shawnbeightol.com Blog

shortlink: http://shawnbeightol.com/blog/?p=578

I wrote this comment on today’s Miami Herald Article RE: Teacher Evaluations under the new IPEGS II that Karen Aronowitz negotiated and committed to contract BEFORE parent union FEA’s lawsuit overturned SB 736.

Karen foolishly set into stone unnecessary and unscientific VOODOO teacher evaluations in return for political chips or personal gain:

“Does anyone else see the BS in this statement? ““We wanted our teachers to really rank at the top of the state,” Aronowitz said.

They either are or they are not…negotiations at a bargaining table over a formula shown to be full of BS doesn’t make a teacher “highly effective” or “needs improvement.”

A common sense evaluation tool involving peer teacher review, competent school-site administrator observation, parental input, and longitudinal data on THAT teacher’s students (5-10 years later?).

Instead, Karen Aronowitz was foolish enough to write SB 736 (legally shakey and ultimately overturned by her parent union, FEA) into our contract BEFORE the legal challenges had their chance to weigh out in court.

Verdict – she was wrong, but the judge says, regarding the legal defeat of SB 736 “This decision does not mean that teachers’ 2011-12 performance evaluations are invalid under the bargained evaluation systems already approved by the DOE for Race to the Top purposes” – Judge Van Laningham (http://feaweb.org/fl-judge-invalidates-state-education-teacher-evaluations-rule )”.

In other words, Karen Aronowitz put into contract the ridiculous language and formula that the entire nation’s educational researchers are saying is bunk.

And MDCPS teachers are held to an evaluation system where excellence or incompetence cannot be observed by the parents, the peer teachers, and local administrators (principals), but is determined at a bargaining table during the period her hand picked successor was up for election.

HOW MUCH MORE BS are parents and teachers going to take from this BOGUS, EDUCATION DESTROYING ENTITY PASSING ITSELF OFF AS A TEACHERS’ UNION?”

Regarding the Wednesday, August 22 2012 ruling by Administrative Law Judge John Van Laningham of Florida’s Division of Administrative Hearings

Unfortunately, teachers’ unions like the United Teachers of Dade (UTD) in Miami, FL have already undermined the value of the judges decision by unwisely signing on to RTTT applications that paralleled and even EXCEEDED the legislation like SB736 in Florida.  So while the courts have declared the invalidity of the legislation, they will still require teachers to be evaluated by instruments in many instances MORE stringent than the legislation as a consequence of their lack of leadership, aggressiveness, and/or strength in opposing such travesties:  “This decision does not mean that teachers’ 2011-12 performance evaluations are invalid under the bargained evaluation systems already approved by the DOE for Race to the Top purposes” – Judge Van Laningham (http://feaweb.org/fl-judge-invalidates-state-education-teacher-evaluations-rule ).

In our case in Miami, UTD pushed an insane change to the teacher evaluation model that essentially gave $350 performance payouts to nearly all teachers (if all get it, is it performance pay?  furthermore, no criteria had been announced ahead of time, so no one knew how to “earn” the “performance pay”). see http://shawnbeightol.com/blog/?p=198

The short take on the insanity is that 50% of all teachers and counselors evaluations come from SCHOOL AVERAGE READING GRADES…which means that no one teacher can hope to change the overall result, no one teacher will be evaluated on the merits of his or her actions in their own classroom.  Consider the further insanity of a calculus, chemistry, band, woodshop teacher receiving 50% of his/her evaluation on the basis of school average reading grades (see the paragraph entitled “What Happens If You Don’t Teach an FCAT Subject?” here: http://stateimpact.npr.org/florida/2012/02/16/inside-the-mathematical-equation-for-teacher-merit-pay/ ).

UTD defended their actions by blaming the changes to the teacher evaluation model (IPEGS) on the recently invalidated SB736 (see the 2nd paragraph here: http://www.utd.org/news/utd-contract-ratification-rumor-control and page 2 of the UTD/Miami-Dade jointly presented August 2011 announcement to faculty of the changes to the IPEGs teacher evaluation instrument…before it had even been ratified by union members: http://ipegs.dadeschools.net/pdfs/IPEGS_Update.pdf ).  see also point G) here:  http://shawnbeightol.com/blog/?p=164

Please note that UTD’s blame of the changes on the Senate Bill 736 is completely refuted by the judge’s statement “the bargained evaluation systems already approved by the DOE for Race to the Top purposes” and is a VERY important reminder for our bargaining agents and unions:  DO NOT INCORPORATE ELEMENTS INTO COLLECTIVE BARGAINING AGREEMENTS BASED ON SHAKY LEGISLATION THAT IS BEING CHALLENGED IN COURT!

Our teachers union, UTD, forced the teachers who were alert, aware, and active to the courts against our own local, UTD, which was acting contrary, not only to its own membership for inexplicable complicit actions with the Miami-Dade Public Schools administration, but UTD also acted contrary to its own parent union, the Florida Education Association (FEA), which filed and prevailed in the lawsuit.  See point C in paragraph 9 here: http://shawnbeightol.com/blog/2011/09/18/beightol-plea-in-circuit-court-for-relief-from-undueextreme-testing-intrusion-into-teaching-via-ipegs-2/

Though UTD prevailed in the circuit court by having our attempt to block their enactment of RTTT/SB736 insane changes to our teacher evaluation model (Ibid., beightol-plea-in-circuit-court), we won in the court of Florida’s Public Employees Relation Commission (see page 7, right column here: http://perc.myflorida.com/news/PERC_News_Jan_-_Mar_2012.pdf ).

Consequently, UTD reran the Teacher Evaluation (IPEGs) Change ratification.  Activists collected broad exit poll results indicating teachers REJECTED the changes 2:1 CONTRARY to UTD’s announcement of passage.  Informed of activists’ data collection, UTD has refused to release poll by poll results, contrary to what is good for membership and what is required by law. see http://shawnbeightol.com/blog/?p=400 and http://shawnbeightol.com/blog/?p=391

As a result of the disingenuity of UTD and the apparent support of the Miami-Dade School Administrative goals and objectives over their membership and student needs, Miami-Dade teachers are stuck with insane evaluation results from 2011-2012 as a result of UTD’s push/ramrodding of the RTTT federal grant for a few million in federal dollars.

