Stiffed Again

Teachers in Virginia are once again hoping class supplies and healthcare costs don’t rise too much.

Last year when Virginia teachers, whose pay had been either frozen or falling behind inflation for ten years, marched on the Capitol, the General Assembly and Governor responded by adding an extra 2% to the 3% the educators were slated to receive on the second year of the 2018-2020 budget.

Even after that teachers in Virginia, the tenth richest state in the union, still lagged around $8,000 below national average pay and $31K below their non-teacher fellow graduates. Yet, a premiere school system was cited by Amazon as a primary reason for locating in Virginia, and is used by the state to advertise to other global businesses.

So, it was all the more shocking when on Monday Governor Ralph Northam announced in his 2020-2022 budget proposal that teachers were to get zero pay increase for the first year, and a less than inflation covering 3% in year 2; all while announcing in the same presentation a budget surplus of more than $500 million in current budget ending in July and revenues continuing to come in above projections.

Teachers and school employees are not only credited with contributing substantially to Virginia’s attractiveness to business, but they were highly active in campaigning for Democratic legislators and significant participants in helping flip the House and Senate: sending postcards, making phone calls, interviewing and endorsing candidates, walking neighborhoods, attending forums and house parties, conducting social media outreach, working at the polls, and contributing from their meager funds.

Yet, in a year when virtually every candidate of both parties was running as a “friend of education” and even the Governor in his budget presentation claimed great regard, respect, and value for Virginia’s educators and students, it was all the more stunning that just six weeks after the historic elections a Democratic Governor would deliver such a deliberately provocative rebuke and pointed insult to the educators and students of the Commonwealth.

In spite of studies and summits on teacher retention and much public hand-wringing over teacher shortages in the last year, when budget time came, the Governor and his administration not only gave instructional staff a funding rate that will leave them with a net 1% pay cut after inflation, but refused to address three other deep concerns voiced by educators last year-

• Ill-maintained, disintegrating, unhealthy, and unsafe buildings around the state,
• the long-standing cap on hiring support staff while enrollments have risen substantially, and
• the much needed reconstituted Standards of Quality (the state’s own minimum requirements for quality schools) which he left with large funding gaps--again.

Adding to the blunt message was a package of tax measures that left big loopholes in place for the already micro-taxed or non-taxed mega companies while creating a series of regressive taxes that would place more burden on the very communities that the newly minted “progressive” Democratic party had campaigned to bring equity to.

All the more remarkable is that Northam counted $808 million, which is the amount needed to maintain current services and accommodate rises in enrollment, as a part of his “increase.” Excluding rebenchmarking, we’re left with less than a 4% increase in education spending. That false equivalency attempts to hide that the state Board of Education’s stated needs are not being met.

The very smooth messaging campaign during and after the announcement hailed the Governor’s budget plan as “a good start” toward better funding our schools. It was assumed no one would notice the falling salaries and number of teachers, the neglected 6 to 18 year olds of the Commonwealth, or those in poor neighborhoods making $17K a year who are still paying the same rate as our illustrious titans of commerce. After all, there were some new initiatives for pre-schoolers and poor college students, if they pick the career that the state decides they should. We definitely should help pre-schoolers and college students, but it is not necessary to help one instead of the others. Virginia can and must take care of all it's children and youth.

As shocked and frustrated as educators and those who care about schools are, we could make one suggestion. We invite the Governor, his top education staff, and our legislators to visit our schools on the day we teach our students what it means to be a friend, how to be a friend and to get one. It’s one of our proudest lessons about honesty, fairness, and considered faithfulness to those we care about. Then maybe, they could visit one of our civics, government, or economics classes.

There is a saying often used in politics in Virginia, “No permanent friends, no permanent enemies.” Let us assure you Governor Northam and General Assembly members, that is not what we teach the children. We teach them to not take advantage of their friends because a friend wouldn’t do that. Or if you’ve already learned that lesson, you could just break down and do the right thing. #FundOurSchools

Who is My Neighbor

 I live in the suburbs 15 minutes from the Washington Monument in good traffic.

