Post by Chris_Wendt on Feb 26, 2011 8:21:24 GMT -5
Which is it?
Your current position is stated thus:
I need to call you on this, even at the risk of my sounding like a shill for the union.
1. The title of this thread is "The WUT disgusts me!" (with "me" meaning you...not me). But in your last post, immediately above, you say that what angers you is the LIFO policy of The State. Now, as you know, the WUT does not lay off teachers, they do not reduce staff or increase class sizes. The Superintendent of Schools lays-off teachers, reduces staff, and increases class size. Because of the State Law which canonizes the LIFO policy, neither the Superintendent nor the Union have ANY SAY as to which specific teachers are furloughed in a Reduction-in-Force.
Ergo sequitur, your "disgust" is very much misplaced, and, your anger, though understandable, is incongruous with the title and gist of your posts in this thread. As James Carville reminded George H. W. Bush during Bill Clinton's first successful campaign for President, "It's the economy, stupid!"
2. Okay, let's leap ahead into the future, and appoint YOU as the sole arbiter of which teachers get furloughed and which teachers are retained in the next big Reduction-in-Force, for example, if Mandalay Elementary School is closed in two years. You have the power, and I trust you to do the right thing. Ten teachers and one principal will be furloughed when the school closes in June of 2013. You've made your picks in consultation with parents and administrators and even with the WUT, and you have gotten 100% buy-in for your retention choices and furlough designees. 'Attaboys!' are received from all quarters of the school district, and even John Hildebrand publishes a complementary article in Newsday about your acumen during this process!
Now, please explain how picking-and-choosing this teacher and that principal over all the others, you know, instead of just going up from the bottom of the seniority lists...has saved even a single teacher's job, or a single dollar for the taxpayers?
You would have accomplished precisely DIDDLEY-SQUAT!
I must sound a lot like a shill for the union, but I'll take that hit.
Nobody is proffering any alternative to LIFO, including you. LIFO is not exclusive to teachers or schools. Most unions use LIFO during reductions in force (RIF), because LIFO protects the employer and the union from lawsuits over arbitrary, capricious, discriminatory, unjust and unlawful terminations.
Some unions, namely Construction Trades, use a shared-pain system of rotating furloughs among all their members. But those are union hall jobs, where the union supplies the labor out of the union hall to the contractors on a project-by-project basis.
So what is the solution for keeping the best teachers among the working teachers?
Randi Weingarten has very recently (this week) agreed, on behalf of the nation's largest two teacher unions (NOT NYSUT) to a proposal in concept that would relax the 3020(a) regulations for disciplining and terminating teachers. Her proposal is still too encumbered with cost and time-wasting bureaucracy for dealing with "bad" teachers, requiring 1.5 years to fire a bad apple. However, that is significant movement in the right direction to solving part of your problem.
Making it easier to get rid of bad teachers will remove them from the equation during RIF. However, a system that would allow RIF to become an excuse or vehicle to punish specific teachers (instead of dealing with their bad performance directly) would not be desirable, because in the absence of a RIF, bad teachers would linger in the schools, doing untold damage to students for years on end.
There is at least one bad teacher in Wantagh, make no mistake about that. But that teacher is not a factor in the RIF that is part of the currently-proposed budget. I doubt that there are four bad teachers among the elementary school ranks, here.
Now, WCC, can we please get beyond your unproductive anti-union animus toward the WUT, and let's move-on to how we can reduce spending and protect the students and taxpayers of Wantagh with some meaningful suggestions, as opposed to "mean"-spirited poking people in the eye with a stick?
