A possible solution for Connecticut’s budget crisis – “Throw the bums out…” - Wait What?

A possible solution for Connecticut’s budget crisis – “Throw the bums out…” - Wait What?:

A possible solution for Connecticut’s budget crisis – “Throw the bums out…”

 Watching a horrible car crash take place would be less traumatic than witnessing Governor Dannel Malloy and the Connecticut General Assembly careen toward their constitutionally mandated deadline of midnight tonight (May, 4, 2016.)

While a Special Session of the Connecticut Legislature will undoubtedly be needed to “clean up” a state budget plan that was developed behind closed doors and remains a mystery to the people of Connecticut, and most of the legislators who will be voting for or against it in the coming hours, the sad reality is that most of the Democratic members of the Connecticut State Senate and State House of Representatives appear to be willing to vote for a state spending plan that continues to coddle the rich while instituting unprecedented cuts to vital human services, Connecticut public schools and other critically important programs.

As Connecticut’s media outlets report, details about the budget are “scarce.”

In fact, it would be impossible for most legislators to have a real understanding of how the Democrat’s “compromise” budget will impact the state, their districts or the people they have sworn to represent.

The media headlines paint a disturbing picture of the mismanagement that continues to mark Dannel Malloy’s time in office.…

Democrats, governor strike budget deal, aim for Wednesday vote (CT Mirror)

Dems Get A Budget Deal, But Republicans Have To Let Them Pass It (CT Newsjunkie)

Malloy, Legislative Leaders Reach Deal On Deep Cuts, No Tax Increases(Hartford Courant)

A true snapshot of the problem becomes evident as the CT Mirror reports;

Democratic legislators ended a tense day of negotiations with the governor Tuesday by announcing a deal on a new state budget that the General Assembly will race to adopt Wednesday before the constitutional adjournment deadline of midnight.

Passage will require the cooperation of the Republican minority, an uncertain prospect after House Speaker J. Brendan Sharkey, D-Hamden, and Senate Minority Leader Len Fasano, R-North Haven, exchanged insults outside the Capitol pressroom.

Sharkey and Senate President Pro Tem Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven, largely glossed over the spending cuts necessary to balance the budget, 

A possible solution for Connecticut’s budget crisis – “Throw the bums out…” - Wait What?:

Government reports drop in overall crime in nation's schools | McClatchy DC

Government reports drop in overall crime in nation's schools | McClatchy DC:

Government reports drop in overall crime in nation's schools

FILE - In this Aug. 29, 2010, file photo, a security camera hangs on the side of the Skyline School in Portland, Ore. The latest government snapshot of school crime paints a picture of safer schools with declines in violent crime, bullying and harassment because of sexual orientation. The report indicated that schools are taking steps to reduce crime. About 75 percent used security cameras during the 2013-2014 school year and more than 9 in 10 controlled access to their buildings. Rick Bowmer, File AP Photo

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/national-politics/article75483472.html#storylink=cpy

WASHINGTON 

The latest government snapshot of school crime paints a picture of safer schools with declines in violent crime, bullying and harassment because of sexual orientation.

Still, about 3 percent of students ages 12 to 18 said they were victims of crimes at school in 2014. About 1.3 million students were suspended for at least one full school day for alcohol violations, violence or weapons possession.

Middle school students were more likely to be bullied than high school or elementary school students, said the report, released Wednesday by the National Center for Education Statistics and the Justice Department.

On college campuses, the number of sexual attacks more than doubled from 2001 to 2013. "There's really no way to say whether those increases reflect an increase in actual forcible sex crimes or just that more people are coming forward and reporting them," said Lauren Musu-Gillette, an author of the report.

Overall, the report showed progress, said Peggy G. Carr, acting NCES commissioner. "Bullying is down, crime is down, but it's not enough," she said.

Even before the report was issued, Ken Trump of the National School Safety and Security Services cautioned about reading too much into federal statistics on school crime.

"Federal and state stats underestimate the extent of school crime, public perception tends to overstate it and reality is somewhere in between," he said in a presentation to the Education Writers Association national conference in Boston.

