Anthony Cody: Our union leaders are in denial.
The NEA Representative Assembly in Atlanta last July. Delegates tried to separate Common Core and high stakes testing. At the NEA Representative Assembly held last July in Atlanta, delegates refused to put the union on record opposing Common Core Standards (CCSS), but were willing to denounce the high stakes assessments that were driven by the standards. This was an attempt by delegates to reac
Saturday coffee.
Joseph Albers’ Homage to the Square. It is hard for me to believe it will get to 90 degrees today in Chicago. It is a beautiful comfortable morning on the back porch. Our neighbor’s chickens finished making their morning noise. Yes, our neighbors have two chickens. I have heard that Logan Square has the highest per capita chicken population in the city. Chickens. Bikes. And hipster bars. Earlier
YESTERDAY
This is real outrage, folks. And I’m not alone.
Trotsky on Twitter? No. Paul Revere with a blog. Joe Williams, who shills for the corporate reform group Democrats for Education Reform, once threatened to kick my ass. Perhaps he felt I had crossed a red line. It seems Presidents and corporate school reformers can both act like 4th grade boys sometimes. No offense to 4th grade boys. In a recent post, Joe describes me, my brother and Shanker In
LIfe in Rahm’s Chicago. “I didn’t know about it until I read it in the papers,” says Emanuel.
Indicted Chicago Comptroller Amer Ahmad. He was watching city pensions. Rahm claims he didn’t know a thing about the shady dealings of ex-city Comptroller Amer Ahmad until he read it in the newspapers. I guess now he knows some more this morning. The Tribune published a long investigative (I know. Right?) linking the Ohio laundryman Amer Ahmad and the Mayor’s Chief Financial Officer, Lois Scott.
SEP 05
The in box. From Senator Dan Biss. What the pension committee is thinking.
Senator Dan Biss, pension bomber. September 4, 2013 Dear Friends, I am writing to update you on the progress of the pension conference committee. There are two topics that I would like to address: the timing of our work, and recent news reports about items under consideration by the committee. Regarding timing, I know that many people are frustrated that the committee has not yet c
SEP 04
Will Guzzardi running for the Illinois 39th state representative seat. “Our state needs to meet its end of the bargain with a long-term sustainable plan for new revenues.”
Logan Square activist Will Guzzardi is running against Representative Toni Berrios. Toni Berrios is the daughter of Machine Boss Joe Berrios, County Assessor and Democrat Party Chairman. Nobody believes his daughter would be the local state rep if her last name wasn’t Berrios. Recently I had to a chance to ask Will Guzzardi about the issue of state public employee pensions, Mike Madigan’s Senate
Interview with myself.
Q: You’re running as a retired delegate to the IEA Representative Assembly? A: I’ve been elected as a delegate for over twenty years. Except last year when the Springfield office of the IEA lost my paperwork moving my active membership to retired membership. But, yes. I sent my nomination form to President Klickna by certified mail yesterday. Q: What’s the process? A: It’s easy, really. Retired
The in box. Machinists Union: 44 million reasons to defend pensions.
The IAM cited “44 million reasons” to defend America’s pensions in a new full-page ad published in USA Today. The ad ran from Friday, August 30, 2013 to Labor Day, Monday, September 2, 2013. To see a copy, click here. “More than 44 million American workers faithfully contributed part of their paychecks every week into U.S. pension funds based on the promise that they would have a measure
SEP 03
No comment. Come up with your own.
Photo: Springfield Journal-Register Springfield Journal-Register: While the IEA is focused on improving education for students in Illinois, they also must fight the perception that their overriding concern is the well being of teachers. One of Klickna’s goals as president is to change how the general public perceives her organization. “If you say ‘association,’ everyone thinks you’re great. If
Who will the IEA take to the dance? Or will we dance alone?
AFSCME President Lee Saunders. “Quinn won’t forget who took him to the dance,” IEA President Cinda Klickna reportedly told a reader of this blog. That was a couple of years ago. More recently AFSCME President Lee Saunders was quoted as saying this about Pat Quinn and other turncoat Democrats. I am sick and tired of the fair-weather Democrats. They date us, take us to the prom, marry us, and the
This morning Philadelphia teachers are working without a contract.
Philly teachers rally in 2011. This morning Philadelphia teachers are working even though their contract expired this weekend. That’s not what I said yesterday. There was a flurry of Facebook reports that the Philly teachers had voted to strike. I did a quick Google search. It appeared to be true. It was true. Ten years ago. I should have noticed that the ABC story I posted mentioned a Philly M
SEP 02
Breaking. Enough is enough. Philly teachers vote to walk out.
ABC: Thousands of teachers in the nation’s sixth-largest school district voted today to hold their first strike since 1981, after a Labor Day breakdown in contract negotiations. Members of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers voted unanimously in favor of a walkout during a morning executive meeting, union officials said. Classes are scheduled to begin on Thursday for the district’s 200,000 stu
You can’t scare me, I’m stickin’ to the union.
Happy Labor Day, the US Congress’ alternative to May Day. The politicians believed that May Day, which originated here in Chicago, had too rough and militant a content to it. And it had too many Reds involved. However, Labor Day has its roots in Chicago as well. As Paul Krugman points out in today’s NY Times Op-Ed page: Here’s how it happened: In 1894 Pullman workers, facing wage cuts in the wak
SEP 01
Guest blog. “Nothing is written.”
By Mark Stefanik Accept Common Core. Forget Collective Bargaining for compensation and benefits. Accept new teacher evaluations which don’t evaluate for good teaching. Forget tenure. Accept impoverished retirements. Forget pension theft. WHY? Because it is coming. Because that’s reality, Jack. Or so our union leadership would have us believe. They would have us believe we are impotent in th
Labor Day Weekend reads.
Why is Teach For America sending its teachers on Israel junkets? What would Muhammad do? A rebutall to Obama’s war argument. The continuing chaos in Rahm’s Chicago. They call us Chiraq. Rahm’s De Paul basketball arena? I swear I will never step foot in the joint. You make that pledge too. Labor Day: Workers are striking even if they don’t have a union. Seattle teachers reach a tentative agreeme
AUG 31
Catching hell.
NEA President Dennis Van Roekel spoke to the NEA Retired Conference in Atlanta last July just prior to the NEA RA. He spoke – not from notes as far as I could tell – and said that as a result of defeats for collective bargaining rights in several states, the NEA would be backing off those issues over the next couple of years and focus more on issues of teacher quality. I checked around to make sur
Saturday coffee.
NY’s Bill de Blasio and his wife. Union support him. Except for the teachers union. After a day in which the temperature rose to the upper 90s, a summer storm full of thunder, lightening, wind and hail swept through Chicago early last night, sending poor Ulysses under the bed. I love the sound and feel of these midwestern storms. I grew up in LA where it rains for days or not for months. In Chi