A couple of weeks ago president Trump told four Congresswomen to, "Go back where you came from." That a President did something like that was shocking. It was embarrassing to U.S. citizens, but well, that's just Trump. But then several other things happened that changed my perspective. 

I have lived in the same neighborhood for 30 years.  One of the things I have loved most about my neighborhood is that we come from all over, and that (I thought) we embrace the richness of our many cultural heritages.

I have loved that my children grew up with people from all over the world: dancing in quinceaneras with Hispanic friends, celebrating Eid with middle eastern friends, and lunar New Year with Vietnamese and Cambodian friends, and I loved that everyone came to our house for Halloween. 

Foods at our PTA events were a buffet, from Indian to Peruvian, to Soul and Thai, and as a result our palates developed fusions of world recipes because we enjoyed one another's contributions to the richness of our diversity. Our art and artists and musicians merged into international styles that defied the limits of one culture alone.

I have taken comfort that though the rest of the world might be rocked with -isms and harshness, here we treated one another with a welcoming respect.  In the last several days that comfort-ability has been deeply shaken, and from some surprising places.

A couple of days ago two of my long-time neighborhood friends who are both Hispanic were conversing on facebook and shared stories that shook my sense of what my neighborhood is like. My daughter's childhood soccer coach who has lived here for pretty much her whole life, experienced one of those Youtube racist rants you see posted periodically of a screaming white person yelling at a Hispanic person in the check-out line to "speak American" and "Go back to Mexican where you came from."   This happened at my neighborhood Giant.

From that story she and another friend, who has also been here forever, told of the numerous times in the last few years they had been told to "go back where you came from" or had been asked for papers, rather than "is anybody hurt" by the police when they called for a fender-bender, or were put through additional hurdles when they went to DMV to transact car business.  As their stories kept coming my chest felt heavier and heavier.

I was shocked and so saddened. I had not realized.

Then while interviewing a conservative political candidate who happened to be Jewish, he spoke of the fear he had for his children since both the Jewish Community Center and a nearby church with a Black pastor were graffiti-ed - twice recently. 

This is all in my wonderful place where the school I taught in had no ethnic majority, and our children played together without regard for where their parents were from. 

The hatred being pushed by those in authority at the national level had invaded my protected world.

I get it that racism and bias have existed all along, and that those who are not white in our culture have always experienced some level of disrespect and discounting, oppression and racism.  But I thought in my little corner of the world, we were making progress on being human and humane to one another, on being neighbors who were indeed neighborly.

Then this weekend there were two more mass shootings in which the El Paso shooters' manifesto echoed Trump's words about "going back to where you came from."

One of my favorite parables is Jesus' story of the Good Samaritan, which starts with the aphorism to "Love your neighbor as yourself." and  a member of the crowd asks, "Who is my neighbor?"
Then Jesus answers with the parable of a man who is fallen on by robbers and beaten and the person who lifts him from the ditch, binds his wounds, and gets him help is not a priest or a highly respected upper class man of power, but a despised and looked down on Samaritan. 

Tonight that question is getting asked again on so many levels- In my neighborhood, in other neighborhoods across the country, and in the halls of our Capitol and Whitehouse.  "Who is my neighbor?"

We are one another's neighbors, and it is time we genuinely try to "love our neighbors as ourselves."

Please, Don't yell at your neighbors in the check-out line. Don't invite strangers to beat them up or shoot them.  Don't hassle them or try to throw them out or in general try to make their lives difficult.   And if you see someone else disrespecting, being rude, or harming your neighbors speak up. Defend them, bind their wounds.

As Hillel and Jesus said- This is the essence of the law.

I hope We can Be the Good Samaritans, and maybe our neighborhoods can begin to be restored to the uplifting places we once hoped and envisioned them to be.

Happy Birthday Badass Teachers

June 14, 2019

Today the Badass Teachers Association is 6 years old.

When we started I drove to school every morning to an NPR story talking about how schools were failing and teachers were inadequate to their jobs. They don’t do that anymore, and it is because BATs changed the narrative.

