Change the Story

                                                                                         

There is an often told story embedded in the policies and public statements of Virginia about teachers and employees of schools; so embedded that many people act as though it is true.

It goes something like this.

Virginia is not like “those other” states.

Things may be hard here, but they are not so bad for you individually. After all you are surviving even if barely.  

Besides,

As an educator or employee you cannot make a difference by speaking up or taking action,

and if you try there will be retribution.

It is selfish to ask for more money.

It will hurt your school, and your students, if you dare to speak up publicly, about the 

punishing policies, the work over loads, the crumbling building or unsafe trailer, or the lack 

of resources.

It is greedy to ask for more money, your neighbors “give” you your salary. You cannot ask them to

            “give” you more.  

What if you knew there is a different set of facts that tell a very different story?
 In reality-

                Virginia’s funding for schools is even worse than many of those “other states” And localities have to fight most years to figure out whether to cut services or raise taxes because the state doesn’t fulfill its constitutional responsibility to provide adequate schools.

                In Virginia educators are paid $9000+ below the national average, even though the cost of living here and income of other professions is above the national average.  Quite simply, Educators in Virginia are not paid competitive or comparable wages for the work they do. And general schools employees are not paid a living wage.

                Even the increase in funding the Governor recently proposed (which some in the legislature have pledged to defeat) won’t get school funding to national averages- if we can get it passed. It will take two more budget cycles of larger increases to get close to restoring funding to 2008 levels.

But here is the really important part

What you do can change everything.

Your actions can make the difference.

In states where educators and employees have banded together salaries become higher, class sizes grow smaller making lighter work loads, and there are protections from the retributions we fear.

Make it Personal- Simply by Taking A Day

January 28, 2019

At 11:00 a.m.

March in RedforEd

From Monroe Park

to the steps of the State Capitol

with your colleagues and parents from your community

to tell them our schools are in distress and must be fully funded.

There are 120,000 educators and employees in Virginia’s public schools.  If even one fourth of us show up at the Capitol demanding fair and equitable school funding, it will be historic.  If half of us March, Richmond cannot hold the size and power of the message.  If we all come, no one can deny us.

March for your School!

                March for your Colleagues!

March for Your professional dignity!

March for your Students’ futures!

A tribute to Goosebumps or How to Unhook the Testing Monster

Sometimes the Testing Monster created by politicos, techno advocates, school policymakers,  and

administrators across the last 15 years must seem like one of RL Stine’s creations to its creators:

like Slappy, the dummy, now chasing them down the street and through the halls of power,

terrorizing their days, staring glassy eyed back at them from their desk chair, threatening their very

ways of life. Or like the Ghost of Spirit Moon Camp, possessing the spirits of their over-tested

victims.

Because now, the Testing Monster is not just frightening derelict teachers, and slacker children, and

poor parents who can’t afford fancy vacations for their kids- Now, the Testing Monster has turned on

its creators.  

It is chasing politicians out of office (If you don’t believe it, just check the unemployed legislators of

Missouri). The Testing Monster is humiliating officials and billionaires in their favorite restaurants, or

on the way to work-- Beware the Taqueria and the Coffee Line.  The monster is forcing once

powerful rich and elite to up their security details in fear of those it has possessed, and turning their

fellow parents into suspicious characters who won’t invite them to parties anymore. And the final

horror, making it impossible for the elite to find music teachers and art teachers for their gifted

progeny, because teachers are disappearing everywhere-- The Lost Teachers of the Gated Community.

So, how do we unhook and vaporize the monster well-intended Reformers have loosed that is

making our story into Welcome to The Dead Schools of America?   

Here are the steps in the decommissioning process necessary to Unplug the Testing Monster:

1. Amend ESSA to no longer use test scores for rankings and funding.

2. Revoke VAM requirements at the state level. Take all testing data out of the teacher evaluation

process. A small input for growth measurements on authentic assessments won’t trigger the

monster.    

