Turning Over Parental Responsibility to the Community

At the Town Hall meeting I was very disappointed that so many people are willing to turn over their parental responsibility to the community (taxpayers) and to the government. Matt Wittasek proposed a 5000 dollar amendment to the budget so the children can go on field trips and ice skating, etc. The line that every one fell for is it is only going to cost a few dollars. This is on top of the thousands of dollars we already pay to support a system with mediocre results at best. Well if it is only going to cost a few dollars why don't the parents at the beginning of each year pay a 50 dollar field trip fee or have the PTO raise the money? But as my readers know PTO's have been hijacked by the unions and the teachers so their needs are served over the children's needs.

Shame on those people who neglect their parental duties. Who knew there was so many people in Croydon who followed the Communist Manifesto.

Friedrich Engels, who in is 1847 draft of the Manifesto called "Principles of Communism" wrote as one of its tenets:
"Education of all children, from the moment they can leave their mother's care, in national establishments at national cost."
You can find many copies of this draft on the web.

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

Public Service Research Foundation

Hat tip to our friend Chris Jenner a fiscally responsible school board member for pointing us to the Public Service Research Foundation website.

The Public Service Research Foundation studies the impact of unionism in government on government.

One of my major bones of contention with the public education system aka the government education system aka the taxpayer paid education system is that it has been hijacked by the teachers unions. The Public Service Research Foundation has a series of studies regarding the impact of teachers unions on education. There is an absolute plethora of information and a must read for all parents and taxpayers.

One of the foundations most recent articles is titled "The PTA, the NEA and Education" another must read for parents considering joining the PTA.

I saw all too well the power of the PTA has over parents and voters during the most recent school board elections in Croydon. When teachers do not like a school board candidate they use the PTA to get parents to vote for candidates who are in the teachers best interests not the parents. I am glad a has third party has research for parents to view for themselves.

Cathy

Quote of the Day "I say this not to the teachers, but to their unions: If education were a war, you would be losing it. If it were a business, you would be driving it into bankruptcy. If it were a patient, it would be dying. " Bob Dole 1996

Budget beef finds way into student backpacks

Union Leader.
Lizbeth McDonald the school president denies that she knew what she was doing was against school policy, she is either ignorant or lying either way she should not remain in her current position. The tactic of sending political propaganda home in students back packs is nothing new and a tactic widely used by PTA and PTO's which have been hijacked by teacher unions and their agendas.

Budget beef finds way into student backpacks
By JOHN WHITSON
New Hampshire Union Leader Staff
Saturday, Apr. 19, 2008


MANCHESTER – A letter written by Weston Elementary School's PTO president urging parents to lobby aldermen on school spending was given to Weston students to take home this week.

That violates school board policy.

The board adopted a policy in the 1990s banning the use of school children as couriers to distribute material of a political nature.

Jennifer Lenox, vice president of Weston's parent-teacher organization, said the letter was written by the group's president, Kathleen Epperson.

Attempts to reach Epperson and Weston Principal Lizabeth MacDonald yesterday were unsuccessful.

Superintendent of Schools Henry Aliberti said both women became aware of the violation after the fact and regret the mailing.

"Liz was not aware of (the policy)," said Aliberti. "She's fairly new to the position. I know that both she and the head of the PTO feel very bad about it."

Aliberti said he learned of the letter yesterday and immediately called Mayor Frank Guinta.

"I wanted his office to know this wasn't a practice of the district," said Aliberti.

The administration also took steps to avoid a similar misstep this political season.

"We notified all principals, all assistant principals and school secretaries that any material containing political, budgetary information is not to go home through students," said Aliberti.

Though written by Epperson, the letter was approved by MacDonald for distribution to every child in the school.

The one-page, unsigned letter is addressed to "Weston Parents" with the headline: "EXTREMELY IMPORTANT ~ PLEASE READ."

The letter lists the city's 14 aldermen and their contact information.

