Be sure to visit the Freedom Foundation’s newest website,
Workable Future: Ideas for an Innovative Workforce (www.workablefuture.com).
Workable Future is about connecting the dots between labor
policy and our daily lives. As we struggle to compete in the global marketplace
of an information economy, we remain trapped in a labor relations paradigm that
is nearly a century old. In this time of economic stress and uncertainty, it is
crucial that we recognize that a free labor market is essential for a free and
prosperous society. For workers, for entrepreneurs, for all of us: it’s time to
build a workable future. At WorkableFuture.com,
readers can:
get the latest news about labor unions, jobs, and the
economy;
find out how to opt out of their union;
discover the possibilities for labor reform; and
learn how labor reform will benefit workers, employers, and
consumers.
Check back for more updates, the latest news, and more!
The Ferndale Education Association has struck the Ferndale School District delaying the start of the 2010 school year until Monday at the latest nearly a week later than scheduled.
Wednesday morning was supposed to be the first day of school for up to 4,800 students and 330 teachers in the district. Instead, teachers were pounding the pavement while students expressed frustration and disgust at the strike.
And the presence of a reporter from the Evergreen Freedom Foundation created buzz among union officials and touched off a minor confrontation with some picketers.
Tucked in the upper northwest corner of Washington state a few miles from the Canadian border, Ferndale is a pleasant community long associated with dairy farming and oil refining, not educational labor troubles.
The issues in dispute in the negotiations included six minutes per day of planning time for elementary teachers, 10 new early release days for teacher planning and more health care plan options for teachers.
But there was confusion as to whether some of the issues were in dispute at all. Communication efforts from both the district and the union made it difficult to discern the status of negotiations or what the relative positions of the two sides were. In addition, some teachers on the picket line claimed that an attorney for the Washington Education Association had advised them that they had a legal right to strike. When advised that Washington state law did not give them a protected right to strike, they expressed surprise.
In the meantime, eighth-graders Erick Price, Luke Robinson and Marcus Nightengale (pictured right) were not happy that the teachers were disrupting their education.
"It's stupid," said Luke. "If they want six minutes, they should come to school earlier. They aren't thinking of us."
The three 13-year-old students were unanimous and emphatic in saying that they wanted to go to school, and they said they would be really angry if the strike goes on for long.
"My dad has to work every day, so why shouldn't they?" said Luke, whose father is a garbage man. He said he would favor a court order to get teachers back in the classroom. "Whatever makes them go back to school," he said.
The three students were walking through the parking lot at district headquarters when they were asked for an interview. One picketing teacher sought to interfere with the interview by telling the students that they were not obligated to speak to a reporter, but they insisted that they wanted to. The teacher, Jay Sozanski, who had granted an interview just a few minutes earlier and then sought to, in his words, "revoke" it, had to be told to back off and not interfere with the right of the three students to state their opinions when he left the picket line and walked toward the students and this reporter.
In that earlier interview, Sozanski, a 34-year language arts and social studies teacher, said that the district had refused to negotiate and that district officials were "too shook up with the strike to mediate."
He claimed the district had $2 million in the bank that could pay for all the union demands, a figure that was later disputed by district superintendent Linda Quinn during a conference call with several reporters.
Sozanski refused to comment on what he would do if a judge ordered the teachers to return to the classroom. "We will deal with things as they come up," he said. At that point, another picketer approached him and hustled him away. After a few minutes of discussion with the other teacher, Sozanski came back and tried to "revoke" the interview, which was refused.
This reporter's affiliation with the Freedom Foundation was apparently the reason for Sozanski's demand. Sozanski became increasingly confrontational and aggressive in his comments culminating in his attempt to prevent the interview with the students.
An earlier visit to the district's Mountain View Elementary found an empty parking lot that ordinarily would have been packed with activity on the first day of school. Picketing at the school were Jan Polen, a special education teacher with 14 years of experience at Ferndale, and Katey Dexter, a reading specialist with nine years at Ferndale and 25 years of total teaching experience.
"The district has more money than what they're saying they have," said Polen. The union's figures and the district's figures were vastly different, she said.
"We're not asking for a raise," said Polen, although an information sheet from the district did include increases in staff professional responsibility stipends as an issue yet to be resolved in the negotiations.
Both teachers refused to say what they would do if ordered to return to the classroom by a judge. Polen accused the district of not negotiating. "They have refused to meet," she said.
