Search Results for: "Collective Bargaining"
Utah lawmakers abandoned efforts to compromise on a bill restoring a sweeping prohibition on collective bargaining for public employees
Carmen Nesbitt: Utah lawmakers in a bill draft Wednesday restored a proposed ban on collective bargaining rights for public employees, backtracking after days of negotiations with public sector unions who were hoping to reach a compromise with legislators. Lawmakers in an earlier revision had removed an outright ban on collective bargaining, though the updated bill […]
A lawsuit backed by teachers and public workers challenging Wisconsin’s near-complete ban on collective bargaining rights for most public employees….
Mitchell Schmidt: The lawsuit was filed late last year by teachers and other public workers and argues Act 10’s exemption of some police, firefighters and other public safety workers from the bargaining restrictions violates the Wisconsin Constitution. Plaintiffs also note in court filings that those exempted from the restrictions endorsed Walker in the 2010 gubernatorial […]
Unions in Wisconsin sue to reverse collective bargaining restrictions on teachers, others
AP Seven unions representing teachers and other public workers in Wisconsin filed a lawsuit Thursday attempting to end the state’s near-total ban on collective bargaining for most public employees. The 2011 law, known as Act 10, has withstood numerous legal challenges over the past dozen years and was the signature legislative achievement of former Republican Gov. […]
THE CORRUPT BARGAIN: How Unions Use Collective Bargaining to Impose Their Political Agenda on Schools
Paul Zimmerman: Public school union bosses across the country are using an anti-democratic process of negotiating collective bargaining agreements to embed their progressive goals in school policies. In woke-filled back rooms, these unions and their supportive allies in the school districts agree to impose curricula on schools to indoctrinate students in leftist ideas, replace traditional […]
A bill that grants Chicago Public Schools principals collective bargaining rights passed the Illinois Senate
Nader Issa and Sarah Karp The legislation, approved with bipartisan support in a 45-7 vote, would recognize a Chicago principals and assistant principals union and put them across the table from senior district leadership for contract negotiations. The bill, if signed into law, would not allow a principals’ union to strike. A statement Friday from […]
Collective bargaining needs some sunshine
Bob Wickers and Sam Coleman: These are legitimate questions that none of us can answer. Even though taxpayers will have to fund whatever agreement is ultimately reached, the public knows virtually nothing about the proceedings. They won’t see any details until a final contract is approved, and they will likely never know about the offers […]
Do the Benefits of Collective Bargaining Include Giving Up a $10,000 Bonus?
Mike Antonucci: But for the moment let’s suppose you were an exemplary New Mexico teacher paying agency fees to your exclusive bargaining agent. Then you read this: This week, Gov. Susana Martinez signed off on a budget bill that provides for $5,000 and $10,000 bonuses for exemplary teachers in New Mexico. And while she used […]
The Effects of Collective Bargaining in the Public Sector
Jonathan Adler: This paper presents the first analysis of the effect of teacher collective bargaining on long-run labor market and educational attainment outcomes. Our analysis exploits the different timing across states in the passage of duty-to-bargain laws in a difference-in-difference framework to identify how exposure to teacher collective bargaining affects the long-run outcomes of students. […]
The Impact of Teacher Collective Bargaining Laws on Student Achievement: Evidence from a New Mexico Natural Experiment
Benjamin Lindy: This Note uses the 1999 sunset and 2003 reauthorization of New Mexico’s public employee collective bargaining law to estimate the causal effect of teacher collective bargaining on student achievement. This Note finds that mandatory teacher bargaining laws increase the performance of high-achieving students while simultaneously lowering the performance of poorly achieving students. After […]
How the Global Financial Crisis Drove Down Collective Bargaining
Melanie Trottman: The decline, which follows a longer-term slide in union membership rates in many countries, reflects a variety of factors. Legislation allowed some financially troubled companies to opt out of their bargaining agreements. The recession also made it more difficult to renew existing pacts. Meanwhile, some governments made it harder to negotiate national and […]
Madison Governance Status Quo: Teacher “Collective Bargaining” Continues; West Athens Parent Union “Bargains Like any other Union” in Los Angeles
Ben Austin, via a kind email: Last week was an important moment in the Parent Power movement. On Friday, LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy came to West Athens Elementary School in South LA to sign a groundbreaking Partnership Agreement with the leadership of the West Athens Parents Union, called the “Aguilas de West Athens” (AWA) – […]
25.62% of Madison’s $402,464,374 2014/2015 budget to be spent on benefits; District’s Day of Teacher Union Collective Bargaining; WPS déjà vu
The Madison School Board Act 10 duckduckgo google wikipedia Madison Teachers, Inc. Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter (PDF), via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email:: School Board Decisions on Employee Health Insurance Contributions Could Further Reduce Wages Under MTI’s various Collective Bargaining Agreements, the District currently pays 100% of the health insurance premiums for both single […]
Commentary & Votes on The Madison School Board’s Collective Bargaining Plans
Pat Schnieder: Maybe the formal deliberations on strategy don’t start until a closed session of the Madison School Board on Thursday, May 15, but engagement over a proposed extension of the teachers contract already has begun. School board member Ed Hughes is stirring the pot with his remarks that the contract should not be extended […]
Advocating Additional Collective Bargaining in Madison
Madison Teachers, Inc. members fill the school board work group room, and the hallway outside. pic.twitter.com/UaIN004Pf7 — Molly Beck (@MollyBeckWSJ) May 12, 2014 Related: Collective Bargainain, Act 10 and Retired Ripon Superintendent’s 2009 speech to the Madison Rotary Club.
Madison school board candidates Wayne Strong and Dean Loumos discuss superintendent Jennifer Cheatham, collective bargaining
Five candidates are competing for three seats on the Madison school board, with the general election on April 2, 2013.
The political context for the races is explosive, given Gov. Scott Walker’s revolutionary proposals for education in Wisconsin: cuts to public school funding, an expansion of the voucher program, and a revamping of teachers’ evaluations and bargaining rights.
In Madison, the issues are particularly complex, with the intense disagreements over the district’s achievement gap between white and minority students.
In the race for Seat 3, former La Follette High School teacher and low-income housing provider Dean Loumos is running against retired Madison police lieutenant Wayne Strong. The winner will replace retiring school board member Beth Moss.
In this competitive series of elections, there are numerous candidate forums and listening sessions under way, and we thought we’d pose our own questions to candidates.
This week, we ask the candidates about where they think incoming superintendent Jennifer Cheatham should direct her attention. We also ask about the changes in collective bargaining wrought by Act 10: How have they affected the district, and how should it respond to this new policy?
Much more on the 2013 Madison School Board election, here.
Madison school board candidate TJ Mertz discusses superintendent Jennifer Cheatham, collective bargaining
Five candidates are competing for three seats on the Madison school board, with the general election on April 2, 2013.
The political context for the races is explosive, given Gov. Scott Walker’s revolutionary proposals for education in Wisconsin: cuts to public school funding, an expansion of the voucher program, and a revamping of teachers’ evaluations and bargaining rights.
In Madison, the issues are particularly complex, with the intense disagreements over the district’s achievement gap between white and minority students.
TJ Mertz, an Edgewood College history instructor and education blogger, is running unopposed after Sarah Manski dropped out of the race for Seat 5 following the February primary. Her name will appear on the ballot, but she is moving to California. Mertz will replace retiring school board member Maya Cole.
