Fantabulous I hope to see more of this in the future.
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
The following piece appears at Business Insider.com.
Unionized Rhode Island Teachers Refuse To Work 25 Minutes More Per Day, So Town Fires All Of Them
Henry Blodget
Go ahead and sleep. I make way more than your Dad.
A school superintendent in Rhode Island is trying to fix an abysmally bad school system.
Her plan calls for teachers at a local high school to work 25 minutes longer per day, each lunch with students once in a while, and help with tutoring. The teachers' union has refused to accept these apparently onerous demands.
The teachers at the high school make $70,000-$78,000, as compared to a median income in the town of $22,000. This exemplifies a nationwide trend in which public sector workers make far more than their private-sector counterparts (with better benefits).
The school superintendent has responded to the union's stubbornness by firing every teacher and administrator at the school.
A sign of things to come?
Mish Shedlock has the details at Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis:
Central Falls Rhode Island Fires Every High School Teacher
Here is an interesting email from "Jason" regarding high schools in Central Falls Rhode Island. Jason writes:
Hi Mish,
As I'm sure you're aware, Rhode Island has one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation.
Central Falls is one of the poorest towns in the state. It looks like the pictures everyone's seen of Detroit or Flint. There are lots of boarded up windows, abandoned buildings, decrepit factories with broken windows, etc. It's an absolutely depressed community. According to Wikipedia, the median income in the town is $22k.
Teacher salaries at the high school average $72-78k. Apparently 50% of the students at the school are failing all of their classes, and the graduation rate is also under 50%. In an effort to turn the school around, the superintendent requested some changes be made whereby the school day would be slightly extended, teachers would perform some extra tutoring, etc.
The union balked and refused the terms, so now she is firing the entire teaching staff of the high school and replacing them. This is yet another example of unions digging their own graves by refusing to negotiate or accept reasonable terms. Sentiment is on the side of the superintendent, at least among the folks I have discussed the issue with.
Jason
With that backdrop, please consider Central Falls to fire every high school teacher.
The teachers didn’t blink.
Under threat of losing their jobs if they didn’t go along with extra work for not a lot of extra pay, the Central Falls Teachers’ Union refused Friday morning to accept a reform plan for one of the worst-performing high schools in the state.
The superintendent didn’t blink either.
After learning of the union’s position, School Supt. Frances Gallo notified the state that she was switching to an alternative she was hoping to avoid: firing the entire staff at Central Falls High School. In total, about 100 teachers, administrators and assistants will lose their jobs.
Gallo blamed the union’s “callous disregard” for the situation, saying union leaders “knew full well what would happen” if they rejected the six conditions Gallo said were crucial to improving the school. The conditions are adding 25 minutes to the school day, providing tutoring on a rotating schedule before and after school, eating lunch with students once a week, submitting to more rigorous evaluations, attending weekly after-school planning sessions with other teachers and participating in two weeks of training in the summer.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
Those Who Voted for the Children are Suckers
It was never for the children and those who voted for the children are suckers and took the intelligent voters down with them. Public schools were hijacked long ago by the people who work in them, they have hijacked them and made them their own entitlement programs. The following piece appears on the American Thinker.
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
Taxpayers: Eat your hearts out, suckers
By Ed Lasky
A looming problem has received far too little coverage from a liberal-dominated media: the power of public pensions to destroy our nation's finances and ransack our wallets.
For many years, government workers have enjoyed munificent benefits: relatively high salaries for lenient work demands; gold-plated retirement benefits that allow most of them to "retire" at a young age with very high pensions and generous health care benefits. Days off for holidays that few of us would even recognize.
All courtesy of us: the lowly taxpayer toiling away at jobs that may vanish at a moment's notice and that certainly don't guarantee the value of any retirement package. Not true for the ever-expanding ranks of government workers.
A recent Forbes magazine article highlights the absurd benefits that public sector workers enjoy on the job and off the job when they retire. The article, describing the leisurely life of retired government employees, could be lifted from the pages of Travel and Leisure magazine. The poster boy for the problem? A retired 42 year old policeman lollygagging on a beach, comfortable with his $2 million pension.
But there are more tales from across our land: a fireman who can be "retired" at 55, collect a pension and still collect a salary while keeping the job he "retired" from (don't ask about the logic-this is the government); a thirty eight year old teacher in New Jersey earning twice the state ‘s average income who works 10 months a year and barely contributes to a pension that will allow early retirement with quite the golden nest egg; California prison guards earning $300,000 a year.
In my own area, the superintendent of a small, suburban school district earns -- well, makes -- over $400,000 a year and has a slew of benefits to boot (medical care during his retirement, 100% comped for him and his family) . Remember that story when teachers' unions decry low salaries.
These anecdotal stories of staggering benefits received by the government worker elites are companied by reams of statistics that display the ticking time bomb of government salaries and golden parachutes. Forbes notes:
In public-sector America things just get better and better. The common presumption is that public servants forgo high wages in exchange for safe jobs and benefits. The reality is they get all three. State and local government workers get paid an average of $25.30 an hour, which is 33% higher than the private sector's $19, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Throw in pensions and other benefits and the gap widens to 42%.
Four in five public-sector workers have lifetime pensions, versus only one in five in the private sector.
Those pensions are guaranteed by state law, regardless of how pension investments fare, because you, the taxpayer, guarantee them with your tax dollars. It is the law, made by our legislators or incorporated in state constitutions.
The problem is national in scope and severity. Often public sector employees claim early retirement for disabilities -- and sometimes find loopholes to claim disabilities when none in fact exist -- and they are able to work in other jobs. Pensions are often boosted by goosing final years' salaries that are used to determine lifetime pension levels. The practice is called "spiking" and recently prompted criticism of a California fire chief who, three days before announcing his retirement (at the grand old age of 51, no less), had his salary suddenly increased so as to boost his annual pension to $241,000. The practice is unfair because employees or employers contribute to pensions based on salaries. When a salary is boosted around retirement, a shortfall is created between what a pension system has collected for an employee and what it must pay out for his lifetime.
Cooking the books to goose public pensions? What astute fiscal management! This problem is exacerbated by the fact that politicians use faulty and overly optimistic projections about future investment returns to justify high pension payouts. Politicians can run but they cannot hide for too long even if they rely on Stupid Debt Tricks to disguise the problems.
Remember the scandals over welfare queens and executive salaries? These are dwarfed by the ticking time bomb of inflated government salaries and crippling pension obligations for us to pay off in our taxes.