Fifth grade teacher Dave Esser, a 23-year Ferndale veteran, said that even conservative parents are in support of the strike. Most cars that passed the picketers at both Mountain View and school district headquarters honked their horns seemingly in support of the teachers.
A union official tried to buttonhole this reporter by phone on two occasions offering an in-person interview with a spokesperson, which never materialized.
Efforts to interview district officials were rebuffed initially because they were in a staff meeting and unavailable. Later in the afternoon, Tammy Bengen the district director of public information and executive secretary to the superintendent said that the only information from the district that would be available, aside from a two-page summary of negotiation issues, would be a conference call with Quinn.
During that call, Quinn said that the district had no plans to go to court to end the strike.
"Lots of people say that teachers strikes are illegal, but I don't want to put it into that framework," she said. When asked if the teachers are doing what they think is right, Quinn said, "Sure I do."
Quinn said that the union's claim that $2 million was on hand to fund the additional planning time and early release dates as well as other issues was false. She encouraged people to go to the district website to verify her claim by looking at a recent district financial statement. An effort to retrieve a financial statement by following her instructions was unsuccessful.
The district was eager to negotiate, Quinn said, and a mediation session was scheduled for 1:30 pm on Thursday. That the parties spent some 18 hours together in the same room on Monday, Labor Day, exhausted them, hence a respite in negotiations. Responding to union accusations that they refused to meet, Quinn said, "We never said that we wouldn't meet again."
But she did say that the district had given as much as they could afford in negotiations. She said that the district had agreed to the six-minute-planning demand if they could implement it 30 days after the start of school. And they were prepared to agree to the early-dismissal demand if they could determine that it would not be disruptive to the families of students.
"I really believe we want the same thing," Quinn said when referring to what the district and the union wanted out of the negotiations.
She said she was hopeful that the Thursday mediation session with a state mediator based out of Olympia would result in a settlement. Should a settlement materialize, the earliest school could start would be Monday, September 13.
Asked what message she had for parents, Quinn said, "We are sorry about the inconvenience."
The district's telephone hotline message for Thursday only said that there would be no school that day.
Accurate information about the issues or the positions of the parties was difficult to obtain by talking with people on the ground. Union promises of interviews never materialized, and the district superintendent only had time for a 15-minute conference call with reporters. No other officials were available for in-depth interviews or comments. Based upon their comments to this reporter, picketing teachers weren't always accurately informed on the issues or on the legality of their strike.
Since its inception in 1882, Labor Day marks the recognition
of America’s
workers. It’s a day to
celebrate good, honest, hard work, and to thank those who were willing to put in the long hours that led to historic achievements, innovations, and discoveries.
Yet this year’s holiday will be painful for many. The September jobs report
released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics brought dreary news:
unemployment is now up to 9.6 percent across the nation, and nonfarm industries
shed 54,000 jobs over the past month.
This year, many discouraged citizens will stay home from
their annual holiday vacations to save a much-needed buck, while others won’t
really care to celebrate at all. For them, the day merely serves as a
reminder of just how long it’s been since they’ve put in a full day’s work.
It’s no stretch to say that we’ve all seen better days.
Even so, I’m determined to be hopeful this weekend. While
the present looks a bit gloomy, I have only to remember that as long as
Americans do what they do best—innovate and create solutions—we’ll be alright.
That’s
because innovation has always fueled economic recovery. According to the Small Business Administration,
64 percent of all new jobs over the past fifteen years have been created by
small businesses and start-ups. Small businesses pay 44 percent of the total U.S. private payroll
and employ just over half of all private-sector employees.
Unfortunately,
American innovation is having a hard time these days. Heightened government
involvement in man’s freedom to solve his own problems is one of the culprits.
It’s a rather awkward time in history, really. The Age of
Technology has made work specialized, creative, and flexible. We now have an
“ideas” economy, yet government is starting to say—in an increasingly louder
voice—that we can’t figure it out ourselves.
Many entrepreneurs and business owners aren’t free to create
jobs and move forward because of over-regulation and labor laws that were passed
during the New Deal—the era when the non-leaking ballpoint pen was
invented and Penguin sold the first ever paperback books! These laws may
have worked for an assembly-line, manufacturing industry, but now they're only
damaging our modern workforce.
In addition, private industries must now compete with an
increase in government jobs, characterized by monopolies and inflated salaries
and benefits. This increase can be
attributed in part to powerful public-sector unions that seem to thrive under
an outdated way of doing labor relations.