He said in an interview that there is no mandated crime reporting for elementary, middle or high schools.

However, NCES' Musu-Gillette said the report was a nationally representative sample of school crime, taken in large part from surveys of students.

The report indicated that schools are taking steps to reduce crime.

About 75 percent used security cameras during the 2013-2014 school year and more than 9 in 10 controlled access to their buildings. Schools also required students to wear IDs and mandated dress codes to try to make campuses safe.

"Our nation's schools should be safe havens for teaching and learning, free of crime and violence," the report said. "Any instance of crime or violence at school not only affects the individuals involved, but also may disrupt the educational process and affect bystanders, the school itself, and the surrounding community."

Trump called security cameras a quick fix that leads to a "false sense of security," and said there has to be a balance between the hardware and the human element of school safety. That includes having counselors and psychologists on hand and training staff to deal with bullying, verbal abuse and other threats.

He said too much focus is on the rare possibility of a shooting, rather than incidents that may occur daily. He asked, for example, whether schools know how to deal with a non-custodial parent trying to pick up a child.

"School administrators are a lot more proactive about security than they were a decade ago," he said. He said social media and an overall awareness have made it "harder to hide things that occur in schools."

The federal Clery Act requires colleges and universities to report and distribute data on campus crimes.

The report said the number of criminal incidents on college campuses declined 8 percent in 2013 from the previous year. The most common type of crime was burglary. There were 23 murders on campus that year.

Despite efforts to improve security, schools still see violence.

The New Jersey Institute of Technology reported Monday that a student was fatally shot Government reports drop in overall crime in nation's schools | McClatchy DC:

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/national-politics/article75483472.html#storylink=cpy

But Will It Be Amazing? What Donald Trump Has Said About Education - Politics K-12 - Education Week

But Will It Be Amazing? What Donald Trump Has Said About Education - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

But Will It Be Amazing? What Donald Trump Has Said About Education

 Real estate executive Donald Trump has taken a huge and possibly decisive step towards becoming the Republican nominee for president, after winning the Indiana GOP primary Tuesday and seeing his chief rival, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, suspend his campaign.

What's less certain? Trump's views on education policy. He hasn't spoken at great length about the topic at any one time, and he doesn't have the kind of record on the issue that say, a former governor would. But over the course of the campaign, we have followed his statements about K-12. Read on for a round-up of our reporting on Trump as a presidential candidate. 

Trump has baffled education wonks: Back in March, we asked a bunch of K-12 policy experts how a President Trump would handle education. For the most part, they threw up their hands.  

Conservatives like Michael Petrilli of the Fordham Institute and Andy Smarick of Bellwether Education Partners, for example, said they were worried that Trump might empower the federal government and not states when dealing with public schools. 

Meanwhile, Carmel Martin of the left-leaning Center for American Progress said Trump would roll back important civil rights protections in education. She also called his plan to get rid of the U.S. Department of Education a dangerous and potentially very damaging one for both K-12 and higher education.

Speaking of the Education Department ... Yes, Trump has said more than once that he thinks the department either needs to be cut "way down" or eliminated altogether. However, he also claimed in a March debate that education should be one of three top priorities for the federal government. Those aren't necessarily contradictory views, but they also don't represent a clear platform.

He's very clear about the Common Core State Standards, however. Trump says he hates the common core, and says he'll get rid of them. But, thanks in part to the Every Student Succeeds Act, the federal government does not have the power to do that. 

By contrast, Trump has praised the power of local school boards. That's pretty unusual for a presidential candidate, Bellwether's Chad Aldeman told me.

American kids' test scores? They're lousy, Trump says: In a speech earlier this year, Trump said that for the amount of money the U.S. spends on education, students' scores on international tests are pretty bad. In fact, he said "third world" countries beat American students on tests, although that's a questionable claim.

"The Donald" has provided money to educational causes through his charitable foundation.Some of those donations, however, are tied to his work the "Celebrity Apprentice" in which contestants directed their cash winnings to certain groups. He has given to Teach for America, though, independently of "Celebrity Apprentice." He's also a fan of the Police Athletic League and charities associated with New York Yankees that do work with kids. 