Already, communities are declaring bankruptcy, done in by skyrocketing public employee salaries and pension costs. We have only glimpsed the future and it is colored red-in more ways than one. As government revenues sink and government obligations rise, the red ink will spread across the nation; as will steps by Democrats to take our savings. We are only at Act One of this tragedy to come.
How bad is the problem?
This "Hidden Pension Fiasco" will cost us over one trillion dollars. Barack Obama and fellow traveling Democrats will hoist this problem on our shoulders via tax hikes yet to come. This trillion will be to benefit government workers, a key Democrat constituency, who know who butter their bread at our expense. Forbes:
"The tax hikes you face [to fully fund public pensions] will have a much more tangible impact on your financial life than anything a Social Security fix will entail," says Alicia Munnell, who runs Boston College's retirement center..
Government employees could care less about how well the investments backing their pensions fare, since they are guaranteed. Nor do they care who invests them. But we should. Pension funds are often turned over to politically connected firms, who may know the right people, but not the right way to invest. Our once and former car czar, Steven Rattner, is embroiled in what looks like a classic pay-to-play scandal involving politically connected investment boutiques being rewarded by politicians with deals to invest government pensions.
Money can be spread around by the pension fund managers to help politicians win campaigns. If their returns come up short, well, who cares? The taxpayers pay the price.
Why do government workers enjoy such sweet deals? They determine their own benefit packages, for one. But another fact plays a role: their powerful union, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), which can devote its resources -- money, votes, volunteer labor during campaigns -- to help elect Democrats win elections. The quid pro quo is sweetheart contracts that reward union members, and punish us, for the rest of their lives.
This is disgraceful.
Our money should not fund dream retirement packages for government workers. Government workers should not lead lives insulated from the risks and travails most of the public must bear. Are politicians too in hock to public unions to care that we may go in hock to fulfill their absurd deals?
Who will stop them?
Some far-sighted people are responding to this crisis in the making. These include an activist group seeking to publicize the problem websites that publicize the problem; even apostates who feel they have unjustly benefited and are outraged at ways public employees milk taxpayers. .
Even a legendary auto union leader, Barry Bluestone, sees risks of taxpayer revulsion leading to taxpayer revolt. How fitting that his op-ed (A Future for Public Unions) ran in the Boston Globe, home of the original Tea Party. Bluestone warns that the future of public unions is in jeopardy should they follow the practices that helped wreck the American-owned auto industry. He looks back at how auto unions often:
... insisted on job classifications and work rules that undermined efficiency and compromised the industry's competitiveness.
He sees history repeating itself:
Will public-sector unions follow the same path? Nationwide, these unions represent over 35 percent of federal, state, and local employees, roughly the same as in 1980. Over the years, they have won improved wages and benefits for their members. Yet the leaders of many of these unions, particularly in Massachusetts, seem to be setting the stage for the same kind of deterioration we see in unions like the UAW.
Teachers unions refuse to make changes in work practices that could help improve the chances of children succeeding in school. Police unions fight against lowering the cost of details at construction sites. The MBTA union and others representing transport workers lobby vociferously against reforming the state's transportation system. Municipal unions refuse to permit their local communities to join the Group Insurance Commission that would save their towns millions without compromising the quality of their members' medical care.
As a result, between 2000 and 2008, the price of state and local public services has increased by 41 percent nationally compared with 27 percent in private services. Even in the face of the worst fiscal crisis in decades, many state and local union leaders refuse to consider a wage freeze that could help preserve more of their members' jobs.
Bluestone notes that citizens and ultimately their elected representatives, will object to tax increases to pay for bloated union contracts and poor public service. Bluestone does not address the public pension time bomb that will only make our problems worse.
Of course, the key point is the need to make our elected representatives themselves pay for the steps they have taken over the years to enrich public unions at our expense. That is the only type of payback they understand: our votes. They should not come as cheaply or carelessly as they have in the past. They have cost us too much already.
Ed Lasky is news editor of American Thinker.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
This Belongs in the No Poop Sherlock File
Schools that accepted stimulus funds now have big budget holes. I pointed out months ago that this would happen if schools slept with the devil and used mortgaged money from the very children they are educating. Schools are supposedly filled with bright Superintendents, respectable school administrators and responsible school boards so why would they accept the stimulus funds in the first place? Greed not need. Budget holes are a result of greed and not need and our public schools are filled with greedy people. Thank you to the Croydon School Board members who did not grab the dangled carrot put out by Newport last Fall, thank you Croydon School Board Members for rejecting the stimulus funds.
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
The following piece appears on the My Way News website.
Schools face big budget holes as stimulus runs out
Feb 14, 2:54 PM (ET)
By TERENCE CHEA
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The nation's public schools are falling under severe financial stress as states slash education spending and drain federal stimulus money that staved off deep classroom cuts and widespread job losses.
School districts have already suffered big budget cuts since the recession began two years ago, but experts say the cash crunch will get a lot worse as states run out of stimulus dollars.
The result in many hard-hit districts: more teacher layoffs, larger class sizes, smaller paychecks, fewer electives and extracurricular activities, and decimated summer school programs.
The situation is particularly ugly in California, where school districts are preparing for mass layoffs and swelling class sizes as the state grapples with another massive budget shortfall.
The crisis concerns parents like Michelle Parker in San Francisco, where the school district is preparing to lay off hundreds of school employees and raise class sizes because it faces a $113 million budget deficit over next two years.
"I'm worried they're not going to have the quality education that's going to make them competitive in a global society," said Parker, who has three kids in district elementary schools.
Around the country, state governments are cutting money for schools as they grapple with huge budget gaps triggered by high unemployment, sluggish retail sales and falling real estate prices. A recent report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that 41 states face midyear budget shortfalls totaling $35 billion.
"The states are facing a dismal financial picture," said Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy.
The Obama administration's $787 billion federal stimulus package provided roughly $100 billion for education, including $54 billion to stabilize state budgets. In October the White House said the stimulus created or saved 250,000 education jobs.
But many states have used most of their stimulus money, leaving little to cushion budget cuts in the coming fiscal year.
Experts say the looming cuts could weaken the nation's public schools, worsen unemployment, undermine President Obama's education goals and widen the achievement gap between students in rich and poor districts.
Wealthier communities are filling school budget gaps with local tax increases and aggressive fundraising, but could worsen inequality and undermine the larger system for paying for public schools, said John Rogers, who heads the UCLA Institute for Democracy, Education and Access.