So what will bring our nation back on top? Well,
it’s up to us to figure that out. And Americans have always been good at
coming up with solutions. Sometimes, though, we need a little inspiration
in dark times.
That’s why next week, the Freedom Foundation is launching a
new website, called Workable Future:
Ideas for an Innovative Workforce. The website will highlight the
benefits of innovation under a free labor market and motivate Americans to consider
what our nation could look like under a labor model that truly embraces creativity,
flexibility, and worker freedom.
While America has enjoyed many monumental achievements throughout history, we must continue to believe that it's not over; the best is yet to come.
Look for more information about Workable Future next week, and have an optimistic Labor Day!
Negotiations between Washington state and the Washington Federation of State Employees, among other unions, over a new contract continue with the big issue - really, the only issue - being health care costs. LibertyLive.org has been keeping a close eye on those talks.
On Thursday comes this Associated Press story that should, but probably won't, toss some cold water on the howling we've heard from WFSE, et al, over the state's request to hike the employee portion of health care premium cost from 12 to 26 percent.
From the article:
"Researchers found that businesses still pay at least 70 percent of the total premium, on average, for their workers. But they're asking workers to chip in more, and that goes beyond increasing the premium contribution.
'The coverage that employees get is looking less and less like the coverage that their parents used to get,' (Kaiser Family Foundation CEO Drew) Altman said.
A growing percentage of workers are covered by health insurance that requires them to pay a deductible of $1,000 or more before most coverage starts. The increase is most striking with smaller companies, where 46 percent of workers are enrolled in high-deductible plans, up from 16 percent in 2006."
So, even at 74 percent employer-paid premium levels, the WFSE-represented state workers will be better off than the average American worker.
Sometimes it's best to know when you're well off. To paraphrase the old saw, I cried when they asked me to pay more for my health coverage until I met a man who had none at all because he lost his job due to his employer leaving the state because of its unconscionable tax burden. Just a thought.
Naming the Seattle Education Association’s 2010 labor relations strategy requires extending apologies to late-night comic David Letterman. When it comes to Stupid Negotiating Tricks, SEA has cornered the market.
The strategy for Seattle Public Schools, however, appears to be focused on ignoring insults and vituperation, bargaining toward making progress in specific areas and, contrary to last year, providing unprecedented access to the media.
The union’s tactics were on display recently at a fizzled rally at the Seattle Public School District headquarters office followed by a near-hysterical rantathon directed at members of the school board during the public testimony period of the board’s regular meeting.
Estimated by Seattle police at 75, attendance at the rally grew to maybe 100. That number paled in comparison to a similar event 14 months ago at the school district headquarters in Seattle’s industrial area. For the most part, the rally consisted of picketers marching through the parking lot and along the sidewalk carrying signs that read “Historic Change Now” with a few wearing assorted funny hats.
SEA president Olga Addae tried to motivate her troops by describing the union as one of the most progressive labor organizations anywhere. King County Labor Council Executive Secretary Dave Freiboth anemically talked up the affiliation Seattle teachers had with organized labor. He said it was a matter of “respect.”
Among the assembled faithful was Ken Berry, 60, a special education instructional assistant and member of the SEA, who said that the school district is going in the wrong direction.
“All they do is rubber-stamp the superintendant,” he said.
“The so-called ‘disaster’ in education – worrying about whether Johnny can read – is a fake,” he said. How can things be so bad when there has been unprecedented growth in the economy and technology all the while the state of the country’s educational health has been condemned, he asked?
Berry said that he was against the school district’s contract proposal that includes merit pay. People shouldn’t be paid differently because of how someone else measures their performance, he said. There are no incompetent teachers, just teachers who are not performing as well as they could, he said.
Scornfully critical of tests generally and of the use of them to measure teacher performance, he said that seniority was the only just way to determine who should stay and who should be let go when it came time for a reduction in force. “If you want the highest quality performance and results, you won’t get them through tests,” he said.
Berry said he was working in support of a recall of five school board members, and he would go out on strike to resist having to accept the board’s contract proposals, which he said aren’t supported by parents and citizens despite what polling results from Our Schools Coalition that found strong parent and taxpayer support for much of the district’s position..
The Our Schools Coalition represents 33 groups and either current or former city-wide elected officials all with strong interest in education.