Is there a doctor in the house? In a GOP debate in March, Trump said thatBen Carson would be "very involved in education" in Trump's presidential administration, as my colleague Daarel Burnette II reported. Carson is a former 2016 GOP presidential hopeful and retired pediatric neurosurgeon, 

Gun-free school zones? Get rid of them, Trump says. He claims they're just"bait" for people looking to do harm to children. But contrary to Trump's stated plans, he won't be able to get rid of them without an act of Congress.

Some claim Trump's rhetoric has made students feel unsafe. That's according to a report from the Southern Poverty Law Center, which surveyed 2,000 K-12 teachers about the possible "Trump effect" on students. However, as my colleague Evie Blad noted, the survey is unscientific.

Trump has also weighed in on autism and vaccines. In a GOP debate, Trump said that autism has become an "epidemic" and said that he wants vaccines to be given to children in smaller doses over a longer period of time. That's a reference to the claim that there's a link between vaccines and autism, although as my colleague Christina Samuels pointed out, the former does not cause the latter.

Photo: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, seen speaking at a rally in Valdosta, Ga., has yet to lay out a detailed education platform. Andrew Harnik/AP

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But Will It Be Amazing? What Donald Trump Has Said About Education - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

President Obama Honors 2016 Teacher of the Year

President Obama Honors 2016 Teacher of the Year:

President Obama Honors 2016 Teacher of the Year, Thanks All Educators

President Barack Obama honors the 2016 National Teacher of the Year Jahana Hayes of Connecticut and finalists during an event in the East Room of the White House on May 3, 2016 . (Photo by Olivier Douliery/Pool/ABACAPRES.COM)

At a White House ceremony coinciding with National Teacher Day on May 3, President Barack Obama honored the 2016 National Teacher of the Year Jahana Hayes and public school educators everywhere.

“Every year on this day, we say publicly as a country what we should be eager to say every day of the year, and that is: Thank you,” Obama said.

Obama saluted Hayes, a social studies teacher in Waterbury, Connecticut, not only for her talent but for her perseverance. Being a teacher was the furthest thing from her mind when she was growing up. In fact, there were times when Hayes didn’t even want to be a student. As a teenager, Hayes became pregnant and probably would have dropped out of school, but thanks to her teachers she finished her studies.

“Her teachers saw something. They saw something in her,” Obama said. “And they gave her an even greater challenge, and that was to dream bigger and to imagine a better life. And they made her believe she was college material and that she had the special gift to improve not only her own condition, but those around her.”

As a teacher, Hayes understands how and why students bring their own challenging circumstances into the classroom. “She meets them where they are,” Obama continued. ” And she sees a grace in them, and she sees a possibility in them. And because she sees it, they start seeing it. That’s what makes Jahana more than a teacher; she’s a counselor and a confidant. That’s how a woman who became a teenage mom is now a mentor to high schoolers in the same city where she grew up.”

“I know what it feels like to have a dream and exist in an environment where nothing is expected to thrive,” Hayes said. “I know what it feels like to struggle to find sunlight and constantly be met with concrete barriers. I see myself in every one of those students, and I carry my own experiences as a reminder that as a teacher I have to be better.”

As the 2016 National Teacher of the Year, Hayes, whose career as an educator goes back 13 years, will spend a year traveling the nation to represent educators and President Obama Honors 2016 Teacher of the Year:

Union Urges Detroit Teachers to Return to Work After Second ‘Sickout’ Day - WSJ

Union Urges Detroit Teachers to Return to Work After Second ‘Sickout’ Day - WSJ:

Union Urges Detroit Teachers to Return to Work After Second ‘Sickout’ Day

Detroit Federation of Teachers said it received assurances they would be paid after June

Detroit teachers protested in front of Detroit Public Schools headquarters on Tuesday. Their union Tuesday evening said it received a letter from the district’s transitional manager, assuring that teachers will be paid after June. PHOTO: BILL PUGLIANO/GETTY IMAGES

 The Detroit Federation of Teachers urged teachers on Tuesday evening to return to work after effectively shutting public schools for two days, saying the union received assurances that teachers will be paid after June.