"I urge every parent, guardian, aunt, uncle, grandmother and grandfather to place a call to their Alderman or send an email voicing their concerns as soon as possible," read the letter, in part.

"Please let the decision makers know that we cannot tolerate such a drastic decrease in the funding for our children's education."

The letter also urged people to attend an April 28 public forum on the school district budget at Memorial High School.

Guinta said that sending such information home with students puts the children in an awkward position.

"It troubles me that an organization that has good intentions would make an error in judgment and utilize kids in that fashion," Guinta said. "When I heard about it, I was surprised that it occurred."

Guinta said it is important to move beyond the incident and continue productive talks on the city's financial challenges and ways to improve education.

Lenox said the letter was not meant to be political.

"We all feel strongly about the class sizes increasing, especially in the Weston School district," she said, "because we have new houses and condominiums being built and we already have a portable (classroom)."

Alderman Real Pinard, whose Ward 6 includes Weston School, said he expected to be inundated with constituent calls after a neighbor showed him the letter.

As of yesterday, however, Pinard said he'd received just two calls, one from a person concerned about funding sports and another who was worried about music.

"I called the school yesterday and asked them who sent this letter and they couldn't tell me," said Pinard.

"As far as I'm concerned, this letter is worthless because it doesn't have a signature."

The letter actually understates the gap between the school board's and the mayor's proposed budgets for the district, citing a $7 million difference when it is $13.1 million.

Guinta's spending plan is approximately $7 million less than this year's district budget. The school board has proposed a $6 million spending increase.

Staff Writer Dan Tuohy contributed to this story.

12 Rules to Help Parents Take Back Their Public Schools

When we moved from Illinois a little over a year and a half ago I was hoping to escape many of the shenanigans that went on in the public schools in Illinois. We were so excited to move to Croydon when we read about and heard about Croydon's one-room schoolhouse. Croydon's one-room school house is great and I only hear great things about the very hard working Croydon teacher from parents. Problems arise when our children our shipped out of Croydon and when we have undo interference from those that benefit financially from our Croydon education tax dollars.




When I look for solace I remind myself of Joe Williams book Cheating Our Kids: How Politics and Greed Ruin Education.

Mr. Williams offers up "12 Rules to Help Parents Take Back Their Public Schools"

Rule 1 "Never ever be ashamed of the fact that you want a good education for your child."
Rule 2 "If you don't blow the whistle on school problems, no one will.
Rule 3 "If parents want to be treated like customers, they must start acting like customers."
Rule 5 Don't trust the PTA's ( I took the liberty of paraphrasing this one.)
Rule 7 " If the facts are on your side, share them with the world."
Rule 8 "Fight for transparency throughout the system.
Rule 9 " If an administrator tells you something can't be done, assume they are wrong and plow forward."
Rule 11 "If you've tried steps 1 through 10, and your kids still aren't a priority, it's time to demand your tax money back." (My personal favorite rule.)

To read the rest of the 12 rules and instructions for those rules I suggest reading Joe Williams book Cheating Our Kids: How Politics and Greed Ruin Education.

Cathy Peschke

Visits to our site.

Unbeknownst to us the Argus Champion
placed our BLOG link in their paper. Because of this we have had a large number of visits to our site. Please visit our mission statement page if you are new to this site. The purpose of our site besides what is noted on our mission statement page is to educate the people of SAU 43 and Croydon about the darker side of public education. We hope that you will read this site in full especially the educational resources. We focus on all aspects of public education including curricula, PTA, teacher's union, pensions, school districts, legislation, budgets, salaries, etc to show the parent and voter how intertwined they all are and how it all works against the parent, child and taxpayer. We hope to give you as much information as possible so that you may make an educated decision when going to the polls.

We also encourage all residents to get copies of all contracts and budgets from the SAU offices so they can make educated decisions when going to the polls.

Remember that public schools are nothing more than government schools.