Bottom line:  Had UTD represented its teachers’ and their students’ best interests and had the patience to await the ruling of the court on the lawsuit filed by its own parent organization (FEA), teachers would be able to go back and insist on an evaluation that was based on their actual classroom performance and not some insane, disconnected system now shown by the courts and the expert witnesses to be dangerously flawed.

http://shawnbeightol.com/blog/?p=567

Once again, UTD leadership imposes on the naivety, blind trust, and complacency of the masses: having been implicated in election fraud in EVERY election she has presided over, Karen rigs another election so that votes are placed in envelopes and entrusted to her henchman for overnight storage with no prior vote tally to provide accountability.

Apparently, something went wrong at UTD with the Votenet scanners and software so that they couldn’t perform the oft observed drama of feeding pages into a scanner and projecting whatever the hell they want to tell us is the result. see http://www.utd.org/news/utd-vote-count-for-internal-elections-update

G-d forbid they allow the votes to be counted at the school sites by our good stewards.

This is in the face of repeated attempts by brave and determined stewards to instill some kind of accountability procedure to allow for independent verification of the UTD claimed vote tally…something as simple as having stewards count the ballots at the school site in public view and then record the tallies on a webpage (like a google docs form).

Yet another stolen election.

Here’s the bigger picture:

Karen has compromised teacher and support staff pay and benefits for years for her own personal/political gain. Impending guilty verdicts from court challenges to her involvement in election violations for several elections run up nearly a million dollars in fees (see http://perc.myflorida.com/download.aspx/Prefix=CB/CaseYr=11/CaseNo=073/File=CB11073-Ord17-022912084010.pdf for the previous guilty charge and http://perc.myflorida.com/co/scheduleresults.aspx?CaseID=30293 for the current pending case).

Karen is apparently told to move on from UTD leadership.

Her recent contract is no better (fall of 2012), resulting in a mere $300 step raise for over 50% of the employee steps, leaving most employees in the negative for having failed to account for the returned higher social security rate instituted in Jan 2013.

This same year the National Center for Teacher Quality releases a damning study showing MDCPS teachers lose more than $300,000 over their career compared to similar urban school teachers with similar starting and ending salary points due to the depressed schedule negotiated by our weak leadership (Karen, Artie, and Fed) – see page 40 for the text to Figure 21, http://www.nctq.org/docs/nctq_miami.pdf .

Just after the teachers’ contract is “ratified” (we don’t know because Karen/Artie/Fed refuse to follow state law and publish school by school results so we can verify the tally), the MDCPS school board pulls a fast “switcheroo” with the public records agenda of the school board meeting…on the day of the board meeting to ratify both the net negative teacher changes in salary and the $30,000 administrative salary increases! (see http://shawnbeightol.com/MDCPSD21-11-21-12.pdf ).

The publicity $#it hits the fan and even the normally pro-Carvalho (MDCPS propped-up) rag, the Miami Herald, can’t keep quiet over the glaring inequity: http://shawnbeightol.com/2012MiamiHeraldonADMINraises.pdf

Carlvalho’s spin machine is spinning so hard for an angle to retell the story and knows Karen is out. Her appointed successor Fed “Fed ‘em crumbs” is faced by 2 aggressive TRUE UNIONIST fighters who may surprise the incumbents by mounting a massive uprising – Ceresta Smith and her Phoenix Rising MORE caucus and James Bush/Geno Perez “No Teacher Left Behind” caucus. Not willing to allow for any more possible egg on his face in the case that “yes-man Fed” is beat by the potentially aggressive opposition caucuses, Carvalho releases an email in December 2012 that says “I know you got screwed by Karen/Artie/Fed in negotiations. We’re going to take care of you immediately following winter break…” see http://shawnbeightol.com/OopsAMCM570.pdf

This email is pure spin control.

By delaying this “immediate” revisit of the documented anemic salary schedule til after the election, he can wait to see which caucus wins the leadership positions…

By February, it is apparent that the opposition caucuses will not mount a credible threat to the incumbents and Carvalho’s promise of an immediate return to negotiations is “forgotten.”

Forgotten to the politicians and extortionists and exploiters…but not to the starving teachers and support staff.

Mark my words. Fed will be announced the winner. Either directly or after runoff with Bush. This will be the result of yet another manipulated vote count.

It will then be time to initiate decertification action against UTD and form group that will organize over the next 2 years to the point they will be in position to manage the bargaining of MDCPS teachers and support staff.

This is not an anti-union action. It is a pro-TRUE union action.

I apologize for this LATE blog entry on the topic of UTD Elections. I have been working 2 fulltime jobs as my wife and I have just opened our Veterinary Hospital.

I wholeheartedly endorse PHOENIX RISING MORE caucus with Ceresta Smith, Sharon Beck and John Roques. I also endorse Otto Zequiera for Delegate.

A vote for either Fed or Artie’s caucus is more of the same concession to carvalho and scott.

Their failure to standup to Karen’s selling out bodes only to their concessions to carvalho and Scott down the road.

Their “sins of ommission” are as great as “sins of commission” in their current leadership roles.

see the herald article about their part in under-selling the UTD property on Brickell here http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/02/15/3237169/sale-price-of-brickell-tower-at.html

Vote today PHOENIX RISING MORE

Last week the November 21, 2012 school board agenda was amended at the last minute with the revised D21 item – see http://pdfs.dadeschools.net/Bdarch/2012/Bd112112/agenda/D21rev.pdf vs the original http://pdfs.dadeschools.net/Bdarch/2012/Bd112112/agenda/D21.pdf .

Some believe this was done at the last minute to avoid an outburst or protest from the UTD bargaining unit.