In Michigan, which has the nation's highest unemployment rate, school districts lost 2 percent of their state money this year
and could lose another 4 percent next year because of a projected government shortfall of $1.6 billion. Most of more than $1 billion in federal stimulus money is gone.
Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm has proposed an incentive program to entice about 39,000 public school employees to retire, but that plan has been criticized by the state's largest teachers union.
"Our districts don't know what the next step is," said Don Wotruba, deputy director with the Michigan Association of School Boards.
In Washington state, school districts that lost $1.7 billion in state money over the past two years are bracing for another round of cuts as lawmakers try to plug a $2.8 billion state deficit.
Seattle Public Schools, the state's largest district, plans to lay off nonunion staff, freeze hiring, create more efficient bus routes and increase class sizes further to close an expected budget shortfall of $24 million.
In Florida, public schools are being squeezed by state budget cuts and an unexpected increase in student enrollment, including an influx of Haitian students in the aftermath of Haiti's devastating earthquake.
Districts have been coping by closing schools during breaks, cutting energy costs and changing transportation routes, but the next round of cuts is expected to hit classrooms.
"We're at a point now where you just can't stretch that rubber band any further," said Bill Montford, CEO of the Florida Association of District School Superintendents.
In California, school districts have already laid off thousands of teachers, increased class sizes and slashed academic programs.
But state officials are warning the worst is yet to come because the state has already handed out most of its $6 billion in stimulus money.
Per-pupil spending for K-12 schools fell 4 percent last year and would be slashed another 8 percent under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed budget for 2010-2011, according to the state Legislative Analyst's Office.
"It's cataclysmic. It hasn't been seen since the Great Depression," said Bruce Fuller, an education professor at the University of California, Berkeley. "Now you're talking about sizable layoffs and further increases in class sizes."
More districts are expected to look like Vallejo City Unified School District, which has laid off most of its middle school guidance counselors and no longer offers music or art in elementary school. Last year it laid off 60 of its 860 teachers and raised K-3 class sizes from 20 to 28 students, and officials are considering more layoffs and even bigger class sizes this year, said Christal Watts, who heads the teachers union.
Lori Peck, a first-grade teacher at Vallejo's Patterson Elementary School, said the larger class size means she can no longer give her students the individual attention they need.
"I feel like my class in general is further behind where they should be," Peck said. "My concern is they don't reach the standards by the end of the year."
In San Francisco, Superintendent Carlos Garcia said he's worried the cuts will reverse the district's progress in narrowing the achievement gap between black and Hispanic students and their white and Asian classmates.
"These cuts hurt some of our poorest and neediest kids," Garcia said. "The decisions that school boards and superintendents have to make pretty much go against the grain of everything we believe in."
---
Associated Press Writers Tim Martin in Lansing, Mich., Donna Gordon Blankinship in Seattle, and Christine Armario in Miami contributed to this story.
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
The following piece appears on the My Way News website.
Schools face big budget holes as stimulus runs out
Feb 14, 2:54 PM (ET)
By TERENCE CHEA
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The nation's public schools are falling under severe financial stress as states slash education spending and drain federal stimulus money that staved off deep classroom cuts and widespread job losses.
School districts have already suffered big budget cuts since the recession began two years ago, but experts say the cash crunch will get a lot worse as states run out of stimulus dollars.
The result in many hard-hit districts: more teacher layoffs, larger class sizes, smaller paychecks, fewer electives and extracurricular activities, and decimated summer school programs.
The situation is particularly ugly in California, where school districts are preparing for mass layoffs and swelling class sizes as the state grapples with another massive budget shortfall.
The crisis concerns parents like Michelle Parker in San Francisco, where the school district is preparing to lay off hundreds of school employees and raise class sizes because it faces a $113 million budget deficit over next two years.
"I'm worried they're not going to have the quality education that's going to make them competitive in a global society," said Parker, who has three kids in district elementary schools.
Around the country, state governments are cutting money for schools as they grapple with huge budget gaps triggered by high unemployment, sluggish retail sales and falling real estate prices. A recent report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that 41 states face midyear budget shortfalls totaling $35 billion.
"The states are facing a dismal financial picture," said Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy.
The Obama administration's $787 billion federal stimulus package provided roughly $100 billion for education, including $54 billion to stabilize state budgets. In October the White House said the stimulus created or saved 250,000 education jobs.
But many states have used most of their stimulus money, leaving little to cushion budget cuts in the coming fiscal year.
Experts say the looming cuts could weaken the nation's public schools, worsen unemployment, undermine President Obama's education goals and widen the achievement gap between students in rich and poor districts.
Wealthier communities are filling school budget gaps with local tax increases and aggressive fundraising, but could worsen inequality and undermine the larger system for paying for public schools, said John Rogers, who heads the UCLA Institute for Democracy, Education and Access.
In Michigan, which has the nation's highest unemployment rate, school districts lost 2 percent of their state money this year
and could lose another 4 percent next year because of a projected government shortfall of $1.6 billion. Most of more than $1 billion in federal stimulus money is gone.
Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm has proposed an incentive program to entice about 39,000 public school employees to retire, but that plan has been criticized by the state's largest teachers union.
"Our districts don't know what the next step is," said Don Wotruba, deputy director with the Michigan Association of School Boards.
In Washington state, school districts that lost $1.7 billion in state money over the past two years are bracing for another round of cuts as lawmakers try to plug a $2.8 billion state deficit.
Seattle Public Schools, the state's largest district, plans to lay off nonunion staff, freeze hiring, create more efficient bus routes and increase class sizes further to close an expected budget shortfall of $24 million.
In Florida, public schools are being squeezed by state budget cuts and an unexpected increase in student enrollment, including an influx of Haitian students in the aftermath of Haiti's devastating earthquake.
Districts have been coping by closing schools during breaks, cutting energy costs and changing transportation routes, but the next round of cuts is expected to hit classrooms.
"We're at a point now where you just can't stretch that rubber band any further," said Bill Montford, CEO of the Florida Association of District School Superintendents.
In California, school districts have already laid off thousands of teachers, increased class sizes and slashed academic programs.
But state officials are warning the worst is yet to come because the state has already handed out most of its $6 billion in stimulus money.
Per-pupil spending for K-12 schools fell 4 percent last year and would be slashed another 8 percent under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed budget for 2010-2011, according to the state Legislative Analyst's Office.
"It's cataclysmic. It hasn't been seen since the Great Depression," said Bruce Fuller, an education professor at the University of California, Berkeley. "Now you're talking about sizable layoffs and further increases in class sizes."