The teachers union was protesting statements made this weekend by the district’s state-appointed manager, who said it wouldn’t be able to pay teachers and other staff after June, or conduct summer school, if the state Legislature didn’t pass a $715 million package to restructure the district and erase its debt.

But by Tuesday evening, the union said it received a letter from the district’s transition manager, Judge Steven Rhodes, assuring the union teachers will be paid after June. In the letter, a copy of which was provided by the union, Judge Rhodes said the district would honor its contractual obligations to pay teachers and other staff.

“We’re happy to return to the classroom and finish the school year with our kids,” the union’s interim president, Ivy Bailey, said in a statement.

Judge Rhodes said in a statement that he looked forward to working with the union following the end of their two-day action.

On Tuesday, there was also progress in moving legislation forward. A a House committee passed measures that would include about $500 million to clear the district’s debt and about $33 million to fund the operations of a newly created district.

Gideon D’Assandro, a spokesman for Republican House Speaker Kevin Cotter, said the full House could take up the measures as soon as this week. He said he believed the Senate, which passed the $715 million package in March, would now be open to the House version.

Tuesday’s “sickout” was the 14th day during this academic year that some of the district’s schools were forced to close, said Michelle Zdrodowski, a spokeswoman for the Detroit Public Schools. She said 94 of the district’s 97 schools were closed.

Earlier protests by the city’s teachers focused on conditions in schools, including class sizes and the disrepair of some buildings that teachers said had become a health hazard.

The sickouts have drawn criticism from Judge Rhodes, as well as some lawmakers and Republican Gov. Rick Snyder.

Rep. Cotter called the sickouts selfish and misguided and said they only made it harder to move legislation forward. He said that more than a million hours of instruction have been lost due to teacher sickouts. “These egotistical teachers have lashed out at the children who rely on them and accomplished nothing but disrupting their students’ education,” Rep. Cotter said in a statement.

The union took issue with those comments, with Ms. Bailey saying teachers were being advocates for students.

“You cannot in good conscience ask anybody to work without a guarantee that they are going to be paid,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, parent union of the DFT.

Judge Rhodes criticized the sickouts’ disruption to the families of the nearly 46,000 students who attend the city’s public schools.

“Many parents may have been forced to take a day off from work without pay,” Judge Union Urges Detroit Teachers to Return to Work After Second ‘Sickout’ Day - WSJ:

Nina Rees’ Airbrushed, Wall Street Journal Charter Sell | deutsch29

Nina Rees’ Airbrushed, Wall Street Journal Charter Sell | deutsch29:
Nina Rees’ Airbrushed, Wall Street Journal Charter Sell

On May 01, 2016, the CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, Nina Rees, published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal entitled, “The Union War on Charter-School Philanthropists.”

 Nina Rees

In order to read the piece, one must have a subscription to WSJ. However, Diane Ravitch has posted the piece in full.

Given that Rees’ piece appears in a publication named for “influential financial interests,” perhaps her opening statement is true of many WSJ readers:

If you heard that a group of philanthropists came together to donate millions of dollars to schools, you would probably consider it good news.

Anyone who has spent even five minutes on this blog would know that I would not consider the above to be “good news.” I am aware that millions donated “to schools” in this day and age likely means the corporate reform billionaire attempt to convert traditional public education into an under-regulated, market-driven model.

But Rees– whose job is to shift the stability of the community school into that which can only result in a flimsy, test-score-centered churn fest– thinks she has a fine Nina Rees’ Airbrushed, Wall Street Journal Charter Sell | deutsch29:

Ethnic studies gaining momentum after slow growth in California school districts | EdSource

Ethnic studies gaining momentum after slow growth in California school districts | EdSource:

Ethnic studies gaining momentum after slow growth in California school districts

 An expansion of ethnic studies courses in some of California’s largest school districts is changing the way thousands of students are learning about the historical contributions of a wide range of racial and ethnic groups.

