Break’s Over

If you’ve been reading this blog (and I’m simultaneously grateful and sorry if you have), you may have noticed that the titles of these posts don’t always fit perfectly with the content of them. That’s because they’re titles of episodes of The West Wing and I’m a super-huge nerd. (I may have put those items in the wrong order.) Tonight, for the first time, I was unable to find a halfway appropriate title. Looking back at two-and-a-half months of blog silence, though, I was reminded of a line of dialogue that fit just right.

I’m supposed to be grateful. For the first time since 2008, I received a meaningful raise this year. There are thousands of WCPSS employees who, like me, will experience varying degrees of relief as they rework their household spending to reflect changes enacted by this year’s state budget. And we’ve been reminded by certain policy makers (ahem, Skip Stam) and pundits that we should be grateful.

Let me be clear: I am grateful. I’m grateful to the thousands of public school workers and concerned citizens who organized during the 2013-2014 school year. It was their actions that forced this General Assembly to make an effort to appear to be doing something—anything—about school funding. I’m grateful to the 18,000 WCPSS employees—teachers and bus drivers, administrators and custodians, instructional assistants, clerical staff, counselors, cafeteria workers, central office personnel—who came to work today ready to do their best work for the students of Wake County. And I’m grateful to this school board and leadership team for the exhausting work they’ve done to balance thousands of competing interests and priorities against shrinking resources and a growing student population.

I am glad to have extra money in my paycheck—and I’m glad for the thousands of other WCPSS employees who will share that experience. But I’m too angry to be grateful.

I’m angry because teachers with decades of experience have seen that service rewarded with pay raises of 0.3%. I’m angry because classified employees—like custodians and secretaries—who work in public schools only got ½ of the raise that their counterparts in other parts of state government received. I’m angry because legislators bemoan the difficult task of finding money for public schools while simultaneously budgeting money for private school vouchers and creating enormous budget deficits through hundreds of millions of dollars in tax cuts for the wealthiest North Carolinians.

This year’s state budget pays for the average 7% teacher raise with cuts to instructional assistants and Medicaid. And, maybe worst of all, it uncouples school funding from student enrollment growth. That last part, it seems to me, is the clearest sign yet that the General Assembly’s agenda isn’t about building stronger public schools: it’s about eliminating them altogether.

But there’s hope for our schools. There’s hope in the thousands of new hires who began work with the Wake County Public School System this year. There’s hope in the sacrifices made daily by public school workers and parents and community leaders who spend their extra time and money on other people’s children. There’s hope in the public school organizing done across Wake County and the entire state last year. And there’s hope on November 4.

Elections matter—even boring midterm ones. On November 4 we can continue to push back against the neoliberal agenda that is crushing NC’s public schools. If you’re a public school worker, parent, supporter or student who will be of legal voting age on or by Election Day, get registered. Get involved. And get out to vote.

We won’t win overnight. But together we can’t lose.

Access

Yesterday, about a dozen public school workers, many of whom I am fortunate to count among my friends, held a teach-in on the second floor of the NC General Assembly. Their intention was to stay there until Phil Berger, President Pro Tempore of the NC Senate, sat down with them. And that’s exactly what they did.

Among those public school workers was Todd Warren, an elementary school Spanish teacher in Guilford County. Before he left for school yesterday morning, he wrote about the decision he made to sit-in at Sen. Berger’s office. With his permission, I’m re-blogging his post here.

WHY I AM SITTING-IN AT NC SEN. PHIL BERGER’S OFFICE

It’s early Monday morning. Very soon I will be leaving the house to teach elementary Spanish like I do every school day. My after-school routine will vary a bit today as I head over to Raleigh to participate in a civil disobedience sit-in at NC Senator Phil Berger’s office with fellow educators, parents, fast-food workers, university students, and other community members in an effort to sound an increasingly desperate alarm for public education. This is not a decision I make lightly. As both a teacher and a parent there are several reasons why I believe public education, as a resource that belongs to all of us, needs immediate attention.