More districts are expected to look like Vallejo City Unified School District, which has laid off most of its middle school guidance counselors and no longer offers music or art in elementary school. Last year it laid off 60 of its 860 teachers and raised K-3 class sizes from 20 to 28 students, and officials are considering more layoffs and even bigger class sizes this year, said Christal Watts, who heads the teachers union.
Lori Peck, a first-grade teacher at Vallejo's Patterson Elementary School, said the larger class size means she can no longer give her students the individual attention they need.
"I feel like my class in general is further behind where they should be," Peck said. "My concern is they don't reach the standards by the end of the year."
In San Francisco, Superintendent Carlos Garcia said he's worried the cuts will reverse the district's progress in narrowing the achievement gap between black and Hispanic students and their white and Asian classmates.
"These cuts hurt some of our poorest and neediest kids," Garcia said. "The decisions that school boards and superintendents have to make pretty much go against the grain of everything we believe in."
---
Associated Press Writers Tim Martin in Lansing, Mich., Donna Gordon Blankinship in Seattle, and Christine Armario in Miami contributed to this story.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Think Twice Before Opening the Door to the Census Workers
The following piece appears on theBig Government.com website.
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
Census 2010: Up to 800 Canvassers With Criminal Records
by Bob McCarty
Despite reports last fall that the Census Bureau had severed ties with community-organizing group known as ACORN, Americans might want to think twice before opening their doors to canvassers for the 2010 Census after reading what I discovered this morning.
According to a report issued by the Government Accountability Office Oct. 7, approximately 785 employees with disqualifying criminal records could still end up working for the Census Bureau this year. Excerpts (below) show the exact wording of the agency’s frightening information about the people who go door to door conducting interviews and collecting information for the 2010 Census:
The Bureau’s efforts to fingerprint employees, which was required as part of a criminal background check, did not proceed smoothly, in part because of training issues. As a result, over 35,000 temporary census workers — over a fifth of the address canvassing workforce — were hired despite the fact that their fingerprints could not be processed and they were not fully screened for employment eligibility.
…of the prints that could be processed, fingerprint results identified 1,800 temporary workers (1.1 percent of total hires) with criminal records that name check alone failed to identify. Of the 1,800 workers with criminal records, approximately 750 (42 percent) were terminated or were further reviewed because the Bureau determined their criminal records — which included crimes such as rape, manslaughter, and child abuse — disqualified them from census employment.
…we estimate that approximately 785 employees with unclassifiable prints could have disqualifying criminal records but still end up working for the Bureau
In addition to the news about the criminal element aspect of the 2010 Census, the 2009 report contained an estimate of the total cost of the 2010 Census being some $3.4 billion higher than the estimate in a 2006 GAO report. Compared to ex-cons knocking at my door, I guess I can live with cost overruns. But I digress.
Be sure to visit the Big Government.com website to view the links associated with the story.
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
Census 2010: Up to 800 Canvassers With Criminal Records
by Bob McCarty
Despite reports last fall that the Census Bureau had severed ties with community-organizing group known as ACORN, Americans might want to think twice before opening their doors to canvassers for the 2010 Census after reading what I discovered this morning.
According to a report issued by the Government Accountability Office Oct. 7, approximately 785 employees with disqualifying criminal records could still end up working for the Census Bureau this year. Excerpts (below) show the exact wording of the agency’s frightening information about the people who go door to door conducting interviews and collecting information for the 2010 Census:
The Bureau’s efforts to fingerprint employees, which was required as part of a criminal background check, did not proceed smoothly, in part because of training issues. As a result, over 35,000 temporary census workers — over a fifth of the address canvassing workforce — were hired despite the fact that their fingerprints could not be processed and they were not fully screened for employment eligibility.
…of the prints that could be processed, fingerprint results identified 1,800 temporary workers (1.1 percent of total hires) with criminal records that name check alone failed to identify. Of the 1,800 workers with criminal records, approximately 750 (42 percent) were terminated or were further reviewed because the Bureau determined their criminal records — which included crimes such as rape, manslaughter, and child abuse — disqualified them from census employment.
…we estimate that approximately 785 employees with unclassifiable prints could have disqualifying criminal records but still end up working for the Bureau
In addition to the news about the criminal element aspect of the 2010 Census, the 2009 report contained an estimate of the total cost of the 2010 Census being some $3.4 billion higher than the estimate in a 2006 GAO report. Compared to ex-cons knocking at my door, I guess I can live with cost overruns. But I digress.
Be sure to visit the Big Government.com website to view the links associated with the story.
Friday, February 12, 2010
HB 1580 Misunderstanding or Intentional Deception you Decide
The following piece appears on the NH Parents First website.
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
ON THE RECORD yesterday Feb. 9th podcast available Chenh.org website.
After pointing out that he down loaded ten pages of Supreme Court decisions which support the constitutional language found in HB 1580, Rep. Harvey pointed out one of the problems with adding this constitutional language into statute is the direct contradiction between this constitutional language in HB 1580 and RSA 193-A: 6 dealing with Home Education Records and Evaluation. He confirmed that the current home education law contradicts the constitution! That's a pretty good start: the Home Education law, RSA 193-A, is unconstitutional and has been for 20 years. Rep. Harvey concludes that the committee can't introduce this constitutional language until they have time to review the entire chapter of law. He voted to ITL the bill.
Rep. Casey stated that she does not disagree with the ideology in HB 1580, which is summarized by the constitutional language: "It is the natural, fundamental right of parents to determine and direct the education of their children." How could she disagree? She made this comment right after scolding Rep. Hutchinson for trying to "skip and hold hands" with homeschoolers under a more liberty-minded cooperative law and right before jumping onto Rep. Harvey's bandwagon about the inappropriate language in HB 1580 that might inadvertently advocate prostitution as an "lawful and honest field of employment." Rep. Casey voted to ITL the bill due to inappropriate language.
Please write, call, or visit members of the House Education Committee. They need to understand the following points before the committee vote next Tuesday, February 16th at 10:00 am:
Misunderstandings of House Education Sub-Committee:
---There's a substantial difference between the 1990 "purpose statement" of RSA 193-A and the "natural, fundamental rights" statement proposed in HB 1580. HB 1580 is not redundant. Redundancy must not be used as an excuse to ITL this bill!