In this competitive series of elections, there are numerous candidate forums and listening sessions under way, and we thought we’d pose our own questions to candidates. This week, we ask the candidates about where they think incoming superintendent Jennifer Cheatham should direct her attention. We also ask about the changes in collective bargaining wrought by Act 10: How have they affected the district, and how should it respond to this new policy?Much more on the 2013 Madison School Board election, here.
Madison school board candidates Greg Packnett and James Howard discuss superintendent Jennifer Cheatham, collective bargaining
Five candidates are competing for three seats on the Madison school board, with the general election on April 2, 2013.
The political context for the races is explosive, given Gov. Scott Walker’s revolutionary proposals for education in Wisconsin: cuts to public school funding, an expansion of the voucher program, and a revamping of teachers’ evaluations and bargaining rights.
In Madison, the issues are particularly complex, with the intense disagreements over the district’s achievement gap between white and minority students.
In the race for Seat 4, incumbent James Howard is running against Greg Packnett, a Democratic legislative aide.
In this competitive series of elections, there are numerous candidate forums and listening sessions under way, and we thought we’d pose our own questions to candidates. This week, we ask the candidates about where they think incoming superintendent Jennifer Cheatham should direct her attention. We also ask about the changes in collective bargaining wrought by Act 10: How have they affected the district, and how should it respond to this new policy?Much more on the 2013 Madison School Board elections here.
Priorities and Judgment Calls: A Collective Bargaining Recap
Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes
The other major change to the CBA affects the hiring process for teachers. Currently, teachers have the opportunity to seek to transfer to vacant positions at other schools until four weeks prior to the start of the school year. Once the internal transfer process has been completed, principals can select applicants for teaching positions from outside the district. It is pretty obvious that the school district was placing itself at a competitive disadvantage in hiring if it could not tell a potential new hire where he or she would be teaching until a month before school starts.
According to the new procedure that is now set forth in the CBA, teachers who find themselves surplused will be placed in new positions by the school district by May 1 of each year. Then vacant positions will be posted for internal transfers. While a change was proposed in the district’s initial bargaining proposal, the final agreement retains the requirement that principals must select an internal transfer applicant if any applicants for a vacant position possess the minimum qualifications. The internal transfer process closes on June 15 and at that point principals can choose external candidates for any positions that remain unfilled. This change represents a big step toward a hiring process that maximizes our chances to hire the kind of skilled and diverse applicants we are looking for.
As I mention above, the new agreement does not address wages. At this point we don’t have sufficient information to make any sort of decision about raising salaries for the 2013-14 school year. Most importantly, we have no idea what the governor and new legislature will do about revenue limits for the next biennium and so we don’t know whether we will be able to increase our spending and by how much, or whether we will have to cut our per-pupil spending, as was the case for the first year of the current biennium.Much more on the Madison School District’s rather unique action, here.
Madison Collective Bargaining Rhetoric
Madison Teachers Inc. wants to shake up the Madison School Board after another negotiation in which it conceded several member benefits to stave off the effects of the state’s new collective bargaining law.
MTI’s weekly newsletter equates the School Board with the Legislature and Gov. Scott Walker, and calls the board’s statements opposing changes in collective bargaining “not worth the paper they were written on.”
“Keep in mind that to get fully out from under the cloud caused by Act 10, what is needed is a change in the Legislature, the governor and the Board of Education,” the newsletter states. “All can be impacted by elections this fall, next spring and in 2014.”
Is Teacher Union “Collective Bargaining” Good for Students?
The Madison School Board has scheduled [PDF] a 2:00p.m. meeting tomorrow, Sunday 30 September for an “Initial exchange of proposals and supporting rationale for such proposals in regard to collective bargaining negotiations regarding the Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBA) for MMSD Madison Teachers, Inc. (MTI) Teachers, Substitute Teachers, Educational Assistants, Supportive Educational Employees (SEE), and School Security Assistants (SSA), held as a public meeting pursuant to Wis. Stat. §111.70(4)(cm)”.
The School Board along with other Madison area governments have moved quickly to negotiate or extend agreements with several public sector unions after a judicial decision overturning parts of Wisconsin’s Act 10. The controversial passage of Act 10 changed the dynamic between public sector organizations and organized labor.
I’ve contemplated these events and thought back to a couple of first hand experiences:
In the first example, two Madison School District teacher positions were being reduced to one. Evidently, under the CBA, both had identical tenure so the choice was a coin toss. The far less qualified teacher “won”, while the other was laid off.
In the second example, a Madison School District teacher and parent lamented to me the poor teacher one of their children experienced (in the same District) and that “there is nothing that can be done about it”.
In the third example, a parent, after several years of their child’s “mediocre” reading and writing experiences asked that they be given the “best teacher”. The response was that they are “all good”. Maybe so.
Conversely, I’ve seen a number of teachers go far out of their way to help students learn, including extra time after school and rogue curricula such as phonics and Singapore Math.
I am unaware of the School Board meeting on a Sunday, on short notice, to address the District’s long time reading problems.
A bit of background:
Exhibit 1, written in 2005 illustrating the tyranny of low expectations” “When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before”.
Exhibit 2, 60% to 42%: Madison School District’s Reading Recovery Effectiveness Lags “National Average”: Administration seeks to continue its use.
Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman’s 2009 Madison speech to the Madison Rotary Club is worth reading:“Beware of legacy practices (most of what we do every day is the maintenance of the status quo), @12:40 minutes into the talk – the very public institutions intended for student learning has become focused instead on adult employment. I say that as an employee. Adult practices and attitudes have become embedded in organizational culture governed by strict regulations and union contracts that dictate most of what occurs inside schools today. Any impetus to change direction or structure is met with swift and stiff resistance. It’s as if we are stuck in a time warp keeping a 19th century school model on life support in an attempt to meet 21st century demands.” Zimman went on to discuss the Wisconsin DPI’s vigorous enforcement of teacher licensing practices and provided some unfortunate math & science teacher examples (including the “impossibility” of meeting the demand for such teachers (about 14 minutes)). He further cited exploding teacher salary, benefit and retiree costs eating instructional dollars (“Similar to GM”; “worry” about the children given this situation).
William Rowe has commented here frequently on the challenges of teacher evaluation schemes.
This being said, I do find it informative to observe the Board’s priorities in light of the District’s very serious reading problems.
This article is worth reading in light of local property taxes and spending priorities: The American Dream of upward mobility has been losing ground as the economy shifts. Without a college diploma, working hard is no longer enough.Unlike his parents, John Sherry enrolled in college after graduating from high school in Grand Junction, a boom-bust, agriculture-and-energy outpost of 100,000 inhabitants on Colorado’s western edge. John lasted two years at Metropolitan State University in Denver before he dropped out, first to bag groceries at Safeway, later to teach preschool children, a job he still holds. He knew it was time to quit college when he failed statistics two semesters in a row. Years passed before John realized just how much the economic statistics were stacked against him, in a way they never were against his father.
Greg Sherry, who works for a railroad, is 58 and is chugging toward retirement with an $80,000-a-year salary, a full pension, and a promise of health coverage for life. John scrapes by on $11 an hour, with few health benefits. “I feel like I’m working really hard,” he says, “but I’m not getting ahead.”
This isn’t the lifestyle that John’s parents wished upon their younger child. But it reflects the state of upward–or downward–mobility in the American economy today.Related: Wisconsin State Tax Based K-12 Spending Growth Far Exceeds University Funding.
TJ Mertz comments on collective bargaining, here and here.
Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes: Didn’t See That One Coming: How the Madison School Board Ended Up Back in Collective Bargaining.
The Capital Times: Should local governments negotiate with employees while the constitutionality of the collective bargaining law is being appealed?
Madison’s Collective Bargaining to “Handbook” Transition: Status Quo, or ? Intrade?
Madison will be looking to its own collective bargaining agreement as well as handbooks adopted by other districts and input from employees, Nadler said. Unlike previous collective bargaining discussions, however, School Board meetings on the subject will be held in open session.
Madison Teachers Inc. Executive Director John Matthews, who in 45 years has had a hand in expanding the collective bargaining agreement from four to 157 pages, has been emphasizing since Act 10 passed that everything in the agreement has been jointly agreed upon by the School Board and union.
“Instead of collective bargaining it’s going to be meet and confer,” Matthews said. “We have really 50 years of developing things together that make the school system work.”
Don Severson, president of a conservative watchdog group and MTI critic, sees the handbook as an opportunity for the district to break away from MTI’s influence over school operations. He wants a middle school to be able to hire a math teacher from outside the district with math certification, for example, rather than be forced to hire a district teacher who meets minimum requirements but lacks such certification.
“They need to keep in mind that the only thing the union has any involvement or responsibility for is negotiating salary,” Severson said.Related: Current 182 page Madison Teachers, Inc. Collective Bargaining Agreement (PDF) and Concessions before negotiations (“Voluntary Impasse Resolution Procedure“)
I suspect that 90% of the existing collective bargaining agreement will end up in the District’s “Handbook“. Perhaps someone might setup a prediction @ Intrade on this matter.
Conversely, some Districts will think differently and create a far different and more appealing world for some teachers.
New Wisconsin School District Handbooks take effect.
THE BAD OLD DAYS OF COLLECTIVE BARGAINING: Why Act 10 Was Necessary for Wisconsin Public Schools
Not so long ago, the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC), the state’s largest teachers union, sported the motto, “Every child deserves a great school.”
The irony of that motto was not lost on school administrators, particularly in more recent years, as they struggled to balance budgets while local WEAC unions refused to accept financial concessions that would have helped maintain quality programming for students.
In school district after school district, layoffs have occurred, class sizes have increased and student programs have been cut, partially because many
unions refused to accept temporary pay freezes, or pay a bit more toward their own health insurance or pension costs.
This was happening all over the state, even before Gov. Scott Walker was elected and his biannual budget slowed the rate of state aid to schools.
The problem is not difficult to understand. Most public school administrators tell us they spend between 75-85 percent of their total budgets on labor costs, mostly for salaries and benefits for union teachers. If a budget crisis hits and spending cuts are needed, school boards will logically look at the biggest part of the budget.
But under the old collective bargaining system, local teachers unions had broad legal power to reject cuts in labor costs, and frequently did so. With 80 percent of the budget often untouchable, school boards had little choice but to cut from the 20 percent that has the most profound effect on students.
Something is definitely wrong with that picture, if you believe that schools exist primarily to benefit children.
Budgets & Collective Bargaining: Madison School Board Candidates Q & A
Michael Flores and Mary Burke @ Isthmus
Nichelle Nichols & Arlene Silveira @ Isthmus Seat 1 Candidates:
Nichele Nichols
www.nichols4schoolboard.org
email: nnichols4mmsd@gmail.com
Arlene Silveira (incumbent)
www.arleneforschoolboard.com
email: arlene_Silveira@yahoo.com
Seat 2 Candidates:
Mary Burke
www.maryburkeforschoolboard.net
email: maryburkewi@gmail.com
Michael Flores
www.floresforschoolboard.org
email: floresm1977@gmail.com
new Arlene Silveira & Michael Flores Madison Teachers, Inc. Candidate Q & A
Madison Teachers, Inc & Madison School District 2009-2013 Collective Bargaining Agreement
157 page pdf, via a kind reader’s email.
NEA to Spend Up to $5 Million on Ohio Collective Bargaining Referendum
National Education Association’s board of directors approved an allocation of up to $5 million to fund the campaign to defeat SB 5 in Ohio – the bill that severely restricts public employee collective bargaining.
The $5 million comes from the national union’s Ballot Measure/Legislative Crises Fund, which was doubled in size by vote of NEA’s delegates in July. This contribution is in addition to the estimated $5 million the Ohio Education Association dedicated to the referendum campaign, funded by a $54 special assessment the state union imposed on its members.
Madison teachers union files lawsuit challenging constitutionality of collective bargaining law
Unions representing Madison teachers and Milwaukee sanitation workers sued Gov. Scott Walker on Thursday, alleging that the controversial law severely restricting the collective bargaining rights of most public workers in Wisconsin is unconstitutional.
The lawsuit, brought by Madison Teachers Inc. and AFL-CIO Local 61 in Milwaukee alleges that the state legislature passed what was originally called the budget repair bill in violation of the state constitution’s provision that governs special legislative sessions.
The lawsuit also alleges that the law places severe and unfair restrictions on what unions and their members can discuss with municipalities and school districts, and imposes severe wage increase limits that don’t apply to nonunion workers.
n Tough Times, How Will NEA Handle Collective Bargaining as an Employer?
The teachers’ unions believe that dealing with tight budgets in a faltering economy requires close coordination and collaboration with employees through the collective bargaining process. That belief will be put to the test over the next couple of months as more than half of NEA’s state affiliates will bargain new contracts with their own employees.
Several affiliates have already instituted wage and hiring freezes as well as reductions in force in order to balance budgets short on revenue due to membership losses. But as EIA has reported in the past, the union’s employees, represented by staff unions, are no more likely to meekly accept layoffs and benefit cuts than are NEA affiliates when school districts try the same measures.
The professional staff of the Ohio Education Association went on strike for 10 days last September. Such jobs actions are embarrassing for the union, but two or more such strikes at the same time in different states would be sure to garner national attention and cause NEA significant public relations harm.
Best thing to happen to Wisconsin schools? Repealing of collective bargaining
Wisconsin Senator Glenn Grothman:
The repeal of much of Wisconsin’s collective-bargaining law with regard to many of Wisconsin’s public employees has not been adequately explained. This repeal will do more to improve the quality and lower the cost of Wisconsin government than anything else we’ve done. There are approximately 275,000 government employees in the state of Wisconsin. About 72,000 work for the state, 38,000 for cities and villages, 48,000 for counties, 10,500 (full time equivalent) for technical colleges, and 105,229 for schools. Only half of state employees are unionized, but almost all school employees are.
As you can see, the biggest impact will be on Wisconsin’s schools. Since my office has received the most complaints from school teachers, let’s look at how collective bargaining affects both the cost and quality of our schools.
Under current law, virtually all conditions of employment have to be spelled out in a collectively bargained agreement. Consequently, it is very difficult to remove underperforming school teachers. It may take years of documentation and thousands of dollars in attorney fees to fire a bad teacher. Is it right that two or three classes of second-graders must endure a bad teacher while waiting for documentation to be collected? Just as damaging is the inability to motivate or change the mediocre teacher who isn’t bad enough to fire. Good superintendents are stymied when they try to improve a teacher who is doing just enough to get by.
Tennessee House Republicans clear way to end collective bargaining for teachers
House Republican leaders have backed away from an earlier stand that teachers be allowed to continue collective bargaining on base salaries and benefits, clearing the way for total repeal of bargaining between teachers and school boards.