Public education is not failing, it is being systematically dismantled. Most pressing is the education budget recently passed by the NC Senate and now being heard in the House. At its core, the proposed education budget makes basic day-to-day school functioning considerably more difficult. Teacher assistants, school nurses, bus drivers, textbooks, and supplies are  all looking at severe cuts. Again. We say that we want quality education for all children, but continued cuts like these are a direct attack on our ability as educators to do our job properly.

We are being lied to. Folks who work in school buildings are a good lot. Doing more with less is not just a cliche, it’s a way of life for us. Every year we pull together and teach more students, use less materials, hire fewer teachers, and work with growing class sizes; all with increased accountability and testing. This is not sustainable, nor is it necessary. We are constantly told that there is no money in the budget. Not true.The money and the revenue is there. Corporations and the very well-to-do, while making record profits, are being taxed at record lows. Our elected officials are very literally creating more opportunities for the super rich and corporations than they are for children. Time to raise revenue.

We will not be bought. The recent Senate budget addresses a sticky issue for NC politicians: teacher pay. Going into November, there is no viable way that anyone trying to get elected can ignore NC’s abysmal national ranking of 46th in teacher pay. While teachers most certainly welcome a very auspicious 11% election-year raise, the breathtakingly mean-spirited proposal of where the raises would come from is wholly unacceptable. Raising NC teacher pay while cutting another 7,400 teacher assistants is unconscionable. Forcing teachers to choose between a raise and career status is unfair and a breach of contract. Teacher raises, yes; raises for ALL school workers. But know this: we won’t tolerate raises for teachers if they are paid for with education cuts. There is nothing left to cut.

Testing is not learning. As we witness an unprecedented draining of resources from public education through decreasing revenues, regressive taxation, private school vouchers and other privatization schemes, we are subjecting children to an ever increasing battery of tests. I intentionally use the word battery because relentlessly testing children with no regard to research about multiple intelligences and differentiated learning is child abuse. As education professionals we know more than ever about the varied ways students learn. It is a cruel irony that at time when we know better than ever how students learn we are consistently provided less resources to actually meet student needs.

Our problem is not “bad teachers”. A myth being perpetuated by Senator Berger and others is that in order to improve education we need more ways to get rid of bad teachers. By his logic, education will improve as soon as it is easier to fire teachers. From this stems his obsessive focus on ending career status, our due process rights. Apart from the obvious disrespect to us as professionals and the fact that there are already no less than 15 different reasons for which a teacher can be fired, anyone paying attention to the growing teacher exodus in NC should be asking a wholly different question: What are we doing to keep good teachers?

Poverty in NC. As educators, a substantial part of our professional lives revolves around student data and research. Increasing lexile levels, re-teaching standards, reflecting on our teaching to incorporate best practices; the list goes on. Here’s are some basic statistics we don’t talk about often enough: 1 in 4 children in NC lives in poverty; 1 in 2 is from a low-income household. We know without a doubt that reducing poverty increases academic achievement. I am proud to sit-in with fast-food workers and support the fight for a real living wage. If we  want real opportunity for our students, we must stand with their parents as they demand fair pay.

I am a parent. As a father with two children in public school, I know very well what it means to want not just the best for my children academically, but to want the best for them period. By natural extension, what I want for my own children, I want for my students. In this economic and political environment, telling children they can grow up to do whatever they want rings hollow. We are witnessing a cementing in place of class division by lack of access to opportunity. As educators we cannot stand idly by, under the guise of professionalism, and watch as our resources are stripped away from us and our students. Not standing up to these attacks on public education silently condones structural inequalities disproportionately affecting the poor and students of color for whom prison is a very real and menacing alternative.

I’m sitting-in today to say that we, as educators, parents and students, do not accept being asked to do more with less any longer. I’m sitting-in today because we, the people of NC, are better than this.

 

Tomorrow

Last week, Governor McCrory announced a plan to raise pay for all NC teachers by 2% as part of a long-term plan to overhaul teacher pay. Pending approval from the General Assembly, the scheme would be piloted by eight school districts, which would work to implement the “performance pay” and “career pathways” portions of the proposal.