1.) The "purpose statement" was enacted into chapter law in 1990 along with NH Home Education statute, RSA 193-A. It reads as follows:
279:2 Statement of Purpose. The general court recognizes, in the enactment of RSA 193-A as inserted by section 3 of this act, that it is the primary right and obligation of a parent to choose the appropriate educational alternative for a child under his care and supervision, as provided by law. One such alternative allows a parent to elect to educate a child at home as an alternative to attendance at a public or private school, in accordance with RSA 193-A. The general court further recognizes that home education is more individualized than instruction normally provided in the classroom setting.
2.) From House Bill 1580:
I. It is the natural, fundamental right of parents to determine and direct the education of their children.
The first statement allows parents a very narrow and limited choice of educational alternatives -- specifically, only those defined in statute. The second statement is much broader; it recognizes that it is a parent's right to instruct his child without any restriction. These statements are not the same.
---House Attorney "takes no position" but advises against adding constitutional language to statute as it will "create" problems. Adding constitutional language to statute does not create problems. If contradictions exist between constitutional language and statutes, these problems need immediate correction. This is exactly why HB 1580 is necessary.
---Rep. Casey argued that Art. 3 of NH Constitution may limit certain natural rights. Yes, she is correct.
[Art.] 3. [Society, its Organization and Purposes.] When men enter into a state of society, they surrender up some of their natural rights to that society, in order to ensure the protection of others; and, without such an equivalent, the surrender is void.
---However, due process is required before any natural rights may be restricted or terminated. Due process protects individuals from arbitrary authority and guarantees fundamental fairness, justice and liberty.
---Parents who abuse or neglect their children are given due process in court before their parental rights are restricted or terminated. Truants are given due process in courts before any corrective action is taken. Yet homeschoolers are presumed guilty if they don't annually prove their innocence with assessments and evaluations. This presumption of guilt is backwards. Responsible parents should not be treated like criminals.
---The enumerated list of subjects in HB 1580 is not arbitrary. It was taken directly from the home education statute, RSA 193-A to indicate to the commitment level required by parents in fulfilling their duty to instruct their children. This compulsory education list does not constrain parents, but clarifies their duty. It is not inconsistent with the ideology of this bill. Also, this list can easily be amended to meet the concerns of the community as Art. 3 of the NH Constitution indicates.
---The "lawful and honest employment" language in HB 1580 comes directly from the Ludlow Code of Laws of 1650 which is basic fundamental law of the New England colonies, specifically Connecticut, representing the concern that all communities share for a well-educated populace.
---The language of HB 1580 is appropriate. Each section is concise with a very specific and very clear purpose. Parents, not the state, have the primary duty to instruct their children. HB 1580 exempts parents from compulsory attendance while restraining them with a compulsory education law.
---The current version of HB 1580 under consideration is the amended version, which eliminates section (9), which was an explicit exemption from the compulsory attendance law. This amended version is shorter and easier to follow, without any loss of functionality. 20 words in a constitutional statement, plus another 50 words, which includes the list of subjects to be instructed.
HB 1580 text
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
ON THE RECORD yesterday Feb. 9th podcast available Chenh.org website.
After pointing out that he down loaded ten pages of Supreme Court decisions which support the constitutional language found in HB 1580, Rep. Harvey pointed out one of the problems with adding this constitutional language into statute is the direct contradiction between this constitutional language in HB 1580 and RSA 193-A: 6 dealing with Home Education Records and Evaluation. He confirmed that the current home education law contradicts the constitution! That's a pretty good start: the Home Education law, RSA 193-A, is unconstitutional and has been for 20 years. Rep. Harvey concludes that the committee can't introduce this constitutional language until they have time to review the entire chapter of law. He voted to ITL the bill.
Rep. Casey stated that she does not disagree with the ideology in HB 1580, which is summarized by the constitutional language: "It is the natural, fundamental right of parents to determine and direct the education of their children." How could she disagree? She made this comment right after scolding Rep. Hutchinson for trying to "skip and hold hands" with homeschoolers under a more liberty-minded cooperative law and right before jumping onto Rep. Harvey's bandwagon about the inappropriate language in HB 1580 that might inadvertently advocate prostitution as an "lawful and honest field of employment." Rep. Casey voted to ITL the bill due to inappropriate language.
Please write, call, or visit members of the House Education Committee. They need to understand the following points before the committee vote next Tuesday, February 16th at 10:00 am:
Misunderstandings of House Education Sub-Committee:
---There's a substantial difference between the 1990 "purpose statement" of RSA 193-A and the "natural, fundamental rights" statement proposed in HB 1580. HB 1580 is not redundant. Redundancy must not be used as an excuse to ITL this bill!
1.) The "purpose statement" was enacted into chapter law in 1990 along with NH Home Education statute, RSA 193-A. It reads as follows:
279:2 Statement of Purpose. The general court recognizes, in the enactment of RSA 193-A as inserted by section 3 of this act, that it is the primary right and obligation of a parent to choose the appropriate educational alternative for a child under his care and supervision, as provided by law. One such alternative allows a parent to elect to educate a child at home as an alternative to attendance at a public or private school, in accordance with RSA 193-A. The general court further recognizes that home education is more individualized than instruction normally provided in the classroom setting.
2.) From House Bill 1580:
I. It is the natural, fundamental right of parents to determine and direct the education of their children.
The first statement allows parents a very narrow and limited choice of educational alternatives -- specifically, only those defined in statute. The second statement is much broader; it recognizes that it is a parent's right to instruct his child without any restriction. These statements are not the same.
---House Attorney "takes no position" but advises against adding constitutional language to statute as it will "create" problems. Adding constitutional language to statute does not create problems. If contradictions exist between constitutional language and statutes, these problems need immediate correction. This is exactly why HB 1580 is necessary.
---Rep. Casey argued that Art. 3 of NH Constitution may limit certain natural rights. Yes, she is correct.
[Art.] 3. [Society, its Organization and Purposes.] When men enter into a state of society, they surrender up some of their natural rights to that society, in order to ensure the protection of others; and, without such an equivalent, the surrender is void.
---However, due process is required before any natural rights may be restricted or terminated. Due process protects individuals from arbitrary authority and guarantees fundamental fairness, justice and liberty.
---Parents who abuse or neglect their children are given due process in court before their parental rights are restricted or terminated. Truants are given due process in courts before any corrective action is taken. Yet homeschoolers are presumed guilty if they don't annually prove their innocence with assessments and evaluations. This presumption of guilt is backwards. Responsible parents should not be treated like criminals.