The impact of this board item is to raise the upper values of the MEP (administrative) salary steps.

A couple thoughts:

1) On the day that our 1 salary step for 3 years of work without pay increase was approved by the school board (resulting in an increase in pay ~ $300 for 50% of the steps – 9 of 18 steps as well as an increase in healthcare premiums of 6.5%, deductible increase of 100%, and co-pay increase of 25%)…administrators are given a Cost Of Living Increase for their steps (I believe the last was in July 2012) ranging between $7000 and $30000. Administrators stand to gain MUCH more than this as they are advanced to their next step. For example, the one mentioned in item D21rev.pdf appears to be slated for a $44000 raise (new step with new upper limit).

One thing UTD bargaining unit members

2)

and leaders have forgotten that MEP have not: Steps are one thing, COLA increases are separate and necessary to keep the steps and supplements significant (for example, a step in 1950 might have been $10, laughable by today’s costs of living standards – the step must be increased in value for it to retain value. So must the advanced degree, coaching and activity, extra period and other supplements be increased by cost of living advances each year (approximately 3% per year).

A review of the economic policies and

3)

salary schedules for various categories of employees in MDCPS makes it clear that the route to livable salaries is NOT as a school-site employee, ie., an EDUCATOR (the rest are facilitators/admins to be kind, stuffed shirts to be honest).

4) See http://kafkateach.wordpress.com/2012/11/21/one-two-three-strikes-im-out/ for the latest “proof” that such economic policies drive out the beautiful, passionate, ambitious “those that can” teachers…

Regards,

Shawn Beightol

11 REASONS FOR A NO VOTE NOVEMBER 19TH –

& How to Help Save Our Dignity, Homes, & Profession

shortlink: http://shawnbeightol.com/blog/?p=501

Here’s the summary and action points. Read below for the details and references:

Action Points:

1) This is why I am voting NO on this contract.

2) Monitor your school-site elections and send me a picture of the vote tally to beights@yahoo.com and/or report your tally of the votes here: http://bit.ly/2012contract

3) Stay in touch and informed. Read: www.teacherswakeup.com and http://kafkateach.wordpress.com/ and http://www.audaciouslady.com/ and www.shawnbeightol.com

4) Donate to the rebel fund who are fighting this sold out UTD leadership for you and your profession: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=3NQWYL9L5XJKQ

5) Join me and many other “MAD AS HELL” unit members to OCCUPY UTD Sunday afternoon from
Noon til Sunday Night. – I will stand with my brother and sister educators to protest the lack of respect and failed leadership they are showing for our profession:

I will NOT stay all night or miss school since UTD canceled the ability to cast an absentee ballot at the UTD office.

OCCUPY UTD LEADERSHIP!

THE RANK AND FILE DEMANDS

THE RISE OF UNION LEADERSHIP COMMITTED TO COLLECTIVE BARGAINING & THE BARGAINING UNIT

THE FALL OF SELLOUT LEADERSHIP THAT ENGAGES IN QUESTIONABLE VOTING PRACTICES AND CLOSED DOOR DEALS STEEPED IN INEQUITY

UTD Headquarters at 2200 Biscayne Blvd that’s 22^nd and Biscayne Blvd.

12 noon on Sunday, November 18, 2012 – Bring lunch, lawn chairs, coolers, tents, signs, papers to grade.

* This is a lawful and peaceful assembly with a City of Miami Event Permit

Explanations and References:

5 Time Broad Prize winners deserve better

1) Miami Educators have been nominated as Broad Prize Winners 5 times now, most recently
receiving the National Award over all other school districts, producing travel, performance pay, and career opportunities for our administrators.

(see http://news.yahoo.com/miami-dade-county-public-schools-awarded-2012-broad-160000925.html ).

A NO Vote Will NOT result in a worse deal

2) a NO vote WILL NOT result in a worse deal, not if we have a real union leader and their lawyers working FOR US:

a. In 2007-2008, UTD/MDCPS negotiated a healthcare agreement described variously as an increase of between 35% – 253%. We voted it down with a resounding NO in February of 2008. The school board responded by granting a NO INCREASE healthcare extension.

b. In May 2011, Florida’s Public Employees’ Relations Commission ruled in favor of teachers and support staff because we MDCPS/UTD unit members were the ONLY group of educators in FLORIDA that had not had a raise in the 2 years prior (now 3).

The judge ruled that we should be given a raise, bonus or “something more than nothing”…unfortunately we allowed MDCPS and UTD lawyers to defeat the ordered raise together (see http://shawnbeightol.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/10Minutes-aComplicity.pdf ).

MDCPS just secured $1.2 Billion in bond money

3) MDCPS has just convinced taxpayers to fund up to $1.2 Billion in capital improvements,
at the very least this is money which Florida Statutes 1013.64 allows to relieve the Operating Budget to some extent.

MDCPS rolls over $600 million unused $$ each year

4) MDCPS rolls over about $600 Million each year from the previous year, much higher than the 2-3% required by Florida Statute 1011.051. See page 9 of http://drs.dadeschools.net/StatisticalHighlights/SH11-12.pdf

MDCPS mixes “budget” with “funding”, funding is up

5) MDCPS continues to show increased funding (don’t be fooled by their claim of “cut budgets” – a budget is what they ask for, funding is what they get). Our funding is INCREASED each of the last 17 years except 4 (’01, ’08, ’09, ’11) per FEFP AND MDCPS Statistical Highlights. We are currently $1000 per student AHEAD of where we should be by inflation! Look through the Florida Education Finance Program (http://www.fldoe.org/fefp/offrfefp.asp ) and the MDCPS Statistical Highlights page: (http://drs.dadeschools.net/StatisticalHighlights/SH.asp

Impasse=status quo, status quo=1 step, negotiate 2!