Quote of the Day
"Government does not have a revenue problem; government has a spending problem. Government does not have a revenue problem; government has a priority problem. It is time that we begin to fine tune our focus and decide what the priority of government ought to be."
Marsha Blackburn

PTA's and PTO's hijacked by the teachers' unions.

Teachers, teacher unions and school administrators do not want what is best for parents and their children they want what is best for their agendas and themselves.

The following is a series of must read snippets of articles and links to the stories for parents and those truly interested in education reform.


The first site is by Michael Hodges. His site is rather inclusive and is a one stop site with a plethora of information for parents. Below is a taste of some of the information you will find on his site.


Unions - monopoly control with zero interest in education quality - should be abolished - by former union employee.
Demise of the PTA - 75% drop
Actions - downsize and decentralize, and privatize where possible
Sand-bagging Reform Tactics - used by organizations in attempt to 'sandbag' a test project.
Public schools no place for teachers' kids - 25% send their kids to private schools

Education Quality-to-spending Productivity Index dropped since teachers unionized in 1962

Additionally, we have seen that the education quality to cost productivity index started dropping some time after 1960. Consider this: "Since 1962, when teachers were first allowed to unionize, the public school system has been a system that benefits and answers to the producers of education, not to the consumers. 88% of America's schools are government schools, and 75% of the teachers are union members." John Fund, Editorial Board Wall Street Journal, May 1998 Imprimis volume 27, #5. And, as the president of the American Federation of Teachers recently said: "I will begin to care about the quality of children's education in this country when they start paying union dues." Al Shanker, union president.

To view more of this story go to Grandfather Education Report. To view Michael Hodges main education page go to Grandfather Education Report summary page. This link is extremely important for any parent or grandparent that truly cares about education. Please make an effort to share it with all your friends and neighbors.


This second site is called INTRODUCTION TO: THE TEACHER UNIONS by Myron Lieberman.

The National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO (AFT) are the nation's largest teacher unions. These unions are the major components of "the education establishment," and they play an extremely influential role, not just in education but in politics and the economy as well.

To read the rest of the story go to INTRODUCTION TO: THE TEACHER UNIONS by Myron Lieberman.



The third site is how The PTA Plays Hooky from Educational Reform on the Hoover Institution's website.

Teachers-union influence. National PTA policies, which often are automatically adopted as state and local PTA policies, reflect the dominant influence of the teachers unions, especially the National Education Association (NEA).
Of these factors, by far the most important is the last. Parents and teachers in the PTA both claim to share the same goal: promoting the educational welfare of children. But the PTA's governance structure, in which unionized teachers play a major role, is fatally flawed. Fundamentally, parents and their children are the consumers of education; teachers are part of the producer complex. Elevating the interests of the producers above the interests of the consumers is a formula for irrelevance. In the last 12 months, I have attended two national PTA meetings and five state conventions, and I cannot recall a single instance in which any policy contrary to the interests of teachers unions was given a proper hearing.

To read more go to the Hoover Institution's website.


The following is a chart from Michael Hodges website Grandfather Education Report






Quote of the Day - "Providing services to children at the expense of impoverishing their parents and grandparents is NOT "caring", it is selfish." - Jim Peschke - Parent and Co-founder of Citizen's for Reasonable And Fair Taxes.

The Teacher Unions: Enemies of Reform

One of the main groups behind the lawsuits in Claremont and Londonderry were the teachers unions. The end result of the lawsuits is CACR 18 which will lead to a broad base income tax without any reduction in property taxes. The article below is from the Education Policy website
and requires no further explanation.

The Teacher Unions: Enemies of Reform

by Charlene K. Haar, EPI President
From the school house to the White House, the teacher unions are the most formidable foes of meaningful education reforms -- reforms, which I believe are necessary to achieve superior educational outcomes for children at lower costs to parents and other taxpayers through competition.