---The enumerated list of subjects in HB 1580 is not arbitrary. It was taken directly from the home education statute, RSA 193-A to indicate to the commitment level required by parents in fulfilling their duty to instruct their children. This compulsory education list does not constrain parents, but clarifies their duty. It is not inconsistent with the ideology of this bill. Also, this list can easily be amended to meet the concerns of the community as Art. 3 of the NH Constitution indicates.
---The "lawful and honest employment" language in HB 1580 comes directly from the Ludlow Code of Laws of 1650 which is basic fundamental law of the New England colonies, specifically Connecticut, representing the concern that all communities share for a well-educated populace.
---The language of HB 1580 is appropriate. Each section is concise with a very specific and very clear purpose. Parents, not the state, have the primary duty to instruct their children. HB 1580 exempts parents from compulsory attendance while restraining them with a compulsory education law.
---The current version of HB 1580 under consideration is the amended version, which eliminates section (9), which was an explicit exemption from the compulsory attendance law. This amended version is shorter and easier to follow, without any loss of functionality. 20 words in a constitutional statement, plus another 50 words, which includes the list of subjects to be instructed.
HB 1580 text
Thursday, February 11, 2010
The NEA Is Not about Education it is about Unions
Parents need to wake up, public schools are about meeting the greedy desires of most of the educators, administrators and other interests groups within the schools that suck off the teat of the taxpayer. Most don't give a darn about your child's education or your desire to educate your child as you see fit or allowing you to take your child's tax dollars to the institution of choice. Just look at what Michelle Caccavaro and the other Newport bullies are doing to try to derail the town's desire to break the agreement with Newport. They don't care that the majority of the town would like to get out of the agreement. They also think that those that choose to get out of the agreement just do not know what is good for them. Educators care about themselves they have hijacked public schools as their own entitlement program.
Don't believe me just wait for the town meeting.
Cathy
The following piece appears on Hot Air.com. Feeding the beast at the local level, feeds the beast all the way to DC this is one case where trickle up economics works.
A Less Perfect Union
POSTED AT 6:06 PM ON FEBRUARY 11, 2010 BY DOCTOR ZERO
John Stossel reports on the forced unionization of day-care centers in Flint, Michigan:
"Michelle Berry runs a day-care business out of her home in Flint, MI. She thought that she owned her own business, but Berry’s been told she is now a government employee and union member. It’s not voluntary. Suddenly, Berry and 40,000 other Michigan private day-care providers have learned that union dues are being taken out of the child-care subsidies the state sends them. The “union” is a creation of AFSCME, the government workers union, and the United Auto Workers."
Stossel explains that AFSCME receives about $3.7 million from the Department of Human Services. It achieved its conquest of the Michigan day-care industry through a mail-in vote, which included votes from only 6,000 of the 40,000 day-care providers in the state. You can expect much more aggressive unionizing if some version of the Card Check bill ever manages to slither past Congress.
The current tribute unions demand from their Democrat servants is the “High Road Contracting Policy,” which would give preference for federal contracts to companies that pay a government-defined “living wage,” which would be suspiciously close to the wages unions already demand for their members. As with all subsidies, this living wage would be extracted from the pockets of taxpayers, who will be expected to go on living while their take-home wages shrink, and their jobs evaporate.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with the concept of private-sector labor unions. Every worker is the vendor of his own time, and since individuals have the right of free association, there’s nothing immoral about a group of people with related skills banding together to engage in collective bargaining. Over the past century, however, unions have bathed in the radiation of centralized State power, and mutated from defensive alliances of exploited workers, into de facto arms of the government.
In order to prosper, a union requires two essential advantages: solidarity and exclusivity. Solidarity means the members of the union must remain loyal, provide a steady stream of funding through payment of dues, and obey the instructions of the union leadership. There’s not much power to be gained from calling a strike, if half the union membership decides to go into work anyway, and collective bargaining agreements must be honored with minimal debate.
Unions also require privileged access to labor markets, or else independent workers willing to hire on for lower wages will undercut them. A company paying for expensive union labor cannot compete with an open shop that doesn’t have to pay artificially high wages, or provide elaborate benefits. A union could gain exclusivity by providing a vastly superior work product, providing value equal to their high wages. Naturally, the public-relations arms of labor unions like to claim this is the way they operate… but in the real world of 2010, it’s rarely the case.
There is a much easier way for unions to gain exclusive control of labor markets: they can barter the money and voting power they gain from the solidarity of their membership, to politicians with a ravenous appetite for these delicacies. In exchange, the politicians can use the compulsive power of the State to create monopoly playgrounds for the unions. The teachers’ unions are a particularly grotesque example, pushing an obviously inferior work product onto a captive population of students, while politicians patrol the schoolyard fence with truncheons of rolled-up campaign donations.
The National Education Association is the largest union in America, and one of its most powerful political forces, donating millions to Democrat candidates and spending millions more in lobbying… including over a million dollars in donations to the criminal organization ACORN over the last two years. The NEA also provides invaluable political indoctrination, inserting propaganda for statist causes like global warming into education curricula. In exchange, the Democrats are universally sworn to oppose vouchers and school privatization, no matter how much it hurts other constituencies they profess to care about. There are many fine teachers among the ranks of the NEA, but their individual merits vanish beneath the vast corruption of the union establishment.
We’ve also seen billions of taxpayer dollars spent to bail out General Motors, for the benefit of the labor unions whose parasitic embrace ended its free-market life. The unions set a wage level that rendered GM unable to turn a profit, becoming what Mark Steyn describes as “a vast welfare plan with a tiny loss-making commercial sector.” Every American taxpayer was fleeced by the Obama Administration to rescue the unions from the consequences of their actions. Why should they mediate their demands or become competitive with independent labor, when they can hire politicians to follow them around with a club in one hand, and lifesaving cash transfusions in the other?
These events are entirely predictable, because where the supply of votes and political cash from unions meets the demand from Big Government, a transaction is bound to occur. In a centralized state, the power of a political collective is vastly greater than individuals, or most corporations. Plenty of big companies spend cash buying political influence, producing all manner of mischief… but they can’t deliver the kind of packaged voting power that a labor union or racial grievance organization can provide, because they cannot compel – or even encourage – their employees to vote a certain way. The NEA and AFSCME have a lot more than dollars to spend in the political marketplace.
This kind of thing is inevitable, as long as we allow political control over industry, and place huge amounts of tax money in the hands of our government. The depth of corruption can be measured with the value of a congressional vote… or the presidential seal. Despite its overwhelming presence in every aspect of our daily lives, Big Government acquires many characteristics of anarchy, in which the diminishing resources of a moribund economy become the spoils for feuding warlords. One of the hallmarks of civilization is that no one should ever discover they have involuntarily been conscripted into a gang, or the government that increasingly resembles one.