On balance, it’s a pretty innocuous proposal and almost exactly what you would expect if you’ve been paying attention to this debate over the course of the school year. (I was a little surprised that the announcement came before without apparent legislative support and I couldn’t help but giggle/gag at the new, voluntary endowment fund which seems to be a part of the plan’s funding scheme.) But there’s a really big problem.

Last summer, the NC General Assembly, with Gov. McCrory’s approval, passed a budget that permanently under-funds NC’s state government. So, if you want to give raises to NC’s state employees–including teachers and bus drivers and teacher assistants–or reduce class sizes or fund new technical education programs, you’ve got to decide which other government programs will be cut first.

Now, some would argue that there are plenty of government programs that ought to be cut. And I might even be able to agree with that. (As long as we can start with corporate welfare.) But I’m pretty sure I know which government programs will be targeted for cuts by this General Assembly–mental health, Medicaid, and food stamps come immediately to mind–and they are programs that are essential to the work that public school workers do.

This is the choice that the leaders of the General Assembly and Gov. McCrory have offered us. But it’s a false choice, driven by ideology, self-interest, and narrow-minded politics. And we don’t have to settle for it.

So tomorrow (that’s 14 May 2014), folks from all over NC will descend on the Legislative Building to remind the leaders of our state’s government that they are meant to serve all of NC’s people. NCAE has a full day of events planned. But if you can’t make it for the whole day, then join us at 4:00p at the NCAE Center (700 S. Salisbury St, Raleigh, 27601) for a rally and march for our schools and our future. I hope to see you tomorrow.

 

Evidence of Things Not Seen

Justice Robin Hudson

This is going to be a short, nerdy post. But it’s also REALLY important and, since you were already gonna vote on Tuesday, it calls for almost no extra effort. Because those things are true, I’m going to ask something of you that I don’t think I’ve ever actually asked before: PLEASE. SHARE. THIS. POST. As widely as you can and as soon as possible. We’ve only got until Tuesday morning to make it count. Thanks. 

Robin Hudson is an Associate Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. On Tuesday, because of the vagaries of the NC election laws, she’ll appear on the ballot alongside two other candidates, at least one of whom seems to be a well-qualified and principled jurist. (The two candidates who receive the most votes will advance to November’s General Election.)

Now, it happens that Robin Hudson is a registered Democrat and her opponents are both Republicans. That shouldn’t actually matter in a non-partisan election like this one. But the Greensboro News & Record explains why it does:

An independent political organization called Justice for All North Carolina just spent more than $500,000 on TV ads saying [Hudson goes] easy on child molesters.

That’s dishonest, twisting a complex issue into a nasty sound bite. In 2010, the Supreme Court considered whether a new law requiring satellite-based monitoring could be applied retroactively to sex offenders sentenced before the law was enacted. It touched on a constitutional principle barring ex post facto punishments.

The court ruled 4-3 in favor of retroactive application, deciding that monitoring was not punitive. Hudson wrote the dissenting opinion, and sound arguments were made on both sides. Oklahoma’s Supreme Court went the other way in a similar case last year.

Also troubling is the source of the money for these TV ads. Justice for All North Carolina last week reported receiving $650,000 from the Republican State Leadership Committee in Washington. Its largest funders include Koch Industries’ political organization, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Reynolds American and Blue Cross Blue Shield, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

You read that right: some of the same people (their name rhymes with “oak”) who have funded the historic assault on North Carolina’s public schools are spending big money to ensure business-friendly verdicts from NC’s highest court, and are using inflammatory and misleading TV ads to do it. (It’s worth noting that all of this comes in the wake of campaign finance reforms, passed in 2013, that abolished public financing of judicial campaigns and threw open the doors to private financing of this very type.)

Long story short: if you’ve ever been outraged by the neoliberal agenda pushed by the NC General Assembly during 2013, you need to make your way to your polling place, cast a vote for Justice Robin Hudson. She might not win in November. But it would be really bad for all of us if outside money won in May.

Shutdown

This post has been updated.

It looks like it’s a done deal. Mark Binker is reporting that the NC General Assembly will act during the upcoming short session to move away from the Common Core State Standards.