6 ) Florida public employee contract law requires “collective bargaining issues at impasse…shall be resolved …by otherwise maintaining the status quo under the language of the applicable current collective bargaining agreements.” (footnote, F.S.447.403 Resolution of impasses ). We have a collective bargaining agreement that has provision for a step ALREADY and it is in EFFECT NOW as status quo. If we had a union leader, she would push for impasse (knowing that the judge would rule in our favor since we are 1 further year behind cost of living increases) and SUE FOR THE STEP ALREADY REQUIRED under the “current collective bargaining agreement” for this year. WE WOULD WIN IN COURT AS WE DID LAST MAY! Then we negotiate for 2 steps and $2,000 in retroactive/missed pay in the new agreement.

Each step surrendered = LOWER RETIREMENT

7 ) It’s been 3 years since the 2009-2010 half-year step, and before that it was 3 years of
no steps (2006 half-year step).

Each step you let MDCPS keep is a decrease in your LIFETIME RETIREMENT monthly payment during a time of your life when you cannot work as you can now and your medical bills will be higher.

Months of “Negotiations”=5 pages? That’s No Contract

8 ) 5 months of negotiating and all they can show is 5 slim pages of tweaks? Mostly blank
white spaces? That’s not a contract…

Less than 1% Increase for half the steps? Is that a Typo Karen?

9) Karen made much ado about a 1% TYPO? But then sells us a contract where the steps are
only adjusted by an average of less than 1% and the average increase in salary THIS YEAR is 3.7% to make up for 3 years of no raises but the highest cost of living/income divide in the United States (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/19/housing-transportation-costs-grew-faster-than-income-for-urban-middle-class-study_n_1982522.html ).

The Federal Government has said the period of time for which we haven’t had a raise was a 5.3% COLA increase…and this is artificially low due to the suppression of the calculation for 2009-2010 (Fed decreed these 2 years to be 0% COLA to balance the budget http://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/colaseries.html)

THIS YEAR, exactly half (9 out of 18 steps) of the steps result in an income increase LESS THAN 1%

NEXT YEAR, assuming we are granted a step, 2/3rds of all steps result in increases LESS THAN 1%

Recently hired new teachers on steps 1-3 will be stuck at 40,000, with no further increase for years

Teachers in the system for 7 years will be making under $1000 more than new hires, many of which are the stop gap/transient TFA’s and “____ to Teacher” recruits.

Yet, this proposal raises our insurance premiums by 6.5%
This proposal raises insurance deductibles 100%
This proposal raises Office Visit Copays 25%
(see http://www.utd.org/file_download/651/TentativeAgreement-January27-2012.pdf pages 7-28
vs. http://www.utd.org/file_download/1049/M-DCPS-UTD+TA+11-08-12+copy.pdf p.1)

The salary schedule is the same , worse than the one they held out as bait in 2006 and
NEVER FULFILLED (check and see: http://www2.dadeschools.net/employees/labor_union/utd/entire.pdf p.265 of contract/p.269 adobe vs http://www.utd.org/file_download/1049/M-DCPS-UTD+TA+11-08-12+copy.pdf ).

Why believe they will this time? This is why I demanded RETRO pay + 2 steps upfront in return for Bond Support.

Support’s 2.25% is NO STEP & less than inflation

10 ) Support Staff are shafted again. They have been the target of the majority of reduction in force actions and now are subjected to a %2.25 increase to cover what the Federal Government has said was a 5.3% COLA increase…

P.4′s “Irrespective” clause = Annual’s Can be FIRED

11) Finally, UTD allows management to slip this clause into the contract on page 4 “irrespective of any evaluation process or rating, [annual contract employees] shall remain subject to non-reappointment actions. This means that if you are an Annual Contract employee that satisfies some unstated conditions…even if you have a perfect evaluation…you can be “non-reappointed” (that means fired at the end of the year in honest, everyday terms). This language directly contradicts the existing language and suggests that for all of us, as soon as we are decreed Annual Contract, we are moved to a 3 year window of non-rehireability.

This is why I think this contract is a joke…a bad one, a disgusting one, an insulting stroke added to the indignity of 5 years of stagnated pay under this UTD administration.

Action Points:

1) This is why I am voting NO on this contract. I hope you will share this with all your friends and colleagues as well: VOTE NO

2) This is why I will join many other “MAD AS HELL” unit members to OCCUPY UTD Sunday afternoon from Noon til Sunday Night. – I will stand with my brother and sister educators to protest the lack of respect and failed leadership they are showing for our profession:

I will NOT stay all night or miss school since UTD canceled the ability to cast an absentee ballot at the UTD office.

3) Monitor your school-site elections and send me a picture of the vote tally to beights@yahoo.com and/or report your tally of the votes here: http://bit.ly/2012contract

4) Stay in touch and informed. Read: www.teacherswakeup.com and http://kafkateach.wordpress.com/ and http://www.audaciouslady.com/ and: www.shawnbeightol.com

OCCUPY UTD LEADERSHIP!

THE RANK AND FILE DEMANDS

THE RISE OF UNION LEADERSHIP COMMITTED TO COLLECTIVE BARGAINING & THE BARGAINING UNIT

THE FALL OF SELLOUT LEADERSHIP THAT ENGAGES IN QUESTIONABLE VOTING PRACTICES AND CLOSED DOOR DEALS STEEPED IN INEQUITY

22^nd and Biscayne Blvd.