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
Don't believe me just wait for the town meeting.
Cathy
The following piece appears on Hot Air.com. Feeding the beast at the local level, feeds the beast all the way to DC this is one case where trickle up economics works.
A Less Perfect Union
POSTED AT 6:06 PM ON FEBRUARY 11, 2010 BY DOCTOR ZERO
John Stossel reports on the forced unionization of day-care centers in Flint, Michigan:
"Michelle Berry runs a day-care business out of her home in Flint, MI. She thought that she owned her own business, but Berry’s been told she is now a government employee and union member. It’s not voluntary. Suddenly, Berry and 40,000 other Michigan private day-care providers have learned that union dues are being taken out of the child-care subsidies the state sends them. The “union” is a creation of AFSCME, the government workers union, and the United Auto Workers."
Stossel explains that AFSCME receives about $3.7 million from the Department of Human Services. It achieved its conquest of the Michigan day-care industry through a mail-in vote, which included votes from only 6,000 of the 40,000 day-care providers in the state. You can expect much more aggressive unionizing if some version of the Card Check bill ever manages to slither past Congress.
The current tribute unions demand from their Democrat servants is the “High Road Contracting Policy,” which would give preference for federal contracts to companies that pay a government-defined “living wage,” which would be suspiciously close to the wages unions already demand for their members. As with all subsidies, this living wage would be extracted from the pockets of taxpayers, who will be expected to go on living while their take-home wages shrink, and their jobs evaporate.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with the concept of private-sector labor unions. Every worker is the vendor of his own time, and since individuals have the right of free association, there’s nothing immoral about a group of people with related skills banding together to engage in collective bargaining. Over the past century, however, unions have bathed in the radiation of centralized State power, and mutated from defensive alliances of exploited workers, into de facto arms of the government.
In order to prosper, a union requires two essential advantages: solidarity and exclusivity. Solidarity means the members of the union must remain loyal, provide a steady stream of funding through payment of dues, and obey the instructions of the union leadership. There’s not much power to be gained from calling a strike, if half the union membership decides to go into work anyway, and collective bargaining agreements must be honored with minimal debate.
Unions also require privileged access to labor markets, or else independent workers willing to hire on for lower wages will undercut them. A company paying for expensive union labor cannot compete with an open shop that doesn’t have to pay artificially high wages, or provide elaborate benefits. A union could gain exclusivity by providing a vastly superior work product, providing value equal to their high wages. Naturally, the public-relations arms of labor unions like to claim this is the way they operate… but in the real world of 2010, it’s rarely the case.
There is a much easier way for unions to gain exclusive control of labor markets: they can barter the money and voting power they gain from the solidarity of their membership, to politicians with a ravenous appetite for these delicacies. In exchange, the politicians can use the compulsive power of the State to create monopoly playgrounds for the unions. The teachers’ unions are a particularly grotesque example, pushing an obviously inferior work product onto a captive population of students, while politicians patrol the schoolyard fence with truncheons of rolled-up campaign donations.
The National Education Association is the largest union in America, and one of its most powerful political forces, donating millions to Democrat candidates and spending millions more in lobbying… including over a million dollars in donations to the criminal organization ACORN over the last two years. The NEA also provides invaluable political indoctrination, inserting propaganda for statist causes like global warming into education curricula. In exchange, the Democrats are universally sworn to oppose vouchers and school privatization, no matter how much it hurts other constituencies they profess to care about. There are many fine teachers among the ranks of the NEA, but their individual merits vanish beneath the vast corruption of the union establishment.
We’ve also seen billions of taxpayer dollars spent to bail out General Motors, for the benefit of the labor unions whose parasitic embrace ended its free-market life. The unions set a wage level that rendered GM unable to turn a profit, becoming what Mark Steyn describes as “a vast welfare plan with a tiny loss-making commercial sector.” Every American taxpayer was fleeced by the Obama Administration to rescue the unions from the consequences of their actions. Why should they mediate their demands or become competitive with independent labor, when they can hire politicians to follow them around with a club in one hand, and lifesaving cash transfusions in the other?
These events are entirely predictable, because where the supply of votes and political cash from unions meets the demand from Big Government, a transaction is bound to occur. In a centralized state, the power of a political collective is vastly greater than individuals, or most corporations. Plenty of big companies spend cash buying political influence, producing all manner of mischief… but they can’t deliver the kind of packaged voting power that a labor union or racial grievance organization can provide, because they cannot compel – or even encourage – their employees to vote a certain way. The NEA and AFSCME have a lot more than dollars to spend in the political marketplace.
This kind of thing is inevitable, as long as we allow political control over industry, and place huge amounts of tax money in the hands of our government. The depth of corruption can be measured with the value of a congressional vote… or the presidential seal. Despite its overwhelming presence in every aspect of our daily lives, Big Government acquires many characteristics of anarchy, in which the diminishing resources of a moribund economy become the spoils for feuding warlords. One of the hallmarks of civilization is that no one should ever discover they have involuntarily been conscripted into a gang, or the government that increasingly resembles one.
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Teacher Unions Protect Some Child Molesters
The following piece appeared on Big Journalism.com.
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
Teachers Unions: The Child Molester’s Best Friend
Posted by James Hudnall Feb 9th 2010
Imagine if you could get full salary and benefits for a decent paying job and you didn’t have to work to get it. All you had to do was be accused of a crime.
What crime, you ask? How about molesting school kids? That’s what the teachers‘ unions in states like California and New York State are doing: coddling accused criminals — at your expense. And it’s probably going on elsewhere as well.
Believe it or not, New York is a lot tougher on them than California. From the New York Post:
"At the beginning of his 32-year career as a math teacher in Queens, Francisco Olivares allegedly im pregnated and married a 16-year-old girl he had met when she was a 13-year-old student at his Corona junior high, IS 61, the Post learned.
He sexually molested two 12-year-old pupils a decade later and another student four years after that, the city Department of Education charged. But none of it kept Olivares, 60, from collecting his $94,154 salary.
He hasn’t set foot in a classroom in seven years since beating criminal and disciplinary charges. Chancellor Joel Klein keeps Olivares in a “rubber room,” a district office where teachers accused of misconduct sit all day with nothing to do."