The Tennessee Education Association, which represents 52,000 of the state’s 65,000 public classroom teachers, plans to continue lobbying House members before Tuesday’s key committee vote in hopes of a last-ditch compromise. But TEA spokesman Jerry Winters said teacher morale “is horrible” and warned that if the negotiations law is repealed, “we’re going to make sure that they go before these school boards and wear them out on some of these issues.”
The Senate will likely approve the repeal bill Monday, after deferring its planned vote Thursday to give members time to review another new amendment by the bill’s sponsor. Minutes later, House Speaker Beth Harwell endorsed the Senate version, which she said resulted from talks with House Republican leaders.
Teachers retiring at high rate, many because of collective bargaining changes
More than 130 Madison teachers — many of them worried that Gov. Scott Walker’s collective bargaining law could lead to changes in post-retirement benefits — are retiring in June, a big increase over recent years.
As of the April 15 deadline, 138 Madison teachers have decided to retire, Superintendent Dan Nerad said. That’s a 62 percent increase over the average number of retirements over the previous five years.
The district plans to fill all of the positions, Nerad said, though the loss of so many more veteran teachers than usual could have a more noticeable effect on students and novice teachers.
“A lot of these people have been working with generations of students and influencing people for a long, long time,” Nerad said. “Our intention is to replace them with knowledgeable people, but as a rule they will be less experienced.”
More than 60 teachers indicated they were retiring earlier than anticipated because of concerns about the collective bargaining changes, said John Matthews, executive director of Madison Teachers Inc.
MISSED ADJUSTMENTS and OPPORTUNITIES RATIFICATION OF Madison School District/Madison Teachers Collective Bargaining Agreement 2011-2013
The Madison Metropolitan School District Board of Education and the Madison Teachers, Inc. ratified an expedited Collective Bargaining Agreement for 2011-2013. Several significant considerations were ignored for the negative impact and consequences on students, staff and taxpayers.
First and foremost, there was NO ‘urgent’ need (nor ANY need at all) to ‘negotiate’ a new contract. The current contract doesn’t expire until June 30, 2011. Given the proposals regarding school finance and collective bargaining processes in the Budget Repair Bill before the legislature there were significant opportunities and expectations for educational, management and labor reforms. With such changes imminent, there was little value in ‘locking in’ the restrictive old provisions for conducting operations and relationships and shutting the door on different opportunities for increasing educational improvements and performances in the teaching and learning culture and costs of educating the students of the district.
A partial listing of the missed adjustments and opportunities with the ratification of the teacher collective bargaining agreement should be instructive.
- Keeping the ‘step and advancement’ salary schedule locks in automatic salary increases; thereby establishing a new basis annually for salary adjustments. The schedule awards increases solely on tenure and educational attainment. This also significantly inhibits movement for development and implementation of ‘pay for performance’ and merit.
- Continues the MOU agreement requiring 50% of teachers in 4-K programs (public and private sites combined) to be state certified and union members
- Continues required union membership. There are 2700 total or 2400 full-time equivalent (FTE) teachers, numbers rounded. Full-time teachers pay $1100.00 (pro-rated for part-time) per year in automatic union dues deducted from paychecks and processed by the District. With 2400 FTE multiplied by $1100 equals $2,640,000 per year multiplied by two years of the collective bargaining unit equals $5,280,000 to be paid by teachers to their union (Madison Teachers Inc., for its union activities). These figures do not include staff members in the clerical and teacher assistant bargaining units who also pay union dues, but at a lower rate.
- Continues to limit and delay processes for eliminating non-performing teachers Inhibits abilities of the District to determine the length and configuration of the school day, length and configuration of the school year calendar including professional development, breaks and summer school
- Inhibits movement and placement of teachers where needed and best suited
- Restricts adjustments to class sizes and teacher-pupil ratios
- Continues very costly grievance options and procedures and litigation
- Inhibits the District from developing attendance area level teacher/administrator councils for collaboration in problem-solving, built on trust and relationships in a non-confrontational environment
- Continues costly extra-duties and extra-curricular agreements and processes
- Restricts flexibility for teacher input and participation in professional development, curriculum selection and development and performance evaluation at the building level
- Continues Teacher Emeritus Retirement Program (TERP), costing upwards to $3M per year
- Does not require teacher sharing in costs of health insurance premiums
- Did not immediately eliminate extremely expensive Preferred Provider (WPS) health insurance plan
- Did not significantly address health insurance reforms
- Does not allow for reviews and possible reforms of Sick Leave and Disability Leave policies
- Continues to be the basis for establishing “me too” contract agreements with administrators for salaries and benefits. This has impacts on CBAs with other employee units, i.e., support staff, custodians, food service employees, etc.
- Continues inflexibilities for moving staff and resources based on changes and interpretations of state and federal program supported mandates
- Inhibits educational reforms related to reading and math and other core courses, as well as reforms in the high schools and alternative programs
Each and every one of the above items has a financial cost associated with it. These are the so-called ‘hidden costs’ of the collective bargaining process that contribute to the over-all costs of the District and to restrictions for undertaking reforms in the educational system and the District. These costs could have been eliminated, reduced, minimized and/ or re-allocated in order to support reforms and higher priorities with more direct impact on academic achievement and staff performance.
For further information and discussion contact:
Don Severson President
Active Citizens for Education
donleader@aol.com
608 577-0851
100k PDF version
Why He Did It: For good reason, the Capitol exploded when Gov. Walker struck at collective bargaining: The Rise of Teacher Unions
Christian Schneider, via a kind reader’s emailBy now, the political lore is familiar: A major political party, cast aside by Wisconsin voters due to a lengthy recession, comes roaring back, winning a number of major state offices.
The 43-year-old new governor, carrying out a mandate he believes the voters have granted him, boldly begins restructuring the state’s tax system. His reform package contains a major change in the way state and local governments bargain with their employees, leading to charges that the governor is paying back his campaign contributors.
Only the year wasn’t 2011 — it was 1959, and Gov. Gaylord Nelson had just resurrected the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. Certain of his path, Nelson embarked on an ambitious agenda that included introduction of a withholding tax, which brought hundreds of protesters to the Capitol. Nelson also signed the nation’s first public-sector collective bargaining law — the same law that 52 years later Gov. Scott Walker targeted for fundamental revision.
Two different governors, two different parties, and two different positions.
Ironically, their assertive gubernatorial actions may produce the same disruptive outcome. By empowering the unions, Nelson’s legislation led to public-sector strikes and work stoppages. By disempowering the unions, Walker’s actions might lead to public-sector strikes and work stoppages.
In Walker’s case, union members reluctantly agreed to his pension and health-care demands, but have fought desperately to preserve their leverage in negotiating contracts. That raises the basic question of the Madison showdown: Why is Scott Walker so afraid of collective bargaining?
The answer can be found in the rise of the state’s teachers unions.Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman:
Beware of legacy practices (most of what we do every day is the maintenance of the status quo), @12:40 minutes into the talk – the very public institutions intended for student learning has become focused instead on adult employment. I say that as an employee. Adult practices and attitudes have become embedded in organizational culture governed by strict regulations and union contracts that dictate most of what occurs inside schools today. Any impetus to change direction or structure is met with swift and stiff resistance. It’s as if we are stuck in a time warp keeping a 19th century school model on life support in an attempt to meet 21st century demands.”