The war is not won. In state after state, charter companies, Teach for America, and accountability/privatization promoters are still lobbying for and instituting the old narrative with new twists of “individualized learning” and “school choice” “vouchers” and disrupting and dismantling schools that must be “improved.”

But there are voices pushing back. No longer can enemies of children and proponents of profit speak without response, because BATs are there; in every state, in the national conversation, in the public venues. We will not let defamation of our children, our schools and our profession stand unanswered.

In the last year there has been a nationwide explosion of renewed labor actions and strikes, spawned with BATs involved at every point. The mythology of the United movements coming from out of nowhere, or out of the traditional unions misses that those actions were 5 years in the consciousness raising making, state by state within BAT groups and local action groups.

It is time now for BATs to be on the forming edge of formulating the vision. For years we’ve heard from hired privatization promoters, “If you don’t want reform, what do you want?”

We want:

1. A school system as well-funded and valued as our banks and military, that provides adequate resources for Every child in the nation, and the conditions to enable them to become their most thriving and flourishing selves as children and as adults.

2. A balance of emphasis between curriculum & instruction and assessment that is formulated by teachers and communities, not billionaires, corporate boards, and legislatures.

3. A positive, healthy and safe work and learning place for every child, teacher, and support professional in the U.S. which must include a liveable planet and is free from the toxic conditions both physical and emotional that have overshadowed our days for too long.

4. A philosophy and mission in dynamic, balanced affirmation of competition & collaboration, content & skills, joy & diligence, and creativity & applied knowledge. A mission that builds a system able to change yet still maintain stability for all the children within it.

5. A nationally treasured education system that values the lives and becoming of our young people from birth through adulthood, and prepares them to guide and sustain the future; recognizing that learning, which is a key necessity of life, starts at birth and continues throughout life.

For me this is what Badass Teachers have been fighting for these six years, and what we will continue to stand for in our classrooms, in our communities, in our religious centers, and our legislatures, and in the streets.

Happy Birthday BATs! Fight on for the present and future our children need and deserve.

The Right Person in the Right Place at the Right Time

 This time last year Dr. Ricardy Anderson was in her award-winning school, smiling and greeting her students at the drop off every morning. As the principal of a K-5 public elementary school, later in the day she would go over the projected student population for fall, making decisions about numbers of teachers and staff that would be needed for the coming year; meet with a family and the instructional team for a child who needed a 504 (special needs support); look in on standards of learning testing; and before leaving check the budget for remaining funds that could be spent or should be carried over from this year’s allocation of funds. 

Such was her life as an educator working in a public school, engaged with children, families, and staff, and administering budgets in real time.

Today Ricardy is busy calling volunteers and voters as she runs for the open school board seat in Mason District. When Sandy Evans, the Mason District school board member decided to retire from the board, and Ricardy’s friends began to say, “You’d make a great school board member,” she realized here was the way she could use her extensive training and experience in education to make her next contribution to her community.  

The job of a school board member is one of the most important in our community. While our school board administers approximately half of the $4 billion Fairfax County budget and the school board is one of the largest employers in the state of Virginia, the job is not just about budgets. A great school board member must understand how those numbers affect the classroom and the children in it.

At the end of the day, the most important thing a school board member does is safeguard the quality of life and great becoming of our youngest and most vulnerable residents. It is about what happens in schools every day. It is about the children and young people. 

It is rare to find someone perfectly suited to such a complex set of tasks. On Tuesday, Dr. Anderson was counting out postcards for the campaign and taking care of a friend’s children after taking the friend to the hospital due to a concussion.  As the children came in and out of her dining room, Ricardy never seemed flustered or impatient with their needs or requests.  She cared for them compassionately and patiently as she simultaneously managed her campaign for one of the most complex jobs in our community. 

As the national education scene and some neighboring districts’ school governance continues to be mired in troubles, thank goodness Ricardy has stepped up to serve us and our families. We have someone we can rely on-- someone with a child-centered vision of excellence for our schools. Ricardy is the right person, at the right time, in the right place. 

Mason District FCDC members will have the opportunity to vote for Ricardy Anderson on April 24 at 7p.m. at Annandale High School.

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.