That would be $94K a year for sitting around drinking coffee and reading the paper. Sounds like a DMV job, without the actual “work.” The reason he wasn’t fired is “state laws” and “union rules.” The unholy alliance of unions and government is one of the things that has led us to the mess we’re in now. When you can’t fire government workers, you’re stuck with the dregs sucking away tax dollars in the form of their bloated salaries and benefits. And in many cases, they will get well-funded retirement packages for years of incompetence, thievery or worse. All in the name of “public service.”
But Olivares’s fate in New York is hard time compared to the Golden State. In California, accused teachers are paid to stay at home. In just the Los Angeles Unified School District alone, the cost of these teachers sitting on their hands is helping drive the state into bankruptcy.
"About 160 teachers and other staff sit idly in buildings scattered around the sprawling district, waiting for allegations of misconduct to be resolved.
The housed are accused, among other things, of sexual contact with students, harassment, theft or drug possession. Nearly all are being paid. All told, they collect about $10 million in salaries per year — even as the district is contemplating widespread layoffs of teachers because of a financial shortfall."
Now you may say that these teachers were only accused, they well may be innocent. Yes, some of them may be. And hopefully the innocent will be cleared. But in many incidents, such as the Olivares case, there is no doubt because there’s a provable history, including a list of victims. And yet the state continues to pay his salary.
This is becoming a common practice in many states where teachers’ unions hold sway. When they can’t fire them, in some cases schools have had to offer instructors cash payouts to quit. That’s right, cash bribes to quit after committing some kind of crime.
Unions and public sector jobs are the most unholy alliance of our times. These beasts should never have mated, because they’ve issued forth monstrous offspring in the form of dire consequences that no one probably saw coming. And many victims have been left in their destructive wake.
You have two bureaucracies with the dual intent of protecting their power at all cost and increasing in size every year. These goals lead to a sickening metastasis that rots both entities over time until they become bloated, cancerous threats to the health of the body politic. Public service jobs now pay more, offer more generous guaranteed benefits and are far more difficult to lose (in fact, almost impossible) than those in the private sector. The unions have made sure of that, and the result is that every private sector job is now viewed by an increasingly ravenous and rapacious government-union-lawyer complex the way a vampire eyes a tasty carotid artery.
While many pubic sector jobs have some intrinsic value, such as police, firemen, public works, and yes, teachers, the unions have created a system in which those who should be terminated can’t be. Not with increasingly absurd legal hoops to be jumped through that the unions keep demanding and effecting. This leads to the worst kind of corruption and waste at a time when the nation’s states and federal government are drowning in unsustainable debts and a coming tidal wave of unfunded mandates.
When the government protects and pays criminals with our tax dollars, it’s time for some real change.
Be sure to visit the Big Journalism website to see the links associated with the story below.
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
Teachers Unions: The Child Molester’s Best Friend
Posted by James Hudnall Feb 9th 2010
Imagine if you could get full salary and benefits for a decent paying job and you didn’t have to work to get it. All you had to do was be accused of a crime.
What crime, you ask? How about molesting school kids? That’s what the teachers‘ unions in states like California and New York State are doing: coddling accused criminals — at your expense. And it’s probably going on elsewhere as well.
Believe it or not, New York is a lot tougher on them than California. From the New York Post:
"At the beginning of his 32-year career as a math teacher in Queens, Francisco Olivares allegedly im pregnated and married a 16-year-old girl he had met when she was a 13-year-old student at his Corona junior high, IS 61, the Post learned.
He sexually molested two 12-year-old pupils a decade later and another student four years after that, the city Department of Education charged. But none of it kept Olivares, 60, from collecting his $94,154 salary.
He hasn’t set foot in a classroom in seven years since beating criminal and disciplinary charges. Chancellor Joel Klein keeps Olivares in a “rubber room,” a district office where teachers accused of misconduct sit all day with nothing to do."
That would be $94K a year for sitting around drinking coffee and reading the paper. Sounds like a DMV job, without the actual “work.” The reason he wasn’t fired is “state laws” and “union rules.” The unholy alliance of unions and government is one of the things that has led us to the mess we’re in now. When you can’t fire government workers, you’re stuck with the dregs sucking away tax dollars in the form of their bloated salaries and benefits. And in many cases, they will get well-funded retirement packages for years of incompetence, thievery or worse. All in the name of “public service.”
But Olivares’s fate in New York is hard time compared to the Golden State. In California, accused teachers are paid to stay at home. In just the Los Angeles Unified School District alone, the cost of these teachers sitting on their hands is helping drive the state into bankruptcy.
"About 160 teachers and other staff sit idly in buildings scattered around the sprawling district, waiting for allegations of misconduct to be resolved.
The housed are accused, among other things, of sexual contact with students, harassment, theft or drug possession. Nearly all are being paid. All told, they collect about $10 million in salaries per year — even as the district is contemplating widespread layoffs of teachers because of a financial shortfall."
Now you may say that these teachers were only accused, they well may be innocent. Yes, some of them may be. And hopefully the innocent will be cleared. But in many incidents, such as the Olivares case, there is no doubt because there’s a provable history, including a list of victims. And yet the state continues to pay his salary.
This is becoming a common practice in many states where teachers’ unions hold sway. When they can’t fire them, in some cases schools have had to offer instructors cash payouts to quit. That’s right, cash bribes to quit after committing some kind of crime.
Unions and public sector jobs are the most unholy alliance of our times. These beasts should never have mated, because they’ve issued forth monstrous offspring in the form of dire consequences that no one probably saw coming. And many victims have been left in their destructive wake.
You have two bureaucracies with the dual intent of protecting their power at all cost and increasing in size every year. These goals lead to a sickening metastasis that rots both entities over time until they become bloated, cancerous threats to the health of the body politic. Public service jobs now pay more, offer more generous guaranteed benefits and are far more difficult to lose (in fact, almost impossible) than those in the private sector. The unions have made sure of that, and the result is that every private sector job is now viewed by an increasingly ravenous and rapacious government-union-lawyer complex the way a vampire eyes a tasty carotid artery.
While many pubic sector jobs have some intrinsic value, such as police, firemen, public works, and yes, teachers, the unions have created a system in which those who should be terminated can’t be. Not with increasingly absurd legal hoops to be jumped through that the unions keep demanding and effecting. This leads to the worst kind of corruption and waste at a time when the nation’s states and federal government are drowning in unsustainable debts and a coming tidal wave of unfunded mandates.
When the government protects and pays criminals with our tax dollars, it’s time for some real change.
Be sure to visit the Big Journalism website to see the links associated with the story below.
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