Compromise would limit collective bargaining for Tennessee teachers
House Republicans today advanced a compromise on the bill that would originally have halted collective bargaining by Tennessee teachers — allowing bargaining to continue but with new limits on what can be negotiated.
The House Education Subcommittee approved, on a party-line vote, the amendment that would strip out the bill’s ban on collective bargaining and instead allow negotiations to continue between local teacher associations and school boards on base salaries, benefits and a few other issues.
It would prohibit negotiations on differential and merit pay, giving school boards full authority to enact merit pay plans. It would limit bargaining on “working conditions” — currently a broad topic — to matters affecting employees financially or their relationship with the school board.
FAQ’s on Madison’s Latest Collective Bargaining Agreement
Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes:
After a marathon bargaining session that lasted from Friday morning into early Saturday morning, the school district and MTI, our teachers union, settled on the terms of a two-year collective bargaining agreement for our teachers and four other bargaining units that will take effect on July 1. As is true for most negotiations, the terms of the final agreement varied considerably from the parties’ initial offers (discussed in my previous post). The school board ratified the agreement on Saturday and MTI membership voted to approve the pacts today, Sunday.
Here are some frequently asked questions about the agreement along with my responses.
What is your reaction to the settlement?I wonder if any provisions were included that address the District’s “infinite campus” implementation challenges?
Collective Bargaining and the Student Achievement Gap
As numerous states — most prominently Wisconsin and Ohio — consider curtailing the collective bargaining rights of their workers, the debate has largely focused on money and power. If public employee unions are de-authorized or restricted, what impact will that have on state budgets? Tax rates? Political contests?
When it comes to teachers, however, this discussion bypasses a crucial question: What is the impact of collective bargaining on students? A study just published in the Yale Law Journal, which looks at recent, real-life experience in the state of New Mexico, provides a troubling answer.
It finds mandatory collective bargaining laws for public-school teachers lead to a welcome rise in SAT scores – and a disappointing decrease in graduation rates. Author Benjamin Lindy, a member of the Yale Law School class of 2010 and former middle-school teacher, reports that any improvements in student performance appear to come “at the expense of those who are already worse off.”
Labor union supporters say Wisconsin test scores vastly outpace those in five states without collective bargaining for teachers
With that question out of the way, we’ll take a look at the thornier question of how those five states’ test scores stack up nationally, and against Wisconsin in particular.
On Feb. 20, 2011, Angus Johnston, an adjunct assistant professor at the City University of New York, published a comprehensive analysis of this question on his blog. He published links to a chart that appears to have been the inspiration for the tweets and Facebook postings. It offers a state-by-state analysis of scores on the SAT and the ACT, the two leading college-admissions tests, assembled by University of Missouri law professor Douglas O. Linder.
Johnston is critical of Linder’s methodology for a variety of reasons, which he explains in more detail here. But without even taking those concerns into account, we find the statistics unreliable. They were published in 1999, meaning that the statistics themselves are likely more than a dozen years old — far too old to be presumed valid in 2011.
Fortunately, it’s possible to obtain state-by-state rankings for the SAT and ACT of a more recent vintage. Here’s a table of the relevant states:
Unlike Wisconsin, ‘collective bargaining’ doesn’t exist for Arizona’s teachers
As Wisconsin teachers and other public union workers take on Republican Gov. Scott Walker and his plans to end collective bargaining, Arizona teachers wonder: Could there be an impact here?
Unlike Wisconsin, Arizona is a right-to-work state, along with 21 other states. The National Education Association has an affiliate here – the Arizona Education Association – and most school districts have individual chapters. But Arizona doesn’t have collective bargaining, what public workers are arguing to keep intact in Wisconsin.
The education association represents teachers when lobbying Arizona lawmakers and in negotiation efforts, such as “meet and confer” or “interest based bargaining” with school district leadership.
“With collective bargaining, you’re a little more of a partner at the table than what we see here. In some regards we are a partner, but there are other issues we’re not always included on,” Mesa Education Association president Kirk Hinsey said, pointing out that a school district’s governing board ultimately makes the decisions.
Why Public Sector Collective Bargaining Should Be Public
Because during contract negotiations in Stamford, Connecticut, someone might notice that the average teacher salary is about $80,000.
Because in Brevard County, Florida, someone might notice that more than $5 million designated for the employee health care trust fund was spent on an 8.5 percent teacher pay raise.
Because in Hawaii, someone might wonder if getting rid of school on Fridays is really that great of an idea.
Because in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, someone might suggest that the union is filing multiple grievances to get negotiating leverage.
Because across America, someone might actually get to read the New Haven teacher contract before deciding how reformy it is. In the meantime, you can see that the New Haven Federation of Teachers didn’t emphasize the same areas as Randi Weingarten, Arne Duncan and the New York Times when discussing the contract internally.
Invisible Ink in Collective Bargaining Agreements: Why Key Issues Are Not Addressed
Emily Cohen, Kate Walsh & RiShawn Biddle [305K PDF]:
NCTQ takes a close look at the governance of the teaching profession and finds that state legislators and other state-level policymakers crafting state laws and regulation, not those bargaining at the local level, decide some of the most important rules governing the teaching profession.
As a number of big school districts around the country such as San Diego, Broward County, and Philadelphia hammer out new teacher contracts over the next few months, both sides will no doubt bring laundry lists of “must-haves” to the bargaining table. The common assumption is that the important action happens when district administrators and union representatives sit down at the bargaining table. Yet the reality is that well before anyone meets to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement, many issues will have already been decided.
State legislators and other state-level policymakers crafting state laws and regulation, not those bargaining at the local level, decide some of the most important rules governing the teaching profession. Though the teacher contract still figures prominently on such issues as teacher pay and the schedule of the school day, it is by no means the monolithic authority that many presume it to be. In fact, on the most critical issues of the teaching profession, the state is the real powerhouse. State law dictates how often teachers must be evaluated, when teachers can earn tenure, the benefits they’ll receive, and even the rules for firing a teacher.
A recent example out of New York State illustrates the growing authority of the state legislature in shaping rules that were traditionally in the purview of the local school district. Last year New York City Public Schools sought to change the process for awarding teachers tenure by factoring in student data. The local teachers’ union, the United Federation of Teachers protested the district’s new policy, not through a local grievance (because the union, by state law, had no say on tenure issues), but by lobbying state legislatures to pass a bill that would effectively make the district’s action illegal.1 Guided by the heavy hand of the state teachers’ union and the UFT, the New York State Legislature blocked New York City’s tenure changes by embedding a provision in the 2008-2009 budget that made it illegal to consider a teacher’s job performance as a factor in the tenure process.2 The placement of the provision in the large, unwieldy budget virtually assured the union of a win, as few legislators or the governor would have been prepared to have the budget go down on the basis of a single provision.
The Grinding Battle with Circumstance: Charter Schools and the Potential of School-Based Collective Bargaining
Jonathan Gyurko [196K PDF]:
Despite its teacher union origins as a vehicle for teacher-led, bottom-up innovation and early bi-partisan support, the charter movement was adopted by political conservatives as a vehicle for market-oriented education reforms. In the process, teacher unions largely repudiated an idea they helped launch. Yet recently, a flurry of discussion has emerged regarding an evolving and potentially productive relationship between charter schools and teacher unions. These discussions were precipitated by the recent actions of a few notable policy entrepreneurs whose work may suggest political and policy alternatives that could advance and sustain the policies embedded in the charter model.