Speaking plainly,
Chris Wendt
Your current position is stated thus:
"FYI, this tread was directed primarily at the last-in-first-out policy the state is currently using, take a look at this recent Quinnipiac poll...."However, your initial position was quite different than the song you are singing now:
"What I (am) angry about is the loss of our young teachers, while the "Fat Cats" that represent the teachers union continue to lobby for raises. Shame on you, your members are losing their jobs because of increases to salaries and benefits costs, yet you still haven't approached the BOE with concessions. It is those concession(s) that could help your members remain employed, while keeping services unchanged for the our community, but again you're (meaning the president the WUT board) not worried because of tenure and your seniority. The Younger WUT need to wake up, it is time for you to speak out and be heard."Paraphrasing Meatloaf: "What's it gonna be, boy?"
I need to call you on this, even at the risk of my sounding like a shill for the union.
1. The title of this thread is "The WUT disgusts me!" (with "me" meaning you...not me). But in your last post, immediately above, you say that what angers you is the LIFO policy of The State. Now, as you know, the WUT does not lay off teachers, they do not reduce staff or increase class sizes. The Superintendent of Schools lays-off teachers, reduces staff, and increases class size. Because of the State Law which canonizes the LIFO policy, neither the Superintendent nor the Union have ANY SAY as to which specific teachers are furloughed in a Reduction-in-Force.
Ergo sequitur, your "disgust" is very much misplaced, and, your anger, though understandable, is incongruous with the title and gist of your posts in this thread. As James Carville reminded George H. W. Bush during Bill Clinton's first successful campaign for President, "It's the economy, stupid!"
2. Okay, let's leap ahead into the future, and appoint YOU as the sole arbiter of which teachers get furloughed and which teachers are retained in the next big Reduction-in-Force, for example, if Mandalay Elementary School is closed in two years. You have the power, and I trust you to do the right thing. Ten teachers and one principal will be furloughed when the school closes in June of 2013. You've made your picks in consultation with parents and administrators and even with the WUT, and you have gotten 100% buy-in for your retention choices and furlough designees. 'Attaboys!' are received from all quarters of the school district, and even John Hildebrand publishes a complementary article in Newsday about your acumen during this process!
Now, please explain how picking-and-choosing this teacher and that principal over all the others, you know, instead of just going up from the bottom of the seniority lists...has saved even a single teacher's job, or a single dollar for the taxpayers?
You would have accomplished precisely DIDDLEY-SQUAT!
I must sound a lot like a shill for the union, but I'll take that hit.
Nobody is proffering any alternative to LIFO, including you. LIFO is not exclusive to teachers or schools. Most unions use LIFO during reductions in force (RIF), because LIFO protects the employer and the union from lawsuits over arbitrary, capricious, discriminatory, unjust and unlawful terminations.
Some unions, namely Construction Trades, use a shared-pain system of rotating furloughs among all their members. But those are union hall jobs, where the union supplies the labor out of the union hall to the contractors on a project-by-project basis.
So what is the solution for keeping the best teachers among the working teachers?
Randi Weingarten has very recently (this week) agreed, on behalf of the nation's largest two teacher unions (NOT NYSUT) to a proposal in concept that would relax the 3020(a) regulations for disciplining and terminating teachers. Her proposal is still too encumbered with cost and time-wasting bureaucracy for dealing with "bad" teachers, requiring 1.5 years to fire a bad apple. However, that is significant movement in the right direction to solving part of your problem.
Making it easier to get rid of bad teachers will remove them from the equation during RIF. However, a system that would allow RIF to become an excuse or vehicle to punish specific teachers (instead of dealing with their bad performance directly) would not be desirable, because in the absence of a RIF, bad teachers would linger in the schools, doing untold damage to students for years on end.
There is at least one bad teacher in Wantagh, make no mistake about that. But that teacher is not a factor in the RIF that is part of the currently-proposed budget. I doubt that there are four bad teachers among the elementary school ranks, here.
Now, WCC, can we please get beyond your unproductive anti-union animus toward the WUT, and let's move-on to how we can reduce spending and protect the students and taxpayers of Wantagh with some meaningful suggestions, as opposed to "mean"-spirited poking people in the eye with a stick?
Speaking plainly,
Chris Wendt