Over the past few years, Los Angeles Unified, the state’s largest school district, and San Francisco Unified, the sixth biggest, have added courses in their high schools designed to broaden understanding of the roles played by African-Americans, Latinos and other racial and ethnic groups.

Last October, the Oakland Unified school board approved an ethnic studies course for all Oakland high schools within three years, and last month the board of San Diego Unified voted for an ethnic studies pilot program in two high schools for the 2016-17 school year. San Diego Unified is the state’s second-largest school district; Oakland ranks 12th.

The new courses — which are adding to whatever is taught about these groups in existing history and social studies courses — have come about in response to critics who say the more traditional courses present an excessively Eurocentric view of American history and culture. Just under 11 percent of L.A. Unified’s 643,000 students are white, with the rest from a variety of other racial and ethnic groups.

This year, about 40 of Los Angeles Unified’s 150 high schools offered six one-semester ethnic studies courses — Afro-American History, Afro-American Literature, American Indian Studies, Asian Literature, Mexican-American Literature and Mexican-American Studies. Plans are now underway to offer a one-semester, survey-style course in ethnic studies to even more high schools, starting in the fall. The specific number of schools has not yet been determined.  

Derrick Chau, L.A. Unified’s director of secondary instruction, said the survey course would include separate units on the cultural experiences of African-Americans, Latinos, Asians and Pacific Islanders as well as the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. “And we’re open to adding more,” he said, citing Armenian studies as one possibility.

The push to expand courses to more schools across Los Angeles comes from a school board resolution passed in November 2014 to make an ethnic studies course a requirement for graduation, beginning with the graduating class of 2019.

But six months after the vote, then-Superintendent Ramon Cortines came out against the plan, objecting to making the course a graduation requirement and citing the cost — an estimated $72 million to cover textbooks and specially-trained teachers. He also expressed a preference for weaving ethnic studies into the regular school curriculum from a child’s first year in public school, as early as pre-kindergarten.

Taking those concerns into account, a committee appointed to examine how to expand ethnic studies continued to meet and last month reported to the board that it was moving toward a solution — but not as the board had originally intended. The new course would be an elective and serve as a compendium to the six individual courses that are now being revised to create a year-long program with all of the courses as electives. None would be required for graduation.

“Right now,” Chau said of the graduation requirement, “we don’t have the time or money to implement it that way.”

San Francisco Unified began offering an ethnic studies elective course as a pilot program in five high schools in 2010. In December 2014, the district school board voted unanimously to expand the program in the current academic year to all of the city’s 18 public high schools. The resolution also “encourages Ethnic studies gaining momentum after slow growth in California school districts | EdSource:

Ethnic Studies Now Coalition http://bit.ly/24vIwvP

How Good Is the Best Edujournalism? – the becoming radical

How Good Is the Best Edujournalism? – the becoming radical:
How Good Is the Best Edujournalism?

A recurring theme running through my blog posts—one that could be addressed daily—is that education journalism is almost always significantly misleading and way too often completely inaccurate.

Mainstream media and journalists are trapped in false but compelling narratives about schools, learning and teaching, children, poverty, and race. Journalism itself fails education as a field because of a simplistic “both sides” to a rather cartoonish “objective” journalism.

As I have detailed too often, media coverage of education includes primarily voices and perspectives of people with no or very little experience or expertise in education, but when a few contrary perspectives are offered, those are typically framed as “some critics”—with no effort to establish which claims are credible or not.

Sadly, the best unmasking of the essential failure of the media has been by one of our faux-media comedians, John Oliver, who highlighted that even if there are two sides to an issue, one can be overwhelmingly credible while the other is mostly baseless; therefore, placing them as one-versus-one misleads the public on the weight of the arguments.

So when I received yet another email from the Education Writers Association (EWA)—who is extremely proud of itself—announcing their top award for education reporting, I wondered: How good is the best edujournalism?