This paper chronicles the political history of the charter school movement in the United States, starting with ideas promulgated by the late American Federation of Teachers President Albert Shanker and continuing through the embrace of charter schools by political conservatives. Through a review of available research, the paper assesses the current state of the charter school movement, including an assessment of charter school achievement data and a critique of the charter school policy framework, with particular emphasis on charter school financing, philanthropic support, and access to human capital. The paper also describes the recent and politically counter-intuitive work by the United Federation of Teachers, New York City’s teachers union, in founding two charter schools.
With the broad history and state of the charter school movement established, this paper analyzes recent events through the agenda setting frameworks developed by Baumgartner and Jones (1993) and Kingdon (1984). Specifically, the paper argues that the charter school movement may be approaching an instance of “punctuated equilibrium” due to the charter school movement’s changing “policy image” and the loss of “monopolistic control” over the charter school agenda by a small interest group. The paper concludes that school-based collective bargaining may be a “new institutional structure” that could have transformative and productive consequences for the charter school movement.
Statement on MMSD/MTI Tentative Collective Bargaining Agreement Vote
After much consideration, I have decided to vote against the tentative agreement negotiated by the District and the MTI teachers union. I will do so because the agreement fails to include significant health insurance changes, and as a result, unreasonably depresses the salary increases that can be provided to our teachers. While the total salary […]
Teacher Rules, Roles & Rights National Collective Bargaining Searchable Database
National Council on Teacher Quality: the portal is the first of its kind-empowering anyone to analyze and compare the day-to-day operations of teachers and schools in a single district or all fifty. You can choose to download the full text of a teacher contract, just the salary schedule, and even the school calendar. Or perhaps […]
“The University of Saskatchewan is on an ideological mission. It needs to end”
Peter MacKinnon: I must disclose my background here; I was employed by the University of Saskatchewan for 40 years including 13 years as president. The institution’s distinctive origins combined the development of liberal education with a responsibility to build the province’s agricultural industry, and it did the latter with world-class agricultural programs and research institutes, […]
Notes on Taxpayer Funded Federal Unions & Lobbying
Don Surber: He wrote, “in a letter addressed to members of the Senate, which I obtained, Everett B. Kelley, head of what I believe is the country’s biggest federal government employee union—the American Federation of Government Employees—asks senators to vote no on the House-produced continuing resolution, and says that a shutdown is actually preferable to passing […]
Civics: Colorado Unions and the Freedom to choose legislation
Wall Street Journal: The progressive campaign to turn Colorado into the California of the Mountain West took a leap forward last week as Democrats in the Rocky Mountain State advanced a bill to repeal their right-to-work-lite law. During the early 20th century, Colorado was fraught with labor militancy. To cool tensions, lawmakers in 1943 enacted […]
Wisconsin Act 10 Lawfare and litigation update
Andrew Bahl: A challenge to one of Wisconsin’s most high-profile laws of the last 15 years — restricting the collective bargaining rights of public sector unions — has taken another turn on its way through the court system. The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a case involving Act 10 must first proceed through a […]
Litigation and lawfare on Wisconsin Act 10
Mitchell Schmidt: Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Brian Hagedorn, who served as former Gov. Scott Walker’s chief legal counsel and helped draft the state’s landmark Act 10 law, said Thursday he will not participate in pending litigation seeking to overturn several components in the law. Hagedorn’s decision to recuse himself marks a major blow to Republicans’ […]
Act 10: politics, elections, and the Wisconsin Supreme Court
Scott Bauer: The Republican-controlled Wisconsin Legislature on Tuesday asked that a liberal state Supreme Court justice step aside in a pending case that seeks to overturn a 2011 law that effectively ended collective bargaining for most state workers. If Justice Janet Protasiewicz agrees not to hear the case, the court would be deadlocked 3-3 between liberals and […]
For those who don’t think unions have too much power, here is an active union contract in Michigan.
Mackinac Center Teachers can be drunk at school five times before they are fired. They can be high three times before losing their job. And they can MAKE AND SELL DRUGS and keep their job. James Hope: Another unique bargaining tactic played out in a school about 100 miles north of Ann Arbor. Bay City […]
more on Act 10, litigation (lawfare) and taxpayer funded k-12 systems
David Blaska: You are not a Dane County judgei n good standing if you have not ruled against Act 10, the statutory limitations on government employee collective bargaining. Bonus points if you supported the recall of Act 10’s author, Gov. Scott Walker. The latest judge to make his progressive bones here in Madison WI is […]
Act 10, litigation and the taxpayer funded Madison School District
Abbey Machtig The union representing Madison School District teachers and staff is demanding to bargain with district officials following Monday’s court ruling that would restore collective bargaining rights for Wisconsin teachers and other public employees. “We have returned to a pre-Act 10 collective bargaining environment, and we are therefore entitled to collectively bargain over terms […]
Civics: Organized Labor Requires Government Coercion
Richard Hanania: When I started writing about the problems with civil rights law, few people had any idea what I was talking about, even in right-wing circles. Most understood the Civil Rights Act as the bill that got rid of Jim Crow and banned explicit discrimination. It did in fact do those things, but as […]
Act 10 and the public sector unions
WILL For the better part of the last decade, no piece of legislation has loomed larger in public policy debates in Wisconsin than Act 10, the collective bargaining reform law passed in 2011. The controversial budget repair bill, introduced by Governor Scott Walker in the first weeks of his first term, represented a fundamental break […]
Why Government Unions—Unlike Trade Unions—Corrupt Democracy
Philip Howard: Today, in a runoff election for mayor, Chicago voters will choose either former teacher Brandon Johnson or former schools CEO Paul Vallas. What’s raising eyebrows is the funding of Johnson’s campaign: Over 90 percent has come from teachers unions and other public employee unions. Vallas has the endorsement of the police union, but his funding […]
“the same teacher could earn up to $68,000 in Appleton, and only between $39,000 and $43,000 in Oshkosh”
Alex Tabarrok: In my 2011 book, Launching the Innovation Renaissance, I wrote: At times, teacher pay in the United States seems more like something from Soviet-era Russia than 21st-century America. Wages for teachers arelow, egalitarian and not based on performance. We pay physical education teachers about the same as math teachers despite the fact that math […]
Back to the Past: The Fiscal Threat of Reversing Wisconsin Act 10
Will Flanders: Among the key findings of this report: Few single pieces of state-level legislation have garnered as much attention and controversy in the 21st Century as Wisconsin’s Act 10. Passed by Republican Governor Scott Walker over the strong objections of Democrats, 3 the legislation introduced several important reforms to public sector unions around the […]
Wisconsin’s Act 10, Flexible Pay, and the Impact on Teacher Labor Markets: Student test scores rise in flexible-pay districts. So does a gender gap for teacher compensation.