I’m not a huge fan of the Common Core standards. Plenty of really smart, unbelievably well-informed people, Diane Ravitch and Lois Weiner among them, have laid out strong arguments against them: new, “higher” standards alone won’t lift achievement levels; some early grades standards are developmentally inappropriate; no classroom teachers were involved in the creation of these standards; CCSS can’t really fix economic problems rooted in long-standing inequity; the standards were largely written by representatives of education businesses, and it’s those corporate interests that stand to benefit the most; and, of course, it’s one more reason to test the hell out of students and their teachers.

But I think national standards (i.e. the things upon which states build curricula) make sense. And I’ve seen the really solid learning that goes on in, for instance, middle school math classrooms where curricula built on these standards are in place.

Add to that the fact that so much opposition to the standards seemed to come from decidedly un-informed people who opposed them simply because they were national standards (and sometimes, oh-so-cleverly, referred to them as “Obamacore”) and I found myself hoping that, during the implementation of the standards, we would find solutions to their problems.

(Just a brief diversion, here. It seems to me that the ultimate failure of the defenders of the Common Core was in not taking action, right from the start, to defend (although that’s not exactly the word I’m looking for) their left flank. Opposition from the right should’ve been taken for granted and every effort made to guarantee public school educators–who work with preK-12 students every day and would be the ones putting the standards into action–a place of privilege and authority at the CC development table. Parents and students should have been at that table, too, because only a democratic development process could have curtailed the influence of giant edu-corporations.)

Maybe those solutions will come. But they haven’t come to North Carolina soon enough. Instead, we in North Carolina’s public schools must prepare ourselves for new standards. It’s not enough that we’ve been forced to endure countless indignities over the course of the past few years. Now, we get to do the whole, let’s-implement-a-new-curriculum thing. All. Over. Again. And this time, it looks like we’ll be working with standards written by the NC Department of Administration which “acts as the business manager for North Carolina state government.” Ouch.

If the General Assembly’s Educator Effectiveness and Compensation Task Force is any indication, don’t think we can expect too much in the way of democracy from this new Academic Standards Review Commission. But democracy doesn’t have to be invited. It can just show up, say, at the door of the Legislative Building in the hours before the 2014 short session gavels in on May 14 and demand to be taken seriously.

I know it sounds crazy. But if I had told you, last August, that a Guilford County judge would put a hold on Sen. Berger’s 25% Mandate after months of organizing work by public school workers across NC, you probably would’ve thought that sounded crazy, too.

Update: I wouldn’t have been able to write this without the unsolicited–and unwitting–help of Bryan Proffitt. Thanks, B. Also, if you’re curious about the reasons for this move, listen to this story from WUNC’s Reema Khrais. You can draw your own conclusions.

Internal Displacement

It’s been almost six weeks since I’ve paid any attention to this blog. That’s inexcusable, especially because there’s been a lot to write about. (I’m looking at you, “tax reform.”)

But I’m going to ignore all of that for a few days to give space to what is, in my mind, the story of the day: teacher turnover data from the Wake County Public School System.

You can see watch today’s news conference here, if you like. But the numbers are the real story. And here they are, presented without further comment:

 

In the Room

Last night, the Wake County Board of Education unanimously approved a resolution asking the General Assembly to repeal the divisive, destructive, and demoralizing 25% Mandate and replace it with a meaningful plan that will raise teacher pay to the national average.

It was overwhelming to be surrounded by more than 100 WCPSS educators who came to publicly support this action by the school board. I offer my most sincere thanks to the scores of activist educators, parents, and concerned citizens (like my dad and kid brother) who were in the room last night; any WCPSS “teacher” who wrote an email, signed a petition, or pledged to stand with her colleagues by refusing one of these contracts; my brothers and sisters in the NCAE Organize 2020 Caucus; the Wake County Board of Education and Board Attorney who toiled over the language of the resolution and put themselves on the line to stand up for the teaching profession; and Meighan Davis, Sean McKillop, and everyone who worked on the 2011 and 2013 school board campaigns that made last night’s vote possible.

Last night’s vote was a big deal but the Decline to Sign campaign isn’t over. There’s still time to collect pledges to build unity in your building. And that unity is the really important thing.