The EWA Fred M. Hechinger Grand Prize for Distinguished Education Reporting was awarded for Failure Factories (The Tampa Bay Times), written by Cara Fitzpatrick, Lisa Gartner and Michael LaForgia. The series includes the following:

• Prologue
• Failure Factories
• Lessons in Fear
• Who’s My Teacher Today
• Hear From the Kids
• Discipline
• Reports Spur Visit From Education Chief

Without question, this series is comprehensive and it confronts some incredibly important issues about public schooling: the significant relationship between race/poverty and student achievement; the plague of segregation and resegregation in public institutions such as schools; and the huge inequities of education faced by racial minorities and impoverished students such as teacher assignments, school safety, funding, and discipline practices.

And while the series does a solid job of raising these issues, my first response is that these are all old news—I mean very old news.

That our public schools have failed poor and black/brown students is a recurring message over the last century—little different before or after the Civil Rights movement.

Therein lies a real problem with even the so-called best edujournalim—journalists without a historical lens afforded those with expertise in a field are ripe to fall prey to the lens of a novice.

One such failure of this series and then how the EWA praised the series can be found in thequoted judge’s comment:

Bravo to this team and the paper for taking an all-too-common story (low achievement in a high-poverty area) and digging past the excuses to reveal a shameful history of indifference and, most troubling, willful neglect. I was awed by the dogged reporting, the sheer volume of interviews and data-crunching, and the courageous analysis that put the blame exactly where it needed to be. But the true brilliance of this work is found in the stories of the children who were robbed of an education they deserved. How many other school districts in America might have the same story to tell?

The series title “Failure Factories” is but one of many triggers for the pervasive and ugly “no excuses” narrative that is all the rage in the U.S.

You see, once again, this series oversimplifies the story of educating vulnerable populations of students: racism and classism are merely excuses for the schools charged with high How Good Is the Best Edujournalism? – the becoming radical:

EduBloggers:

http://edubloggers.org/

Dedicated to truth-telling for democracy.

The Education Bloggers Network is an informal confederation of more than 200 education reporters, advocacy journalists, investigative bloggers, and commentators. Members of the Education Bloggers Network are dedicated to providing parents, teachers, public education advocates and the public with the truth about public education in the United States and the efforts of the corporate education reform industry.

As Diane Ravitch noted in a post about the Education Bloggers Network, “If you blog and if you support public education as a pillar of our democracy, consider joining the Education Bloggers Network.”

To become part of the Education Bloggers Network contact Jonathan Pelto, founder and manager of the Network atjonpelto@gmail.com

Rising Income Inequality Is Fueling School Segregation: Families with Resources Increasingly Buy Into Exclusive School Attendance Zones

Education Law Prof Blog:
Rising Income Inequality Is Fueling School Segregation: Families with Resources Increasingly Buy Into Exclusive School Attendance Zones

 It is shaping up as a bad month for school segregation--kind of.  Secretary John King has been pushing for new integration policies. Sean Reardon and his colleagues released a new study finding that money alone cannot close the achievement gaps that segregation creates. And now, Ann Owens has delved into the sociological aspects of segregation and found that economic inequality itself is a source of school segregation, at least, among families with children.  In Inequality in Children’s Contexts: Income Segregation of Households with and without Children, she finds that wealthier families without children are not so much of a problem for school segregation.  But wealthier families with children make housing choices based on schools that intensify school segregation.  In the current environment, they are predisposed to, in effect, buy their way into particular public schools.  In other words, for them, the public school system is not so different from the private school system.  The difference is that instead of paying tuition to the realtor, you pay it through your realtor.  

On one level, this makes perfect sense, and families buying homes in "good" neighborhoods so that their children will attend "good" schools is not new. Owens' study, however, points out that the ability and incentives to exercise this type of choice have increased over time, and the results have become more glaring.  With increasing income inequality, there are more clearly schools that some families do not want to send their kids to.  At the same time, those same families have the purchasing power to go elsewhere, and they know where to go. Her abstract explains:

Past research shows that income segregation between neighborhoods increased over the past several decades. In this article, I reexamine income segregation from 1990 to 2010 in the 100 largest metropolitan areas, and I find that income segregation increased only among families with children. Among childless households—two-thirds of the population—income segregation changed little and is half as large as among households with children. I examine two factors that may account for these differences by household composition. First, I find that increasing income inequality, identified by past research as a driver of income segregation, was a much more powerful predictor of income segregation among families with children, among whom income inequality has risen more. Second, I find that local school options, delineated by school district boundaries, contribute to higher segregation among households with children compared to households without. Rising income inequality provided high-income households more resources, and parents used these resources to purchase housing in particular neighborhoods, with residential decisions structured, in part, by school district boundaries. Overall, results indicate that children face greater and increasing stratification in neighborhood contexts than do all residents, and this has implications for growing inequalities in their future outcomes.