3. Remove or reduce testing data as a measure in school accreditation procedures. Instead use the

age of the roof, the holdings of the library, and the water-tightness of the basement as a means of

checking against monsters.

4. Reduce testing budgets to 1/5th of their current levels if you have to have tests. (At 1/5th they can

exist for those who still love Testing and want to keep him as the Monster that Lives in Your

Basement  or the Mummy in the Crypt, to frighten themselves occasionally) but beware his return.

5. Understand that the Testing Monster thrives on competition and begin to starve it.  The push to

compete for test scores with other kids in the class, the school in the nicer neighborhood, and the

children chained to desks in Shanghai only makes the Testing Monster grow larger.

Save the children, Save Yourself. Stop feeding him.

Why we need to be members of our Unions and participate with Grassroots groups

As a lifetime member of my Union and a coordinator for at least 2 grassroots groups which work with
both teachers’ Unions, I often get questions or viewpoints volunteered that speculate on the relative
value of each.
-- Some not so complimentary of either. 

Questions like: Why should I belong to a union, if I can do activism through a grassroots group?
Or, Why should I get involved in a grassroots group when I’m already a union member?  
These questions are daily fuel for thought and often affect my ToDo list.

The answers are fairly complex, but simply put, it is critically important for us All to both join and
work through our Union/Association and to participate in current grassroots actions like
Virginia Educators United.

Here are a few of the reasons we need both: 

We need a Grassroots movement because 

1. There are 93,000 teachers in Virginia. Roughly half of them are not currently represented by an
Association or Union, and in some districts the number of members is small enough to seriously
limit the power they can wield. Only a grassroots, statewide movement can offer an opportunity for
those 40,000 unrepresented teachers to speak up and speak out- Now!  And those 40,000 or so
additional school employees offer the Unions large enough numbers to have the impact we all need.

2. This year, six other states, many surrounding Virginia, have taken action. There are several reasons
for that; among them are that we have reached a critical point for saving our schools which includes
multiple crisis issues - extremely low funding of salaries, continuing erosion of benefits and degenerating
working conditions, aging schools whose repair, renovation, or additional classrooms have not been
funded, and lack of consideration from even friendly legislators for raising funding levels back to
pre-recession levels. 

3. Grassroots movements in other states have worked. Besides including employees and workers,
they welcome allies, parents, and community groups who will stand with us.They have changed
awareness, challenged the messages from public school enemies, and given a face to all the people
who serve our children. 

4. This year Virginia is seeing a freeing up of dollars that had remained unreachable in prior years.
Now is the time to speak up that those dollars (hundreds of millions)  are needed and necessary to
create the schools our communities and families require. 

We need our Unions because

1. Our Education Associations and Locals provide the on-going monitoring and legislative advocacy
that we need. Every year VEA and AFT provide direct advocacy on bills that are aimed to undermine
our schools further, and they turn back the tide of attack bills anti-schools forces bring year after year.
Our Unions do the tracking of legislators, and provide the information to localities about which
policymakers support schools.  They guide pro-school bills through the labyrinth introduction,
committee, and voting processes. And locals provide similar tracking and monitoring of policies at
district levels.

2. Our Unions represent individual employees whose careers are attacked each year.  Through
representation and challenges to unfair practices, the Unions defend many teachers every year
against personal attacks, inaccurate accusations, and -isms of many varieties from sexism, to racism,
to able-ism, to ageism.  A Union defense is often the game changer that saves good teachers' careers. 

3. Our Unions link us to other educators across the nation. Having NEA and AFT at the national level
enables us to see and defend against attacks launched in multiple states or from the federal level.
In recent years, this has been a critical need because the pro-privatization forces have been better
funded, well-organized, and well-connected for their anti-school agenda.  Through solidarity, we
can compete with the access massive money and its power provides anti-school forces.