Together, we are showing that we have the power to take control of the debate over the future of our public schools. It’s going to be a long, hard fight. But. We’re. Winning.

Tonight and later this week, Boards of Education in Durham and Buncombe Counties, and in Chapel Hill-Carrboro will consider resolutions or further action against the 25% mandate. And, from the looks of it, there are more school boards with this kind of action in the works.

So, as we make our way through the spring semester, let’s remember how good it feels to work together to make things happen for our coworkers, our schools, and the students we serve. And with that feeling in mind, let’s keep fighting until every child has equitable access to a free, public school education and every educator is treated and compensated like a professional.

Twenty Five: Toward a Resolution

If you’ve grown weary of stories about the 25% contracts, I don’t blame you. (I’ve already written two of them: you can find them here and here.) But I’ve also been spending a lot of time talking to teachers, parents, and school board members about this mandate. So, it bears reporting that, insofar as the 25% contracts are concerned, Tuesday (to be clear, that’s 4 March 2014) promises to be a pretty important day.

On Tuesday, during their regular public meeting, the Wake County Board of Education will discuss a resolution in opposition to the 25% contracts. The Wake board won’t be the first to publicly declare their opposition to this demoralizing mandate. But their action might just represent a tipping point in the public debate over the employment rights of public school teachers.

It’s likely that this discussion wouldn’t have happened had it not been for teachers across NC who pledged not to accept one of these demoralizing contracts and asked their local school boards for support. I’m proud of the work that the NCAE Organize 2020 Caucus has done to build upon and coordinate these efforts and I’m inspired by the work of rank-and-file members of Wake NCAE who’ve taken the Decline to Sign campaign and used it to build camaraderie in their buildings. But there’s still work to do.

Because WCPSS is the biggest system in the state and because we’re not quite sure what the resolution will look like, Tuesday’s meeting will be every bit as important as the meeting of the Guilford County School Board three weeks ago. So, if you live or work in or near Wake County and care about the treatment of teachers and the future of our public schools there’s really only one place to be Tuesday night: 5625 Dillard Drive, Cary, NC, 27518.

The open session begins at 5:30, so you should try to arrive between 5:00 and 5:15 if you’d like a seat. Be sure to wear red, bring a photo ID (WCPSS employees, just wear your badge: it’ll make signing in soooo much quicker), and some friends along with you. You’re not gonna want to miss this meeting.

A Proportional Response

Yesterday, Governor McCrory announced a plan to raise pay for NC teachers on the first two steps of the salary scale by as much as 13.1 percent. It’s a necessary step and I’d never argue against pay raises for any of my brothers and sisters in our public schools (or warehouses, factories, or fast food restaurants, for that matter). But the proposal, developed apparently in concert with leaders of the NC House and Senate, is incomplete (and, I might add, currently unfunded).

Many of the 75,000 NC teachers whose pay will remain frozen under this proposal were deeply angered by this proposal. I honor that anger. I think even the Governor himself could be forced to admit that this won’t do very much to answer the “retention” part of the “recruitment and retention” problem he speaks of so frequently. (To be clear, it really is a problem.) But I’m still making up my mind about how to respond.

In the meantime, I’d like to share one of the most thoughtful responses to the Governor’s announcement that I’ve seen. It was written by my friend and fellow Wake NCAE Director Kristin Beller, who teaches fourth grade here in Wake County. It’s a reminder to all of us to keep our eye on the real ball. I’m awfully proud to know her.

Experienced teachers want our young colleagues to have a raise. In fact, we really think that all school workers and state employees deserve a raise but we aren’t willing to let that divide us on what really matters for public education in North Carolina. That’s right, folks. Teacher pay is NOT the biggest issue in public education in North Carolina, it’s POVERTY.

All school workers see children walking our halls each day who are not prepared to be there. They may be middle or high school students who don’t have lunch money or school supplies. Some are kindergartners starting their journey into formal education but don’t yet know how to hold a book facing the right way or recognize the letters in their name. We have students in our classrooms each day who have bigger battles to face than whether or not they pass the quarterly benchmark test. Some of our students stay at home with a big brother, sister or cousin or even a neighbor while their parents work extra shifts at low-paying hourly wage jobs.