12 noon on Sunday, November 18, 2012

* This is a lawful and peaceful assembly with a City of Miami Event Permit

Contract Predictions: December Announcement of Landmark Multistep Contract with RTTT Bonus & Health Increase

I predict that this 1 percent 2 percent debate that keeps getting leaked out to the bargaining unit is an orchestrated drama. I believe sometime in early December Karen will announce a landmark contract deal introducing the new multi step system that she first announced on May 22nd. this will offer a single step to all with satisfactory evaluations and multi-steps for those with above average to exceptional evaluations. I also believe that she will attach the race to the top bonus for this year in the same manner she did last year – there will be concessions either in the contract itself or waiting for MOUs that will facilitate the “not rehiring” that will make room for more computer labs staffed with fewer teachers.

this financial improvement with the attached Race to the Top bonus before the holidays will be sufficient for a cash starved labor force to approve. Karen will use this as an opportunity to release her e-board to campaign for the contract but they will also be campaigning for their reelection in the upcoming February election. we have allowed ourselves to be placed in a position financially where we have no choice but to approve each successive concession because of the financial peanuts attached to the concessions

The Miami Herald, at the direction of Alberto that this is a wonderful opportunity for teachers. Karen will be painted in the most positive light: win-win-lose: MDCPS-UTD-Educators.

regards

Shawn Beightol
beights@yahoo.com
www.shawnbeightol.com

Shortlink: http://shawnbeightol.com/blog/?p=478

My complaint with the Inspector General and the Attorney General:

File your own complaint:

http://myfloridalegal.com/Contact.nsf/Contact <-Attorney General  http://www.miamidadeig.org/fraud.htm <- Inspector General

Email me your pictures or descriptions of violations: beights@yahoo.com

MDCPS administration continues to violate its own Board Rules on political activity.

I am reporting that, directly in violation of

*FS 104.31 Political activities of state, county, and municipal officers and employees.—
(1) No officer or employee of the state, or of any county or municipality thereof, except as hereinafter exempted from provisions hereof, shall:
(a) Use his or her official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with an election or a nomination of office or coercing or influencing another person’s vote or affecting the result thereof.
(2) An employee of the state or any political subdivision may not participate in any political campaign for an elective office while on duty.

*MDCPS Board Rules 1232, 3232, & 4232 – POLITICAL ACTIVITIES
“Pursuant to State law and Policy 6480, administrative staff members may not expend public funds (that is, any funds under the jurisdiction or control of the District) for a political advertisement or electioneering communication concerning an issue, referendum, or amendment, including State questions, that is subject to a vote of the electors.

In particular, note the language prohibiting “electioneering communication concerning an issue, referendum, or amendment…”

*Also, MDCPS Board Rule 6480 – EXPENDITURES
“Neither the District, nor any person acting on behalf of the District, may expend general funds for (1) political advertisement or electioneering communication;…”

Please note that schools are being directed to distribute materials, post signs, and campaign on election day FOR the bond approval, including using paper supplies to print flyers, when teachers are being rationed paper (there isn’t paper enough to print student materials, but they are directing us to print and distribute campaign influencing material):

MDCPS Adminstrative memo to all schools to photocopy hundreds of thousands of pro-tax flyers

“Briefing ID #: 12785 URGENT: ALL PRINCIPALS: Educational Resources Regarding Bond Referendum
As we near the November 6, 2012, General Election, principals are asked to share the following educational resources with all parents and community stakeholders. The flyer is to include:

General Obligation Bond “Fact Sheets,” which can be found attached to this briefing.
Please duplicate the Fact Sheet on one side with the proposed improvements for your location on the other side and send home with all students on Thursday, October 25, 2012.”

Hundreds of Thousands of Pro-Tax Flyers Printed while Teachers are Rationed Paper for Instructional Use

Not only do these instructions and activities violate board rules and state law prohibiting political activity, they interfere with instructional time and take away educational resources (paper, toner, copy time) that are in short supply (rationed!) already.

We teachers have collected photographs and materials that show the district is using resources and bandwidth to persuade voters with taxpayer paid resources. Furthermore, employees are being coerced to participate in the influencing of public opinion on the voting issue and to distribute the taxpayer paid for materials.

Schools are being provided with pdf flyers and they are being printed at the school sites and teachers are being asked to interrupt their teaching time to distribute the flyers to students.

Here is an excerpt from one flyer “222 WHAT? Miami-Dade County Public Schools will ask county voters to invest in their schools by approving the issuance of a $1.2 billion General Obligation (GO) Bond” (this is the flyer that is to be copied and distributed at each school site, it can be found here http://briefings.dadeschools.net/files/99239_Fact_Sheet2_Eng_Sp_HC.pdf ).

The administrative instructions that accompanied the flyer sent by school email “Tomorrow I will be placing in your mailbox a flyer on the Bond Issue for the November 6th election. Please distribute the flyer to your 7th period students on Thursday before they leave”

Though the district may call this “educational material” and that they’re only educating parents, there is NO mention of ballot choice 223 (NO to the bond).

The effects of the administrative directives and the school activities are to utilize public taxpayer resources to illegally influence public voting behavior in the affirmative on a ballot issue.

Administrators are also being told to display pro-tax messages on the school marquis, some of which will be inside the boundary within which no party may “electioneer” – a double wrong-doing by the public employees who are to refrain from electioneering with public resources to begin with:

You are Free to Think Anyway You Like...As Long as It is MY Thoughts. The MDCPS directive telling school employees to display pro-tax messages via publicly paid for signage at each school.

Here’s some examples of the school employees’ compliance (hey, can you blame them, who wants to lose their job in this economy, right?):

Thanks to "Audacious Lady" for the pix of the violations!

And,

See http://www.audaciouslady.com/blog/save-education-vote-no-for-the-bond-referendum-222/ for more images

Here's John A Ferguson's Version...Inside the Voting Boundary

Apparently, not everyone agrees with this measure and methodology:

Darned Vandals Strike Again!

Please contact me and let me know what you are doing about this.

Regards,

Shawn Beightol

http://shawnbeightol.com/blog/?p=470

Dear Teachers and Support Staff:

We, the ground troops of public education, on the front lines daily for years, have delivered each and every year for MDCPS and for our communities.

Whichever way MDCPS and Florida have decided success would be defined, we have produced.

We have garnered award after award for our leaders, allowing them to be flown around the world to speak about OUR successes.

While THEY bask in the glow of our hard work, they pass resolutions for their salaries, for their healthcare, for their board paid expenses (phones, cars, meals)…we work hard under the ever increasing threat of surplussing, of the euphemism currently being used by both UTD and MDCPS for firing: “not being rehired…”

Yet we, the foundation of MDCPS, the ones who make teaching and learning happen everyday, we have been neglected and deceived about our pay, our benefits, and our security.