Barbara Biasi Using employment records on all public-school teachers in Wisconsin linked to individual student information on achievement and demographics from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, I first document how teacher salaries changed in flexible-pay and seniority-pay districts in the aftermath of the reform. After the expiration of districts’ collective bargaining agreements, salary differences […]
History (revisionist…?), Governance and Madison’s long term, disastrous reading results
David Blaska: Here in Madison, the proponents of one-size-fits-all government monopoly schooling are rewriting history to cover their misdeeds. The occasion was the recent passing of barely remembered Daniel Nerad, superintendent of Madison public schools between 2008 and 2012. Capital Times publisher Paul Fanlund marvels that the same problems that beset Nerad a dozen years ago plague the […]
Notes on Wisconsin teacher compensation (focus on salary; no mention of district benefit spending)
Scott Girard: “Wisconsin’s Teacher Pay Predicament,” published today by the nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum, says it’s likely to get more challenging for districts to match the rising cost of living, even as many of the largest school systems gave out record wage increases ahead of the 2023-24 school year. That includes the Madison Metropolitan School […]
SEIU and the Los Angeles School District
Gustavo Arellano: He joined his father in El Salvador after graduating from high school in Florida, teaching English as a second language classes while studying engineering. But the pay wasn’t good, so Arias returned to Florida, where he worked at a Radio Shack for four years while waiting for a chance “to go back to […]
How “Education Freedom” Played in the Midterms
Jessica Winter: The 2022 midterm elections offered many snapshots of the contemporary school wars, but one might start with the race for Superintendent of Education in South Carolina, a state that languishes near the bottom of national education rankings and that’s suffering from a major teacher shortage. Lisa Ellis, the Democratic candidate, has twenty-two years of teaching […]
Notes on Taxpayer supported Madison K-12 spending plans amidst declining enrollment
Scott Girard: While there is a large influx of federal COVID-19 relief funding, officials have expressed hesitancy at using that one-time money for ongoing operational costs like salaries. “You’re going to hear no argument from us that our teachers and our staff deserve better,” LeMonds said at one of MTI’s rallies in May. “The fiscal […]
“When you call WEA Trust, not only do they know how to say Oconomowoc, they know where it is on a map,”
Alexander Shur: The company insured the vast majority of school districts before former Gov. Scott Walker’s Act 10 in 2011 blocked unions from negotiating over benefits, which led school districts to shop for cheaper alternatives, resulting in a stark revenue loss for the company. Conservatives heralded the change, saying it saved school districts tens of […]
Even after Act 10, state employees still pay roughly half for their platinum health insurance of what taxpayers pay for basic health insurance in the real world
MacIver It’s been 11 years since Wisconsin Republicans led by Gov. Scott Walker passed collective bargaining reform, and the savings to taxpayers have been piling up ever since. Known as Act 10, the reforms were designed to permanently solve a financial crisis throughout Wisconsin’s public sector. State government alone was facing a $3.6 billion deficit […]
A proposal to reduce choice in the taxpayer supported Denver schools
Boardhawk: The Denver school board last week introduced a draft policy that could limit the autonomy of innovation schools and zones — district-run schools that under state law have some charter-school-like autonomy. The policy has been given the official title of Standard Teacher Rights and Protections. If passed, the rights and protections provided would be […]
Parents sue to end illegal Chicago Teachers Union Strike
Liberty Justice Center: – A group of Chicago parents have filed a lawsuit against the Chicago Teachers Union, calling this week’s school closures an “illegal strike” and demanding that teachers return to school for in-person learning. The lawsuit was filed late Thursday by attorneys at the Liberty Justice Center, a national nonprofit law firm that […]
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Looking Back and Forward on Substantial Government Budget (and debt) growth
Amity Shlaes: Still, a review of the record of Roosevelt’s New Deal suggests that a sentient voter, slimed or not, might pause before signing up for the newest new deal. When Roosevelt ran for office in 1932, a shocking one in four workers was unemployed. Roosevelt promised to get employment back to usual levels, which […]
Wisconsin act 10 and competitive teacher compensation
Ameillia Wedward and Will Flanders: As Act 10 reaches its second decade, the 2011 collective bargaining reforms continue to prove their value to K-12 education in Wisconsin. But this does not mean that the reforms are no longer controversial, or that opponents of the law have given hope of a repeal. In such an environment, […]
Commentary on the benefits of Wisconsin Act 10
Rick Eisenberg & Will Flanders However, the left is still working to say otherwise, so two prevalent myths deserve to be dispelled. The passage of Act 10 and “right-to-work” legislation — which gave employees in Wisconsin the same freedom to choose whether to be in the union as is enjoyed in 26 other states — did not increase income […]
Wisconsin ACT 10 Outcomes
CJ Szafir: Billions in savings for taxpayers: Since 2011, Act 10 has saved taxpayers over $13 billion, according to the MacIver Institute. The sky didn’t fall on public education. A study from the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, which I co-authored, showed that Act 10 had little or no impact on student-teacher ratios, the number of licensed teachers, […]
Study: Act 10 leads to improvement in Wisconsin math testing results
Noel Evans: Math test scores in schools across Wisconsin have been steadily improving, according to a new study. The study from The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL), “Keeping Score: Act 10’s Impact on Student Achievement,” attributes the rise in scores, particularly in the math scores of students from kindergarten through high school, to […]
Schools Don’t Spread Covid. Teachers’ Unions Don’t Care.
Joe Nocera: My first boss in journalism was Charlie Peters of the Washington Monthly, whose way of mentoring his young staff writers was to assign us articles that took us well out of our comfort zones. Given that my parents were both public school teachers, it was inevitable that when the teachers’ union in Washington, […]
Union’s Union About to Be… Deunionized?
Mike Antonucci: That contract is due to expire on July 31, and it has led to a couple of startling developments. The first is especially odd. Although the Pinellas Staff Organization is the exclusive bargaining representative of the seven staffers, only two of them are actually members of the union. The other five do not […]
“qualifications and not seniority will decide who gets let go”
Scott Girard: Among the changes is one that would allow the district to choose who is laid off and designated as surplus staff based on qualifications rather than seniority. That is among a slate of administrator-proposed “preliminary recommendations” the board discussed Monday night during an Instruction Work Group meeting, with a vote anticipated at the full June […]
Want to Reopen Schools? Better Be Ready to Bargain
Mike Antonucci: Here in California, state officials have made it clear that they will issue guidelines for school reopenings, but the ultimate decision will be left to the individual districts. In the eyes of the California Teachers Association, that means collective bargaining. Last week CTA issued its stance on school reopenings, listing those things the union wants […]
Federalism, local governance, influence and how we arrived at Wisconsin ACT 10
Rachel Cohen: Meanwhile, a top priority for labor has been sitting quietly on Pelosi’s desk and, unlike USMCA, already commands enough support to get it over the House finish line. The Protecting the Right to Organize Act would be the most comprehensive rewrite of U.S. labor law in decades. It would eliminate right-to-work laws, impose […]
Elizabeth Warren Has a Plan to Hurt Wisconsin Schools
CZ Szafir Libby Sobic: Presidential candidate — and 2020 Democrat frontrunner — U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren released her vision for K-12 education in America this week. While the document contains plenty of hyperbolic language (combating the “corruption” associated with charter schools), Warren, who likes to say “she has a plan for that”, does offer policy […]
The Looming Chicago Teacher Strike May Be As Much About Membership As It Is About Money
Mike Antonucci: The Chicago Teachers Union seems to be marching inexorably toward a strike beginning Oct. 17. The union struck for a single day in 2016 and for seven days in 2012, which many credit as being the launching point for a later wave of teacher strikes across the country. While CTU continues to be […]
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Milwaukee’s Pension Assumptions (!) and Expense
Alison Dirr: A Mcouple of factors have contributed to the pending increase, Barrett said: Police and fire budgets and a drop in the anticipated earnings on the city’s pension fund from 8% to 7.5%. Police and fire pensions The city’s fire and police sworn personnel make up about 80% of the total pension costs. Barrett […]
Act 10 litigation continues
Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty: Today, on behalf of a public school teacher who has refused union membership, attorneys at WILL have filed a motion to intervene in the latest lawsuit over the 2011 collective bargaining reform law (“Act 10”). This month, labor unions revived a dormant lawsuit in federal court to bring against […]
Do Charter Schools Cause Fiscal Distress in School Districts?