According to the district, the proposal, entitled Support, Empower, Recognize and Value Educators (SERVE), features a voluntary four-tier evaluation system for teacher performance that includes, but does not exclusively rely upon, student test scores. A teacher can elect to participate, and, if she does, she receives an immediate one-percent pay increase.
Other SERVE features include large blocks of collaborative time for teachers and staff, additional career opportunities, remedial help for struggling teachers, financial incentives to attract strong teachers to lower-performing schools and more.
District officials involved in the negotiations go out of their way to put a positive light on them with one saying that he remained “hopeful and somewhat optimistic.” The official said that they will continue to bargain in good faith and that he was hopeful that school would start on time.
Other district officials refused to criticize the union’s proposals or leadership despite being subjected to seething criticism from a long line of union officials and teachers at a recent meeting of the school board. In off-the-record conversations with several of them, they were united in expressing a desire to develop and implement systems to consistently measure academic growth. While they said they believed that they were making progress at the table, the also expressed some frustration with the process in face of what they saw was the pressing need to make progress.
Given Washington state’s recent poor showing in national competition for a $250 million federal Race to the Top education grant, that frustration looks to be well placed since a lack of progress in many of the areas on the district’s agenda came in for severe criticism from application adjudicators.
Bargaining for a new contract continued throughout the weekend in anticipation of the September 8 start of school in Seattle. Sources say that the district and the union are hung up on the issue of using test scores as one means of measuring teacher performance.
Labor bargaining is underway between Washington state and unions representing state employees. The biggest issue on the table is health care, with the state proposing that the employee share of the cost for health care coverage go from the current 12 percent up to 26 percent of their health care premiums.
For several years, the state has played fiscal ping pong with health care funding, and the Washington Federation of State Employees, the largest state-worker union, has properly called them out on it. But there’s plenty of mud to be slung their way, too. Instead of constructively addressing the issue and working to solve the problem, union leaders howl like stuck pigs claiming that the crime of the century is being perpetrated against their members.
For months, the union has screamed that the Washington State Legislature is “gutless” and that it’s “an absolute travesty” and “it’s a crime” that state workers might have to pay more for their health coverage. Like sheep, the bleating continues unabated. It’s an unyielding sense of entitlement irrespective of cost that many to most public sector unions have.
WFSE Executive Director Greg Devereaux, who leads the bargaining with the state, and their communications guy, Tim Welch, are shrieking that the state’s proposal represents a 117 percent premium increase for state employers…who have jobs.
Since 100 percent of the premium really comes out of the pockets of taxpayers, what do they have to say to those who are paying the premium, getting nothing for it and, for nearly 9 percent of them, are without a job?
For their part, the general public is in no mood to see their taxes go up to subsidize public-sector wages and benefits. Over two-thirds of Americans oppose having to pay more in order for public workers to get more or remain at par.
Also, the union compares their situation to other area employers, such as Microsoft, where 100 percent of the premium is covered by the employer. The problem with this argument is that it’s filled with problems.
Let’s compare apples to apples, not apples to Pop Tarts. In order for the union’s argument to have merit, they would have to show that that they’re getting reamed in comparison to state workers in other states. And they would have to show that those states are in the same fiscal position as Washington.
There are 14 states that pay the full health-care-premium freight. And out of all the states, the average cost of an individual policy is around $502.
In Washington earlier this year, the Legislature raised its contribution level for employee health care coverage to $863, which puts the state better than 40 percent above the national average.
Somehow it’s not in the cards for WFSE to agree to go with the national average.
In addition, Microsoft did better last year than the state. The software giant reported last month that it had record fourth-quarter revenue of $16.04 billion for the quarter ended June 30, 2010, which worked out to net income of $4.52 billion for the same period.
The state of Washington, on the other hand, is currently anticipating a $3 billion gap in the 2011-13 biennial budget.
Get the picture?
And how do the folks at WFSE plan to deal with this? Try raising your taxes. Quoted in the August 26 Olympian, WFSE’s Welch said closing tax breaks could raise $100 million to pay for keeping state-worker health care benefits at their current premium level. Of course, “closing tax breaks” is a euphemism for raising your taxes. So to prevent state workers from having to pay more, they want you to pay more.
Compare this to what large private employers are doing. Nearly two-thirds of them will require increased employee contributions of, on average, 8.9 percent. That may not sound like much compared to what Washington state wants to do, but then again they aren’t $3 billion in the hole.