Chicago teachers just reminded us of the power in unity, in UNIONIZED teachers and support staff. 2 weeks of aggressive, unpleasant action secured for them the respect they deserve- in pay and action- unlike the respect in WORDS ONLY our weak union leadership has settled for- Holiday Greeting emails from Carvalho and Board members…when our mortgages are in jeopardy, our decisions are between the phone bill and food, annually our colleagues swamp the HR office with requests of proof of income to file for foodstamps and government aid, most of our colleagues with families cannot afford the MDCPS owned and operated CIGNA Health Insurance and many are on government welfare “Florida Healthy Kids.”

We haven’t see a raise in years. Wonderful promises are made every 3 years of this step improvement or that. But only half a year of a raise has been delivered by this union and school administration in 6 years. While they say they have saved jobs and point to “No Firings,” what they fail to tell you is that they have established a system to reduce employees by “Not Rehiring.” Its the same as firing.

We have surrendered our security and healthcare for a lie.

The truth is, the contract expired in July, as it does EVERY 3 years. The truth is, it is delayed to allow the district to only pay half of any step/raise used as bait to foist further loss of academic and professional dignity and freedom. The truth is, the union goes along with this because they have timed the union election cycle to coincide with the contract expiration cycle- allowing them to campaign in December for the contract, all while smiling and saying “by the way, if you like these promises, remember, we’re running for re-election in February.”

The truth is, this union leadership has FAILED to negotiate a contract in time to avoid loss of pay. The truth is, this union leadership has failed to uphold the law that states even if the contract expires, the raise and step terms are still to be honored. The truth is, this union leadership has never asked for nor insisted on your back pay for their failure to provide the new contract terms in a timely fashion.

Educators, we have a golden opportunity on hand to act like a real union of laborers- to act as the teachers in Chicago did recently and demand and receive dignity.

It will not be pleasant, but the rewards are great. Chicago teachers did not have a pleasant task, but they knew their future professional respect and treatment was at stake- AS IS OURS.

Our superintendent, Carvalho, has made a big gamble to convince the Miami taxpayers/voters to support his $1.2 Billion bond, voluntarily raising their taxes on average $10 per household.

Among other needed school infrastructural renovations is the purposing of a portion of this money to technology, a move feared by many teachers as further euphemistic language for elimination of teachers through virtual “teaching”, virtual “education.”

We ground troops – EDUCATORS- have a golden opportunity to either publicly support Carvalho’s call for increased local taxes for the schools…or to publicly condemn his request for MORE PUBLIC FUNDS.

I suggest that we prepare a massive public rally at a central, easily accessed park for 3 PM November 4th, the Sunday before the Tuesday November 6 Election Day. We will be prepared to either share with the public why we oppose further taxation of the public (ourselves included!) – on the basis of failed promises, failed delivery of functional curriculum (think Reading Plus, Read180, online textbooks, a gradebook program that crashes regularly and requires teachers to do their own verfication reports, SAP overruns and errors, substandard textbooks, purchased technology that doesn’t work and sits in closets gathering dust, etc – add your suggestions here__________)

OR,

We will rally to support Carvalho because he has made the past lies and failures to his teachers and support staff RIGHT.

We all support the renovation of our schools, just as Chicago Teachers supported being in their classrooms teaching instead of striking…but they knew enough is enough. They knew that if they didn’t take aggressive, decisive action, fewer and fewer of them would survive to pass on their wisdom and knowledge in the art of teaching in Chicago.

So too, we in Miami know that unless we act decisively, we will continue to see our academic freedom disappear, that we will see the experienced veterans eliminated just because they are more expensive, that we will see more and more of our colleagues replaced by computers and temporary hires (“Troops or ____to teachers” “Teach for America” etc), we will see promise after promise of our financial CARE broken and merely used as bait to maintain the compromised partnership between union leadership and district management.

We will give Carvalho and Aronowitz an Ultimatum – either announce to us – the educators and support staff represented by UTD- that a successor contract is ready to go into place with a respectable and long overdue raise with back pay (I’m thinking 2 steps with a couple thousand back pay due immediately) OR we will rally to show that Carvalho and MDCPS have a history of broken promises, State Attorney Investigations, Auditor General Exceptions, poor budget decisions and purchases, misplaced priorities.

The announcement must be made by Thursday, November 1st 5 PM, or we will proceed to enumerate to the public the failures of this system with monies already entrusted.

On the other hand, if they will deliver to us the message that our neglect and desperation has been heard and that our demands as educators will be met with a solid commitment to our bargaining team, we will rally to celebrate and support Carvalho’s bond initiative.

I submit this action to you as the action a Union would take in support of its members and non-members for which it has voluntarily stepped forward to represent as bargaining agent.

Regards,

Shawn Beightol Beights@yahoo.com Www.shawnbeightol.com

Shortlink: http://shawnbeightol.com/blog/?p=452

Seem’s American Laws protecting against monopolistic enterprises have been on the books long enough to have been fully explored for weaknesses and loopholes. Our new Robber-Barrons rob from public service entities, like public healthcare, prisons, and now, Public Schools.

Consider this story in Maine’s Sunday Telegram:

Special Report: The profit motive behind virtual schools in Maine

Documents expose the flow of money and influence from corporations that stand to profit from state leaders’ efforts to expand and deregulate digital education.

By Colin Woodard   cwoodard@pressherald.com
Staff Writer

• KEY FINDINGS

PULLING THE STRINGS: Maine’s digital education agenda is being guided behind the scenes by out-of-state companies that stand to profit on the changes.

FLORIDA CONNECTION: The LePage administration has relied heavily on former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education, a conservative think tank, in writing policies to create taxpayer-funded virtual schools in Maine.

FOLLOW THE MONEY: This foundation and its top officials receive funding from online education companies, which will profit if the initiatives go forward.