Who would have thought that NC’s number one education issue is poverty? Well, school staff would. We use our own money to buy lunches, pay for field trips and school supplies. We warmly embrace the moms and dads who come in late to conferences because their boss wouldn’t let them leave without completing just one more task. We listen when parents express frustration and guilt over leaving their child to do their homework with a family friend instead of having time at home to read with them on their own because they work more than one job. We try to enforce consistent and clear expectations while still offering compassion and comfort.

North Carolina’s legislative leaders want the conversations about education to remain around pay because that can be addressed in a relatively easy manner by giving a fraction of our teachers a raise. If word got out that the real change needs to occur by relieving our communities of poverty, then they’d be in a heap of trouble come November. After recent cuts to Medicaid, unemployment benefits, and preschool programs across the state as well as not supporting a raise in minimum wage, there is not much our legislators and governor can offer to show they have supported North Carolinians suffering in poverty. And after five years of frozen salary schedules, many state employees in NC happen to be part of that population.

Twenty Five: Part Two

Back in October, I first wrote about Sen. Berger’s “25% contracts”. In essence, provisions of the NC state budget require all of NC’s public school systems to offer 25% of their “teachers”—meaning anyone paid on the teacher pay scale—new four year contracts. Teachers who accept those offers would voluntarily relinquish their career status and, in exchange, receive a $500 bonus compounding $500 bonuses during each of the four years of the contract.

When I wrote that post, there were an awful lot of unanswered questions about these contracts and how they would be rolled out. Since that time, school districts across North Carolina have spent thousands of man-hours developing local plans for implementing this process. (You can see the Wake County proposal—which I really do feel is the product of an honest effort to make something rational out of ridiculous legislation— here.) Despite those efforts, though, questions remain. Among them:

• If the money for the promised bonus is not appropriated, does a teacher who accepted this contract get back her career status?
• If the law is overturned as a result of the NCAE lawsuit after contracts have been offered and accepted, what happens to the employment status of a teacher who voluntarily relinquished her career status?
• Is the bonus pay permanent?
• What happens if the appropriated funds are not enough to cover bonuses for the teachers who accept this contract?

We do know that a teacher who accepts this contract will lose it, and the accompanying bonus(!), if she leaves the district where she is currently employed. It’s also clear that school boards could offer these contracts to pretty much anyone, for any reason, as long as she met the basic requirements: three consecutive years of service in the same school district and all summative ratings of proficient or better.

It’s important to remember that these contracts, and elimination of career status that they are meant to accelerate, are the product of the same backroom budget deal that also gave us private school vouchers and higher effective rates of taxation for NC’s most vulnerable citizens. This plan never received a separate vote in the NC House. Local school boards were not consulted. Teachers themselves were completely shut out of this conversation.

I have a fundamental problem with any legislation that presumes that only 25% of our teachers are doing the job that they were hired to do. But I’m more concerned about the impact that the implementation of this plan will have on teacher morale and collaboration. Do we really expect that the process of rewarding some teachers to the exclusion of others will not have a negative impact on the professional climate in our school buildings? Do we really think that students won’t suffer when teachers quit working to help everyone and start working to help their own students even at the expense of other students? During five years of budget cuts and unceasing attacks on their work, NC’s public school workers have been breaking their backs to lift graduation rates to all-time highs. Is this really the way our legislature intends to reward that effort?

For all of these reasons—and frankly, so that I can say that my dignity and professionalism are worth more than $500—I will “decline to sign” if offered a 25% contract. And, as the president of Wake NCAE and a charter member of the NCAE Organize 2020 Caucus, I encourage all of NC’s public school teachers to do the same. Learn everything you can about this destructive, demoralizing legislation. And then, with your coworkers, stand up for teamwork, collaboration, and the basic dignity of our work by taking part in NCAE’s Decline to Sign campaign. After five years of struggle, let’s do our best to not let ill-intentioned schemes distract us from what’s really important.