In King County, the union representing most county workers made concessions by agreeing to forgo cost-of-living wage adjustments. One King County union official was quoted saying “We are not going to be the ones to deny that revenues are down, that they have been down.”
Messrs. Devereaux and Welch and the membership in WFSE should take note. Or not, as the case may be, which may result in job losses for a lot of their members, not to mention increased public antipathy toward them, their union and public employees generally.
While Colorado may have a few advantages over Washington state when it comes to teachers’ rights, this hasn’t stopped the Colorado Teachers Unions from pulling a fast one.
Our friends over at the Independence Institute just produced a great video highlighting an unjust policy that happens in Colorado. From the YouTube summary:
“Due to family medical hardships, non-union Pueblo school employee Becky Robertson missed an annual deadline to opt out of union fee paycheck deductions. The union rejected her appeal. Though she had chosen not to be a union member, Becky ended up paying the union hundreds of dollars that could have been used for medical bills and other expenses. Why do Colorado laws allow this type of abuse to continue?”
This type of abuse shows that although Colorado legislation grants teachers certain protections (teachers in Colorado can choose whether or not they want to join a union and pay dues), it doesn’t always protect from union abuses. Why not? 90 percent of Colorado’s teachers are covered by an exclusive bargaining contract. This means unions enjoy monopoly status over an entire workplace—giving them considerable power and a lack of motivation to work in their customers’ best interests.
If unions had to compete with one another for members, they might show a little more understanding towards those facing medical hardships.
To learn more about Colorado union policies and what the Independence Institute is doing to inform teachers and create change, visit their Independent Teachers website.
If you’re a devoted reader of The News Tribune, you may be familiar with the Pierce County Parks & Recreation saga that’s been unfolding over the past several months, reminiscent of a similar spat last November between a Boy Scout and SEIU.
Teamsters Local 117 has filed a grievance against Pierce County Parks & Recreation for allegedly allowing volunteer workers to edge county maintenance workers out of hours and jobs (see here, here, and here for The News Tribune’s coverage of the story).
The grievance claims that Parks & Rec allowed nonunion workers to do volunteer work at parks without giving the union the chance to negotiate. Also, that Parks & Rec violated the union contract by holding a meeting directly with workers to discuss a possible closure to Sprinker Recreation Center and layoffs. (Due to additional funding of $6.1 million, the center will not be closed, and no layoffs occurred.)
So really, at issue is the volunteer work. This spring, budget considerations dictated Parks & Rec cut back on maintenance services in several parks, including the Gonyea and Dawson playfields in Tacoma.
Concerned neighbors volunteered to do the upkeep themselves by mowing the lawn and picking up trash. After some push back from the county, they were able to work out a deal with that allows them to do this under the “Adopt-a-Park” program.
How exactly is this arrangement edging anyone out of a job—or even hours? The union has received a fair amount of criticism for its actions, most recently in an editorial in The News Tribune, which calls the grievance grasping, petty and poorly timed.
Last Wednesday, the union responded with an op-ed claiming the union supports volunteer work, but just wants clear parameters established when it comes to defining volunteerism.
Considering the “Adopt-a-Park” program already has pretty clear guidelines—volunteers must agree to continue maintenance until more funding becomes available, must be properly trained by parks staff, and can only do certain jobs—is more regulation really necessary, and why is this the union’s problem?
Contracts should be more flexible—not less—in order to accommodate major budget crises, so that state and local entities are free to make prudent decisions about how to best use taxpayer dollars. This is a classic example of policies overriding common sense via a technicality. We’ll see how the Public Employment Relations Commission (PERC) rules in this case.
The Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act (PSEECA) that I mentioned last week squeezed through the House of Representatives on July 1 as part of the Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2010, the war supplemental costing over $84.3 billion, but with only 37 percent actually going to the war (go figure).
The PSEECA would require all state and local governments to enter into collective bargaining agreements with firefighters, police officers, and emergency medical personnel (read: all of these employees will be required to join a union). Such a bill undermines the principles of federalism and freedom of association.
It remains to be seen what the Senate will do with the bill now that the July 4 recess is over, but James Sherk over at The Heritage Foundation warns that it has a very good chance of becoming law. Read his excellent op-ed recently published in The Bellingham Herald (now archived on the Heritage website) to get an idea of what this bill will mean for tax payers and local governments nationwide.