REMOTE CONTROL: The foundation wrote much of the language in Gov. Paul LePage’s Feb. 1 executive order on digital learning, which embraces foundation policies.

BACKSTAGE MEETINGS: The secretive American Legislative Exchange Council — a corporate-backed political group for state legislators — developed digital learning legislation that was introduced by Maine lawmakers. Stephen Bowen (pictured) was a private-sector member until he was appointed education commissioner in Maine.

FAILING GRADES: Virtual schools have no classrooms, little or no in-person teaching and a poor track record compared to public schools. (Sidebar, A5)

CRITICS REACT: National education leaders say democratic governance is being superseded by corporate control.

Excerpt “[Maine's Education Commissioner] Bowen was preparing an aggressive reform drive on initiatives intended to dramatically expand and deregulate online education in Maine, but he felt overwhelmed.

“I have no ‘political’ staff who I can work with to move this stuff through the process,” he emailed her from his office.

Levesque replied not to worry; her staff in Florida would be happy to suggest policies, write laws and gubernatorial decrees, and develop strategies to ensure they were implemented.

“When you suggested there might be a way for us to get some policy help, it was all I could do not to jump for joy,” Bowen wrote Levesque from his office.

“Let us help,” she responded.

So was a partnership formed between Maine’s top education official and a foundation entangled with the very companies that stand to make millions of dollars from the policies it advocates.

In the months that followed, according to more than 1,000 pages of emails obtained by a public records request, the commissioner would rely on the foundation to provide him with key portions of his education agenda. These included draft laws, the content of the administration’s digital education strategy and the text of Gov. Paul LePage’s Feb. 1 executive order on digital education.

A Maine Sunday Telegram investigation found large portions of Maine’s digital education agenda are being guided behind the scenes by out-of-state companies that stand to capitalize on the changes, especially the nation’s two largest online education providers.

K12 Inc. of Herndon, Va., and Connections Education, the Baltimore-based subsidiary of education publishing giant Pearson, are both seeking to expand online offerings and to open full-time virtual charter schools in Maine, with taxpayers paying the tuition for the students who use the services.

At stake is the future of thousands of Maine schoolchildren who would enroll in the full-time virtual schools and, if the companies had their way, the future of tens of thousands more who would be legally required to take online courses at their public high schools in order to receive their diplomas.

The two companies have at times acted directly, spending tens of thousands of dollars lobbying lawmakers in Augusta and nurturing the creation of the supposedly independent boards for the proposed virtual schools they would operate and largely control.”

Now consider my email conversation with Miami-Dade County Public School’s over what I believe is a huge, unnecessary and unethical multi-million dollar books purchase from Pearson (unethical because of the sub-standard quality of the books purchased, below the competitors and below the quality of the books already in possession from 4 years ago and still quite usable):

Ms. D A:

Regarding the new Pearson Chemistry book of which my first impression was/is still that it is deficient in readily accessible information for the serious chemistry class/student,

My neighbor chemistry teacher and I went through the Pearson Chemistry book a little more after school.  With some effort we found a periodic table in the text.  We also found an overly simplified qualitative solubility table (the limited Ksp table only occurs in the chapter on this subject), a limited table of the polyatomic ions and units & constants.

The point remains that the book is even further away from its predecessors in providing readily accessible quantitative information.  Historically, most chemistry books placed important tabular data and an easily accessible periodic table on the inside covers…assuming chemistry students would be doing chemistry problems.

The fact that they are NOT readily accessible and even challenging to find by motivated teachers suggests that the average student will never run across or use what sparse tabular data IS buried in the text.

Older chemistry teachers recognize the “watering down” of the curriculum.  Younger may not.  But even as recently as 2005, the Glencoe Merrill Chemistry Book was data rich for quantitative problems and labs.  The successor, Holt Modern Chemistry, was “watered down.”

This Pearson book seems to be even more “watered down.”

Add to this that the Holt Modern Chemistry books are still quite usable, one wonders what the driving force was to spend millions on such a weak and unnecessary chemistry book.  An associate and I counted $40,000 worth of these books in nearly new condition that are being removed.

Many of us are moving away from the print medium anyhow, because it is becoming more and more worthless and because of other sources of information -  the internet for tabular data, youtube for lecture homework, and google docs for collaboration and automation of data collection, analysis and reporting (psssst…that info is FREE).

Maybe instead of feeding the corporate educational monopoly Pearson millions of dollars for poor-quality books and curricular materials, we should invest that money in the teachers and classrooms instead and continue using the good materials that we have and put to work the high tech toys we’ve made so much public noise about (computers, Wi-Fi for all, laptops for all).

There is a larger picture here related to my last paragraph:

Pearson is under fire for shoddy, questionable curriculum production already:

“A question about a “talking pineapple” on a [Pearson produced] standardized reading test given to eighth-grade students in New York has sparked something of an uproar among students and adults who say it doesn’t make any sense. And because of all the fuss, now the state’s education commissioner says the question won’t be counted in students’ scores…The Daily News quoted a number of students and adults who looked at the whole reading sample and the questions and concluded that they make no sense… the strong likelihood [is] that other questions on these exams <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/the-complete-list-of-problems-with-high-stakes-standardized-tests/2011/10/31/gIQA7fNyaM_blog.html>  make little sense or actually assess only a small band-width of skills, concepts and knowledge that we want students to know.” – http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/talking-pineapple-question-on-standardized-test-baffles-students/2012/04/20/gIQA8i01VT_blog.html

“Scarsdale Middle School Principal Michael McDermott <http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Michael+McDermott>  said the question has been used before and “confused students in six or seven different states.” And he had a quick answer to the question of who is the wisest: “Pearson for getting paid $32 million for recycling this crap.”"
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/talking-pineapple-question-state-exam-stumps-article-1.1064657

Google “pearson monopoly” and you will see even more questions about Pearson’s questionable performance and business dealings.

