachers, it does not appear that principals will receive the same treatment because they are on year-to-year contracts. Which to me sounds “at-will,” yuk.

As I read about the firings of principals, something caught my eye in the Post

Recruiting and retaining high-quality principals have been longtime challenges in the school system. In 2005, then-Superintendent Clifford B. Janey said 25 to 40 percent of the system's 140 principals "are not the caliber they need to be."

My child is a product of DC public and I wasn’t going to let her continue down that path. She’s now on scholarship at a private school in the district and she LOVES it. Going to a DC Public school made her feel bad about herself, left her suicidal, had her in therapy, and saw this bright usually happy child avoiding homework and reading in class instead of learning. She went to an elementary school where her principal was beaten by two fourth graders so badly that he was hospitalized with broken ribs and a broken arm. Principals who take on the worst schools, like Anacostia High School, PR Harris and Green Elementary are then asked to turn around a school with little to no parent interaction, where kids are virtually warehoused, waiting to enter the workforce with no ability to do pretty much anything.

My kid was lucky. I had the determination to be involved in the PTOs and PTAs, the open houses conferences and it didn’t help. I couldn’t get her out of the hell she was in, so with no other choice, she went to a charter school. I became even more involved in the school, volunteering, PTO work, you name it, I did it. And even then, it still wasn’t enough. There were 28 to 30 kids in each classroom and my kid was getting almost no additional assistance with math or science which had been her favorite subjects, so on she moved to another charter school. This one worked better. It had smaller class sizes but no science program. For 8th grade, she went back to DCPS and there she was placed with the worst kids. Kids with criminal records, an inability to read, poor math skills and worse, with behavior issues so severe that she was constantly bullied, threatened and pushed around until she finally just completely closed off into the world of books where everything could be perfect.

So, when her high school accepted her and offered a scholarship, we jumped at it. The scholarship was contingent on her ability to perform after the 1st semester. Coming from DCPS and the charter school system, she was behind in English and only at grade level for Math, so she needed to be able to play catch up and if it didn’t work, there was always Woodrow Wilson High School.

But for the thousands of kids in DCPS, I can’t help but wonder what is achieved through the changes that Fenty and Rhee are now undertaking with DCPS. I just don’t think any of it will work. It won’t work because it seems more political than centered in making learning environments for kids. Take how the Principals not being renewed found out:

A form letter over Rhee's signature went out to the principals identified for firing yesterday afternoon. It was to be followed by a series of one-on-one meetings between the principals and instructional superintendents, their immediate supervisors, said Rhee's spokeswoman, Mafara Hobson.

If you treat your employees like yesterday’s news, exactly why would we think that you’d be out there for the kids?

DCPS has a lot of issues. From violence to behavior, to simply teaching and learning, but all of this can be turned around, I just don’t think it’s going to happen with Fenty and Rhee. I think it takes making the schools as important a part of the community with events and gatherings. If school isn’t community, then you lose out on so much community building that should be taking place. The real issue isn’t with failing schools, it’s with failing communities. So, when are we going to start helping each other?

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