Right now, with Janus having turned the whole nation into a Right to Work and Learn/Earn Less
environment- Those of us who have lived and struggled against that environment for years can lead
the way.  No, we don’t live in a perfect workers’ environment right now, but that is why

• We need Virginia Education Association, and
• We need AFT’s Federation of Teachers and 
• We need Virginia Educators United grassroots coalition

 Every one of them, growing 
stroking on all cylinders, 
building connections with other community groups, other workers’ groups
and developing relationships with our policy makers that are fair, honest,
and forthright,
supporting All our Schools, our Communities and our Co-Workers without reservation or restraint.

If we join together, we can create an Education Commonwealth for the ages,  a point of destination
for all who want to live in a place that values healthy Learning, and Thinking, and Understanding. 
Through our combined efforts Virginia can be the kind of place we all want to live and work.  

So, Join your Union, and become part of Virginia Educators United. You are needed in both, right now. 
There is much to do, and much to be gained. 

Don’t Panic, We Will Prevail

SA4FE members include AFT,NEA,IAFF,SEIU, Police
and first responders, teachers and service workers.

West Virginia Teachers United

North Carolina Red for Ed Marchers being observed.

Badass Teachers Marching to the US Department of Education

This morning millions of workers across the US are waking up to a new normal.  The Janus shoe so long awaited finally dropped, and the question of Are Unions finished?  is being relished in many a gilded mirror.

As someone from a state that is home to the national RTW(LP) office and a place that has been RTWLP since 1947,  (That’s Right to Work for Less Pay.  I won’t ever call them just RTW):  I-We are here to say-- Surviving, even Thriving, can be achieved by workers, both in the public sector and in private enterprise.

Will workers organizations look different? Yes, there will be adaptation, and growth. Wait, Growth? Yes, absolutely, growth. Standing together can we deliver better working and living conditions and healthier economies? Yes! And we will.

Take a look at recent actions by teachers in West Virginia, North Carolina and Arizona;  All RTWLP states, where public sector unions are basically illegal, and keep in mind virtually every labor strike since Spartacus has been illegal. There are ways to push back that are more creative and more effective than anything we’ve seen in the last 35 years.

But workers' solidarity is not just about strikes; it is also about a kind of neighborliness and common good that predatory capitalism has been attacking at least since the 1980's. It is about the kind of world we want to live in, one of fairness and equity for all.

Predatory Capitalism that has driven Janus and the plans to deconstruct workers organizations is based on a hyper-competitive win-lose model that holds only one can win and all others must lose. And we all know that everyone-else-must-lose model quickly becomes an impoverished and lonely paradigm for all.

Labor unions are based on the opposite polarity that All Can Win. In the long run win-lose cannot stand, as it seeks to stand alone. Our interdependence mandates that companies and communities need workers and consumers.  You cannot annihilate your workers and consumer base and survive, and when you destroy unions, you destroy both your workers and your consumers.

So what might the future of labor look like? We do have glimpses, small starts compared to the tsunami of worker activism that is to come, but we already know:

∙ It will be grassroots
∙ It will be coalitions
∙ It will be dynamic- It will be powerful

The Wear Red for Ed movements are an example.  Badass Teachers Association acts as a pro-workers and pro-students activism group, and in Fairfax Virginia, the home base of RTWLP,  all the public unions are part of a coalition called SA4FE (Standing Altogether for Fairfax Employees). SA4FE is not a union, but is a collection of workers groups that defend and protect county workers. These are only a few of the budding groups that are taking on fairness and social justice for all working people as their battle cry. There are others. There will be more.

In the SA4FE photo there are representatives of both AFT and NEA teachers, firefighters, police, EMTs and first responders, service workers, and retirees. They are fighting retirement changes for new employees, not current retirees. These types of coalitions can and are breathing new life into worker activism. BATs work with both AFT and NEA and non union members. The Red for Ed groups include non-union workers and union members from teaching, support, and parent groups.

We are in this together. We will prevail.