Fred Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher who is just looking at the data.:
Fred All Week Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher
NEA RA. Winding down.
I’ve been in Denver since last Friday. You know you have been somewhere too long when you know where the self-service laundry room is in the Hampton Inn and are blogging while the second load is in the washing machine. This will all end sometime late tomorrow afternoon. We will finish after what must be a record 107 New Business Items, a half dozen legislative platform amendments, constitutional
NEA RA. Delegates to Arne: Leave.
A New Business Item critical of Arne Duncan has been brought to the RA for a number of years. In 2010 we passed a New Business Item, 13 Things We Hate About Arne Duncan. At the 2011 and 2012 no confidence in Arne NBIs failed by narrow margins. Today the RA passed by a similarly narrow margin. It calls for Arne to leave the Department of Education. It was so close that there were calls for a roll-
NEA RA. The largest union in the United States has elected three women of color to lead it.
NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia, Vice President Becky Pringle and Secretary-Treasurer Princess Moss. Put aside a moment all the debate (actually too little debate) about Common Core and high-stake testing. Or the other 100 New Business Items that will be considered before the NEA Representative Assembly wraps up on Sunday. The 9,000 delegates did something quite remarkable this morning. The el
The courts pension decision and the governor’s race.
Yesterday’s Illinois Supreme Court decision is cause for celebration. Six of the seven judges agreed that the pension protection clause of the state’s constitution meant what it said. Contractual pension benefits between the state and all government bodies in the state cannot be diminished or impaired. And AG Attorney Genera Lisa Madigan’s claim of police powers that trump the pension protection
JUL 03
NEA RA. A 45 minute break.
It was a long morning of speeches. There were speeches from candidates for a bunch of NEA executive offices, including President. And Dennis Van Roekel gave his farewell address as he enters the relatively large club of former NEA Presidents. He gave pretty much the same speech – although a lot longer – that he gave to the Retired conference that was – it seems like – a month ago. Although it was
Pension news while I was in the convention hall…
While I am participating and covering the NEA RA, Glen, John and Ken are posting about today’s Illinois Supreme Court decision upholding the pension protection clause and ruling against the imposition of state police powers to grab our pensions. Glen Brown: “The Illinois Supreme Court ruled [6 - 1] today that subsidized health care premiums for retired state employees are protected under the Il
Bob Lyons. Pension theft in Illinois almost certainly doomed.
- Bob Lyons represents retirees on the TRS board of trustees. THURSDAY, July 3, 2014 PENSION REFORM LAWS ALMOST CERTAINLY DOOMED HEALTH INSURANCE RULING IS CRYSTAL CLEAR In a sweeping 6-1 decision, the Illinois Supreme Court today struck down an attempt to force government retirees to pay more for their subsidized state health insurance, and in the process made it abundantly clear that the new pen
Denver Thursday forecast. Sunny with intermittent blogging.
In a break between the morning Illinois caucus and the opening of the RA in an hour. Good news from back home today. The Illinois Supremes ruled 6-1 in a case involving public employee health care. They rejected the two key arguments that the state is making in the Senate Bill 1 case. They ruled against the state on both the pension protection clause of the Illinois Constitution and the state’s
NEA RA. NBI on Common Core.
This NBI from the NEA Board of Directors will be voted on at the RA later this week. NEW BUSINESS ITEM C In recognition of supporting quality teaching, as well as learning over testing, NEA will work with state affiliates in states that have adopted the Common Core State Standards or other state standards to ensure that the standards are properly implemented and that educators are empowered to lea
JUL 02
NEA RA. Toxic testing.
This morning the Illinois caucus voted on the NEA Board of Directors’ New Business Item A. It posted it in full down below. I went to the microphone and took an orange card. I had a question. “If the RA passes NBI A, what impact will it have on Illinois where we have PERA and the teaching evaluation component of Senate Bill 7, which uses student test scores to evaluate teachers? It was, of course
NEA RA. NBI A. Toxic testing.
New Business A will be presented to the RA Thursday. NEW BUSINESS ITEM A NEA CAMPAIGN AGAINST TOXIC TESTING NEA will conduct a comprehensive campaign to end the high stakes use of standardized tests, to sharply reduce the amount of student and instructional time consumed by tests, and to implement more effective forms of assessment and accountability. As part of this comprehensive campaign, NEA
NEA RA. Toxic Testing and building a firewall around Common Core.