Center on Reinventing Public Education: Districts must no longer pay to educate students who transfer to publicly funded charter schools but they must still pay costs that can’t be adjusted immediately as school enrollment changes. Since 2017 critics in California and nationwide have claimed charter school growth undermines school district finances and forces cuts in […]
An Unlikely Bargain: Why Charter School Teachers Unionize and What Happens When They Do
Ashley Jochim and Lesley Lavery: For nearly two decades teachers unions and charter schools have formed an “us vs. them” narrative that pits one against the other. Unionization efforts by charter school teachers could scramble that narrative. With this report we set out to understand trends in charter school unionization, document teachers’ motivations for unionizing, […]
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Closed-door meetings on unions preceded Amazon’s withdrawal
Michael Gormley: A series of tense, closed-door meetings during which Amazon was pressed to hire union workers at its proposed Queens headquarters preceded the company’s abrupt pullout on Thursday, which shocked even insiders, according to several people familiar with the discussions. Two days before, in his 38th floor office in Manhattan on Tuesday morning, Gov. […]
School Board candidates stake out their positions at 2019 primary forum
Negassi Tesfamichael: The nine candidates in a crowded primary for three seats on the Madison School Board made their case to an audience gathered at Christ Presbyterian Church Tuesday evening. The forum, organized by the Grandparents United for Madison Public Schools, was the first time the candidates shared the stage during the current election cycle. […]
L.A. teacher sues union, saying dues were illegally taken out of her paycheck
Hannah Fry: A Los Angeles Unified teacher filed a federal class-action lawsuit this week against United Teachers Los Angeles alleging the group continued to take dues out of her paycheck despite a change in law that bars public-sector unions from forcing members to pay. Irene Seager, who teaches at Porter Ranch Community School, signed a […]
The Union Fight That Defined Beto O’Rourke’s City Council Days
Walker Bragman: At the height of the conflict, O’Rourke publicly mused about disbanding the police union, calling it “out of control” and lamenting his colleagues’ unwillingness to stand up to the powerful political force. A year later, he was calling for “better checks on collective bargaining in the public sector.” The fight came at one […]
Madison Teachers Union and the 2019 school board election: Commentary, Spending and Academic Results
Chris Rickert: The questionnaire also includes several questions about teachers’ ability to have a say in their compensation and working conditions, and asks whether the candidates “support the reinstatement of collective bargaining rights for all public employees (currently prohibited by Act 10)?” Act 10 is the controversial 2011 law passed by Republicans that stripped most […]
Commentary on Wisconsin K-12 Governance and the November, 2018 Election
<a href=”https://madison.com/ct/news/local/education/democratic-legislators-look-to-make-big-changes-to-state-education/article_882a0ddd-3671-5769-b969-dd9d2bc795db.html”>Negassi Tesfamichael</a>: <blockquote> Many local Democratic state legislators say much of the future of K-12 education in Wisconsin depends on the outcome of the Nov. 6 election, particularly the gubernatorial race between state superintendent Tony Evers, a Democrat, and Republican Gov. Scott Walker. Legislators spoke at a forum at Christ Presbyterian Church Wednesday night, […]
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker sets goal of topping nation in high school grads in four years
Molly Beck: Gov. Scott Walker said he wants Wisconsin high school students to graduate at a rate higher than any other state in the nation by the end of his third term should he be re-elected this fall. Walker, who in an interview late Monday called himself “an education governor,” set the goal to coincide […]
“And I am going to call it Madison Prep.”
Amber Walker: Critics were also concerned about Madison Prep’s operating costs — totaling $11,000 per student — and its reliance on non-union staff in the wake of Wisconsin’s Act 10, a state law that severely limited collective bargaining rights of teachers and other state employees which passed early in 2011. Caire said despite the challenges, […]
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: By limiting the power of public unions, Janus may help them (States) avert fiscal disaster.
Arthur Laffer and Steve Moore: The Illinois crisis is so severe that paying the promised pensions would require a 30-year property-tax increase that would cost the median Chicago homeowner $2,000 a year, according to a study from three economists at the Chicago Fed. Not a penny of that added tax money would pay for better […]
Wisconsin Act 10 Commentary: Madison schools are near the low end of what districts now require for teacher health insurance premium contributions, at 3 percent,
Mark Sommerhauser: Wisconsin school districts ratcheted up health care costs on teachers and other employees after the state’s Act 10 collective bargaining changes, with the average district now requiring teachers to pay about 12 percent of their health insurance premiums, newly released data show. Madison schools are near the low end of what districts now […]
Commentary on Act 10
Patrick Marley and MRy Spicuzzi: “People think that unions are useless today, that we’re dinosaurs,” Bryce said in 2015, according to the book. “Well, how did that happen? We let it happen. The labor movement has become lazy, because it’s something that’s been handed to us.” Bryce, a Democrat running for GOP House Speaker Paul […]
WILL Messaging Experiment & Public Opinion Poll on K-12 Tax & Spending
WILL: on K-12 Education Reform In almost every context, words matter. Public opinion on particular issues can shift greatly depending on the language used, and K-12 education reform is no exception. To help further understand this, the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty commissioned Research Now Survey Sampling International to conduct a statewide survey experiment […]
Democrats say they would repeal Act 10 if they unseat Scott Walker
Patrick Marley: The Democrats running for governor are pledging to end GOP Gov. Scott Walker’s union restrictions, while Walker is promising to veto any changes to Act 10 if he wins re-election and Democrats take control of the Legislature. Act 10 — adopted amid massive protests shortly after Walker took office in 2011 — brought […]
10 Topics for the Next Milwaukee School Superintendent
Alan Borsuk: Teachers and the teachers’ union. Don’t expect a happy workforce. The union has turned up the volume on its unhappiness and it remains a powerful force, even without the bargaining powers it had before Act 10, which dramatically curtailed collective bargaining for most public employees, including teachers. Beyond the union itself, it won’t […]
Planned liberal arts cuts at UW-Stevens Point fan right-left debate on higher education
Pat Schneider: Critics of the proposal say it is evidence of the UW System’s move toward becoming more technical college than university, part of a retreat from higher education supported by conservatives across the country. “There’s a certain part of society that views higher education as job training and ignores the larger calling of higher […]
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: State Finance and Mandatory Union Agency Fees
Daniel DiSalvo and Stephen Eide: Blue-state Democrats have denounced last year’s tax reform as a partisan attack. Thanks to the new $10,000 cap on deductions for state and local taxes, households in places like California and New York will soon feel the stinging cost of big government. This will make raising taxes more difficult, which […]
Wisconsin labor unions file lawsuit over Act 10, saying it violates free speech
Sarah Hauer: The filing argues that Act 10 is “a content-based restriction infringing on (the unions’) rights to free speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.” It says the law infringes upon association rights “to organize as a collective bargaining unit by increasing costs and penalties through its recertification and fair share provisions.” […]
Public Unions vs. the First Amendment
Wall Street Journal: The Supreme Court on Monday will hear the landmark First Amendment case Janus v. Afscme that challenges whether public employees can be compelled to subsidize union advocacy. As Thomas Jefferson once wrote, requiring “a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical”—and […]