Despite their rhetoric, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, like other labor unions, were established to redistribute income from employers to employees and the unions. There is no incentive to reduce costs when taxpayers must pay upon demand. There is no reason to excel when the best employees are paid what the worst are paid. For decades, the NEA/AFT have negotiated highly inefficient contracts covering such items as

*hours of employment and compensation
*teacher work load and duties
*teacher qualifications
*teaching assignments and seniority
*benefits
*teacher evaluation and tenure
*taxpayer subsidies to the unions, such as paid time off for union work, use of school mail system, payroll deduction for dues and NEA/AFT PACs at no cost to the unions, and retirement credit for full-time service as a union employee.

With incredible specificity, the teacher union/school district contract heavily influences the day-to-day operations and morale of a school. In their study, researchers Howard Fuller, George Mitchell and Michael Hartmann reveal that the 174-page contract between the Milwaukee Public System and Milwaukee Teachers Education Association, is an almost "impenetrable document". Making it even more complicated, they discovered "...a 'contract behind the contract' comprised of nearly 2,000 amendments ('memoranda of understanding'), grievance-arbitration rulings, and various state declaratory rulings."

Like legislators who don't read a bill before voting on it, neither school board members nor teachers are likely to read the labor union contract. However, highly paid union officials and political operatives, known in the NEA as UniServ directors, not only read the contracts, but craft them. The AFT local officers negotiate AFT affiliate contracts, sometimes with the assistance of AFT national representatives.

Consequently, with no competition and no incentives for excellence, teacher unions have a government school monopoly which constantly seeks increased taxes and more government expenditures for teachers and union bureaucracies. In fact, union bureaucracies benefit more than teacher union members according to Myron Lieberman. In The Teacher Unions (Free Press, 1997), Lieberman points out that over 3,000 NEA/AFT staffers earn more than $100,000 a year in salary and benefits. It is these highly paid negotiators/political operatives who insist on maintaining the current system. And their job security comes partly from crafting a document that most citizens cannot decipher. Teacher union control of the process is the result of nearly four decades of political power during which the teacher unions have successfully pressured elected lawmakers and school board members to shape education policies, laws, and contracts in their favor.

Teacher union contracts, policies, and laws exclude or severely restrict parental involvement. Because it is completely subservient to the teacher unions, even the National Congress of Parents and Teachers will not speak up for parental interests when teacher union interests are at stake. Almost 30 years ago, the PTA leadership adopted a position of "neutrality" on teacher strikes and terms and conditions of employment negotiated in teacher union contracts. As often happens in negotiations, school boards sacrifice parent interests to teacher union interests. As a result, parents are relegated to fundraising or helping teachers. As the purported representative of children's best interests, the PTA has failed.

With continued talk about parent representation on site-based management councils, parents need reliable, accurate information about how to review school budgets, curricula, contract provisions, personnel evaluations, and other data. In some ways, local parent groups (PTOs) can be more effective than the PTA, but lack the necessary training to become effective leaders.

Who can help roll back teacher union power? Taxpayer and small business groups, which already have expertise in these areas, could expand their watchdog activities and provide training to parents interested in challenging the status quo. Persistent school boards can cut out taxpayer subsidies to the NEA/AFT. Lawmakers can eliminate legislation which micromanages education and school boards. Instead, they should provide a framework within which real competition takes place, thereby permitting and encouraging

*subcontracting with private providers for delivery of services,
*for-profit schools,
*charter schools with liberal waivers and flexibility,
*universal vouchers, or
*any combination of the above to offer superior educational opportunities to children and efficiency and choice to their parents.

The frustration of long-ignored parents is manifesting itself in the profusion of charter and for-profit schools that do not have school boards, negotiators, teacher unions, or PTAs. What these schools do have are effective, engaged parents in independent PTOs, and enthusiastic teachers unleashed from contract restrictions. Were such coalitions armed with more knowledge about the workings of the teacher unions and the weaknesses of the PTA, imagine what they could accomplish.