The view from the IEA Retired section in the back of the hall at the first Illinois caucus session yesterday. The NEA RA opens later today at the green Colorado Convention Center. Illinois had its first caucus meeting yesterday afternoon and will have another at 7AM this morning. Yesterday NEA Board of Director from Illinois, Jim Grimes, told us that the leadership would present two New Business
JUL 01
Hangin’ at the Hangout. Fred “the Hammer” Klonsky and the hardest thing Christian Mitchell ever had to do. Except for the next one.
Reader columnists Ben Joravsky and Mick Dumke host a live show at Chicago’s Hideout on the second Tuesday of the month. Tonight as I write this they are hosting two alderman. But I’m in Denver. But last month I was in the house waiting to call out State Representative Christian Mitchell for his vote for SB1 and pension theft. Joravsky writes about the confrontation here. One of that show’s highlig
NEA RA. My dinner with Barbara Madeloni.
I messaged the president-elect of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, “Can we meet for dinner?” Barbara Madeloni is a Facebook friend who I have never met. “Love to meet you,” she messaged back. When Madeloni takes office on July 1st she will represent most of the teachers in Massachusetts except for the ones in Boston. Her election represents – much like the election of the CORE caucus and K
NEA staff employees are picketing the RA this morning.
For those of us who believe in collective bargaining it is disturbing the find NEA employees this morning on a informational picket line in front of the Denver convention center with signs asking for NEA management to bargain fairly. Disturbing. But part part of the process. Although the NEA is a union, it hires people. And those people have collective bargaining representation through the Associ
The men on the bench. We need more than a tepid response and a “glad it wasn’t worse.”
Things start slowly here in Denver. Following our three-day pre-conference yesterday was a day off for retirees – except for those who joined student members in the annual Outreach to Teach program. They headed over to a local school with paint, brushes and tools on a hot day to do an extreme makeover. There’s an Illinois Caucus meeting this afternoon. Then the RA gets rolling tomorrow through t
JUN 30
SCOTUS rules against unions in Harris V. Quinn. But not entirely.
Justice Kagan. ” The good news out of this case is clear: The majority declined that radical request.” In a 5-4 ruling the Supreme Court ruled against unions in our attempt to expand fair share fee payment among home care and other public sector workers, providing the benefits of union collective bargaining to those not yet protected. Not surprisingly, Justice Alioto wrote the majority opinion. A
DVR says goodbye to the retirees.
These are the final days for Dennis Van Roekel as President of the NEA. VP Lily Eskelsen Garcia will be elected to replace him later this week. His appearance an speech Sunday in front of the 350 or so retired delegates at our pre-RA conference was warmly received. DVR usually doesn’t so much fire up as make us all a little sleepy. But the retired delegates responded to a president who genuinely
JUN 29
Monday. The SCOTUS and Harris v. Quinn.
We finished up the NEA Retired Conference this afternoon. The three-day meeting addressed some issues that are of specific concern to retirees. Like Social Security offsets in states like Illinois. But make no mistake about the interest that retired teachers have in current education and union issues. The NEA Representative Assembly opens officially on Tuesday. But the most important vote of the
Sunday reads.
At the NEA RA with the next president of the NEA, Lily Eskelsen Garcia. It’s the final day of the NEA Retired Conference, Happy birthday to my Skokie Organization of Retired Educators (IEA-R) member and fellow Illinois delegate Bob Kaplan. Nine thousand delegates arrive in Denver for NEA Representative Assembly. Odessa Jackson, a retired Chesterfield County school teacher, has been selected to re
JUN 28
Keeping retirement weird. “Power concedes nothing without a demand,” said Frederick Douglass.
As I stepped out of the elevator I ran into an old friend who I hadn’t seen since the RA last year in Atlanta. After a warm embrace we headed for a nearby restaurant and bar where I sampled a series of local Colorado IPAs. And she had something – a cocktail – called Smoke on the Water. Then we spent an hour or so doing what retirees do: Talking about the old days. We talked about past struggles –