Sometimes the legislative process is a funny thing.For example, you can introduce a bill, and if
it doesn’t pass, refer to Plan B—that is, hide it in the folds of another bill
that is sure to pass (even if has nothing to do with the “host” bill) and call
it an add-on. This is the path the Public Safety Employer Employee Cooperation
Act (PSEECA) has taken in the past few days.After failing to garner enough support from the Senate for several years
in a row, Democrats have tacked it to the War Funding Supplemental bill expected to go before the House this
week.
The PSEECA is a federal bill that would require all state
and local police officers, firefighters and emergency medical personnel to join
a union and collectively bargain with the state over hours, wages, and terms and
conditions of employment.
While touted as a national security issue, the Heritage
Foundation reminds
us that this bill has nothing to do with public safety or war.Senior analyst James Sherk has been tracking
the PSEECA for several years now, but this year it seems to be more of a
looming threat than in the past.Democrats are in a hurry to pass it. Since labor didn’t get the Employee
Free Choice Act (“card check”) passed this year—their top priority—this may be
viewed as a nice consolation prize. Can you imagine how many members would be
added to the ranks of public employee safety unions if all states were required
to unionize?In addition, six Republican
senators co-sponsored the bill this year.
Sherk’s analysis highlights several reasons why the PSEECA
is bad public policy:
It
would strip away state sovereignty over labor relations
It
would force 21 states that don’t already have collective bargaining for
public employees to rewrite their codes—and may prove disastrous to some
state budgets
It
might spell the end of volunteer fire departments
And to top it off, there’s really no evidence that public
safety employee unions have any positive effect on public safety. In their own
editorial against the PSEECA, The
Washington Post makes this clear:
“Of the 10 states with the lowest violent crime rates in
2008, three did not require collective bargaining for police and one, Virginia,
forbids it for all public employees. Indeed, Virginia’s
violent crime rate is less than half that of next-door Maryland, where collective bargaining for
police prevails.”
It would be surprising if anything moved forward on this
before Congress recesses for the July 4 holiday. Politicoreports that
the GOP is threatening to vote against the war supplemental bill if it includes
add-ons—and it has plenty. In fact, only 39 percent of the $84.3 billion bill
is dedicated to actual defense and military considerations.
It’s hard to imagine what authority gives the federal
government the right to usurp states’ rights in this fashion.The bill is defended as constitutional
because it falls under the Commerce Clause, but a recent report by the
Congressional Research Service (CRS) calls this into question.According to the Washington DCEmployment Law Update, the “CRS acknowledges criticism that
‘police work, firefighting and emergency medical services are not economic
enterprises or activities related to commercial transactions. Rather, such
duties are public services provided by state and localities to their citizens.”
As such, states should certainly keep the authority to make
decisions on the public services that affect them—and their budgets—the most.
If this bill passes, expect to see legal challenges.
Wednesday morning was supposed to be the first day of school for up to 4,800 students and 330 teachers in the district. Instead, teachers were pounding the pavement while students expressed frustration and disgust at the strike.
right) were not happy that the teachers were disrupting their education.
ordinarily would have been packed with activity on the first day of school. Picketing at the school were Jan Polen, a special education teacher with 14 years of experience at Ferndale, and Katey Dexter, a reading specialist with nine years at Ferndale and 25 years of total teaching experience.
negotiations. 
Later in the afternoon, Tammy Bengen the district director of public information and executive secretary to the superintendent said that the only information from the district that would be available, aside from a two-page summary of negotiation issues, would be a conference call with Quinn.
Since its inception in 1882, Labor Day marks the recognition
of America’s
workers. It’s a day to
celebrate good, honest, hard work, and to thank those who were willing to put in the long hours that led to historic achievements, innovations, and discoveries. .png)
headquarters office followed by a near-hysterical rantathon directed at members of the school board during the public testimony period of the board’s regular meeting.
assorted funny hats.
Other district officials refused to criticize the union’s proposals or leadership despite being subjected to seething criticism from a long line of union officials and teachers at a recent meeting of the school board. In off-the-record conversations with several of them, they were united in expressing a desire to develop and implement systems to consistently measure academic growth. While they said they believed that they were making progress at the table, the also expressed some frustration with the process in face of what they saw was the pressing need to make progress.
it’s “an absolute travesty” and “it’s a crime” that state workers might have to pay more for their health coverage. Like sheep, the bleating 
And how do the folks at WFSE plan to deal with this? Try raising your taxes. 