Here’s a few excerpts:

“Pearson…has had major problems. In 2010, Pearson paid a $15 million penalty to Florida for delivering test scores a month late and a $5 million fine to Wyoming after its online testing system malfunctioned. Oklahoma officials have been debating whether to terminate a $16 million contract because of scoring errors.

“Pearson has the worst track record of any firm in the industry over the past decade, possibly because they have expanded so rapidly,” said Bob Schaeffer, a spokesman for FairTest” – http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/education/19winerip.html

“It is difficult to remember what part of American education has not been invaded by Pearson’s corporate grasp. It receives billions of dollars to test millions of students. Its scores will be used to calculate the value of teachers. It has a deal with the Gates Foundation to store all the student-level data collected at the behest of Race to the Top. It recently purchased Connections Academy, thus giving it a foothold in the online charter industry. And it recently added the GED to its portfolio.” http://dianeravitch.net/2012/05/07/the-united-states-of-pearson-2/

” Prentice-Hall is now a sub-division of Pearson and that The American Nation is now a Pearson publication?… Pearson <http://www.pearson.com/about-us/our-history/>  has been expanding voraciously and now controls what used to be the independent school textbook publishing companies Scotts Foreman <http://www.sfsocialstudies.com/index2.html> , Longman, Addison-Wesley, Allyn & Bacon, Silver, Burdette & Ginn, and the Macmillian Company, all in partnership with Colonial Williamsburg, the Smithsonian Institute, the Discovery Channel, Mapquest, and Inspiration Software. Partnership in these cases generally means the other organizations get paid or donations to let Pearson use their names.” – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/hacking-away-at-the-pears_b_1464134.html

Consider the national educators’ movement to boycott this FOR-PROFIT corporation that is wielding incredible sway over non-profit public education: http://unitedoptout.com/boycott-pearson-now/

Perhaps the answer to why we are purchasing millions of dollars in unneeded, under-quality textbooks has something to do with these stories?

“In recent years, the Pearson Foundation <http://www.pearsonfoundation.org/>  has paid to send state education commissioners to meet with their international counterparts in London, Helsinki, Singapore and, just last week, Rio de Janeiro.

The commissioners stay in expensive hotels, like the Mandarin Oriental in Singapore. They spend several days meeting with educators in these places. They also meet with top executives from the commercial side of Pearson <http://www.pearson.com/> , which is one of the biggest education companies in the world, selling standardized tests, packaged curriculums and…textbooks <http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/subjects/t/textbooks/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier> .

Pearson would not say which state commissioners have gone on the trips, but of the 10 whom I was able to identify, at least seven oversee state education departments that have substantial contracts with Pearson.” – http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/education/19winerip.html

and “The state superintendent of education in Illinois – which has $138 million in contracts with Pearson – went to China, Brazil and Finland with the foundation.’ ‘Several who have participated in the international trips did not respond to requests for an interview, including the former commissioners Eric Smith of Florida (Helsinki); Kathy Cox of Georgia (Singapore); Susan Gendron of Maine (Helsinki); and a former deputy superintendent, Gavin Payne of California (Singapore).’ ‘States whose officials have attended Pearson conferences and also have contracts with Pearson include: Florida, to administer state tests; Virginia, to provide online courses; California, Georgia and Michigan, for teacher certification programs; Iowa, to develop eTranscript and portal systems; and South Dakota, to create alternate assessment tests for the disabled.’ ‘In the summer of 2010, Lu Young, the superintendent of schools in Jessamine County, a Lexington, Ky., suburb, took a trip to Australia paid for by the Pearson Foundation. Six months later, in Frankfort, Ky., Ms. Young sat on a committee interviewing executives from three companies bidding to run the state’s testing program. While CTB/McGraw-Hill submitted the lowest bid, by $2.5 million, Ms. Young and the other committee members recommended Pearson. In April, Kentucky’s Education Department approved a $57 million contract with Pearson. And then, over the next six months, the commissioner who oversees that department, Terry Holliday, traveled to both China and Brazil on trips underwritten by – that’s right – the Pearson Foundation.’” http://m.tcpalm.com/news/2012/may/07/sandra-reinhard-beware-corporations-lobbying/ quoting http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/02/education/inquiry-into-school-officials-travels-paid-for-by-pearson.html

The question of money and motives is raised higher by the realization that Pearson holds the contract for writing FCAT EOC exams through 2014…when they will immediately be made obsolete by the switch over to the NEW required PARCC exams (the switch to Common Core Standards):

“SB 736 mandates a standardized test for every subject taught by every school in the state by 2014.   These are the infamous new “end-of-course exams,” better known as EOCs, and NCS Pearson has the lucrative contract.”
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/04/2783911/whos-accountable-for-the-fcat.html

and
” The Item Development Invitation to Negotiate (ITN)…lays the foundation for the major components of the PARCC assessment system as it will procure the development of English language arts/literacy and mathematics items, tasks and related materials for the mid-year, performance-based, and end-of-year assessments. The procurement will generate a large bank of items to support the construction of assessments for grades 3-11 which will be given in PARCC states beginning in the 2014-15 school year.

“The procurement itself is an innovative document that presents a fresh approach to working with vendors” (like highly questionable Pearson), which

” the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) today announced they have awarded a contract to Pearson to develop a new Technology Readiness Tool to support states as they transition to next-generation assessments.” http://www.parcconline.org/press-release-new-technology-readiness-tool

So, while we buy millions of dollars of unnecessary, under-quality textbooks from Pearson, while we continue to pay millions of dollars for test authoring to Pearson which has been highly criticized for the tests it (recycles)/authors and also for its under-performance in analyzing and reporting the test results – tests which are already obsolete by our participation in Common Core Standards and PARCC assessments – we are going to award millions more to Pearson for its involvement in replacing the already obsolete EOC exams?

I think this kind of business dealings is reason enough, on top of the shoddy impact of the new book, to send them all back and get our money back.

Regards,

Shawn Beightol
Chemistry Instructor, MDCPS