The text of the article offers these findings:

• The increase in residential income segregation occurred entirely among families with children, for whom income segregation rose by about 20 percent. Among childless households—two-thirds of the population—income segregation did not change, on average. By 2010, income segregation between neighborhoods among families with children was twice as high as segregation among childless households. My findings reveal that the current narrative of an increasingly unequal metropolis in terms of income segregation is true only for families Education Law Prof Blog:

Why Detroit educators spend Teacher's Day pleading for pay

Why Detroit educators spend Teacher's Day pleading for pay:
Why Detroit educators spend Teacher's Day pleading for pay

For many educators, Teacher's Day comes with apples, thank-you cards, and other tokens of gratitude from parents and students. But in Detroit, teachers are spending this day demanding their paychecks.

Most of Detroit’s public schools remain closed on Tuesday, as teacher sick-out protests over missing pay enter their second day.

Ninety four of Detroit’s public schools closed on Monday due to the protests, causing more than 40,000 students to miss class. Detroit’s teachers, who are legally not allowed to strike, stayed home sick in order to protest the announcement that they will not receive pay for work already completed.

"While we recognize that this puts Detroit's parents and communities in a difficult situation, the district's broken promises and gross negligence leave us no choice," said the Detroit Federation of Teachers’ executive vice president Terrence Martin in a press conference Monday.

Monday night, DFT interim president Ivy Bailey sent out an email saying that teachers would once again miss work on Tuesday. Teachers also have a protest and a union meeting scheduled for Tuesday, in the absence of classes.

Educators are trapped between a rock and a hard place in Detroit, where debt has skyrocketed and school enrollment plummeted since the early 2000s.

During the 2003-2004 school year, Detroit schools enrolled over 150,000 students. Today, about 46,000 students, a third of 2003’s enrollment numbers, attend Detroit public schools.

By this summer, Detroit’s schools will be a whopping $515 million in debt and the schools are rapidly running out of funding. Unfortunately, about two thirds of the city’s teachers have signed onto a common teacher payment plan that spreads paychecks out throughout the year, ensuring that teachers receive paychecks in the summer for work they did during the school year.

This year, the school district announced that it simply doesn’t have enough money to pay teachers their salaries after June 30. That announcement shocked the teachers and prompted Ms. Bailey to call the situation a “lockout,” where she says teachers are essentially barred from their jobs by the fact that they would be working without pay.

What will happen in Detroit as the sick outs continue?

Although Michigan teachers are legally prohibited from striking, former DFT president Steve Conn said that, "a strike is the only way the teachers can win."

Despite legal prohibitions, Detroit’s teachers have gone on strike before, in 1999 and 2006. In 1999, teachers went on strike for nine days and eventually received a two percent pay raise for their trouble. In 2006, teachers went on strike for 16 days over pay cuts. Although a judge ordered teachers to return to their classrooms, most did not.

Yet even if teachers go on strike, where will Detroit get the funds to pay them?

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder signed a bill last month that gave the Detroit Public Schools $47.8 million dollars, but that was not enough. A $720 million restructuring plan approved by the state’s legislature could aid the city, but if all else fails, the district could require another short term cash injection to grant teachers their due.  

"Being paid for their work isn't a luxury, it's a necessity," wrote DFT president Ivy Bailey in a statement yesterday.

This report contains material from the Associated Press.Why Detroit educators spend Teacher's Day pleading for pay:

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Q&A: What To Know About Detroit Public Schools Teacher Sick-Outs « CBS Detroit http://cbsloc.al/1SJxXkN