Election Day, 2014

Tomorrow is the day, and excuses won't cut it.  Vote!  If you don't, there will be no need to ask Wednesday for whom the bell tolls.  Just look in the mirror.

Governor:  Mark Shauer
U.S. Senate:  Gary Peters
Attorney General:  Mark Totten
Secretary of State:  Godfrey Dillard
State Senate:  Cathy Forbes
State House:  Collene Lamonte
MI Supreme Court:  Bernstein and Murphy (Part time-Thomas)
State Board of Ed:  Smith and Ulbrich
U of M Board of Regents:  Behm/White
MSU Board of Regents:  Perles and Owen
Wayne State Board of Regents:  Kelly and Thompson
Ballot Proposals 1 and 2: No

The Fires of the Righteous

           One of the most enduring memories I have of childhood is that of Buddhist monks setting themselves on fire to protest the Vietnam War.  My oldest brother spent a year there as a nineteen year old; barely in my teens myself, I was acutely aware of the war and its consequences.  In addition to the images of the Detroit riots and Dr. King’s murder, those black-and-white pictures from T.V. and magazines of flames devouring those robed figures imprinted themselves on my brain and have yet to disappear.     The sacrifice of those monks ultimately proved futile, of course.  The war dragged on until 1975, and the conviction and faith of everyone touched by Vietnam was left in pieces by its wake. 

            Such devotion to righteousness always ends in destruction it seems, and it doesn’t matter what era we’re talking about.  Think of the upheaval we’ve experienced in recent years at the hands of radical politicians who are more interested in fanning the flames than finding a way to extinguish them.  The devil is in the details, so it is especially troublesome that many of us helped elect those overseers of destruction, swayed by their promises to embrace a pragmatism we understand and respect.

            So let me be blunt.  If your plan is to go into the voting booth on November 4 and vote for any candidate with an ‘R’ beside his or her name, you’d be as well off to buy a gallon of gasoline and drive to Lansing with the purpose of setting yourself on fire on the capitol steps. Seriously.  If you think the last few years have been tough, consider what Rick Snyder and Jase Bolger will do knowing that Snyder won’t have to face the electorate again.  Your devotion to righteousness may very well cost you your home, your child’s college education, or your pension.  While you’re busy rationalizing your vote in protest of your low-life, food-stamp-collecting, pot-smoking neighbor, Snyder and Bolger will very quietly pass another bill attacking your livelihood, sponsored by those friendly folks at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

            Rick Snyder does not deserve to be re-elected.  It’s that simple.  A vote for Snyder is a vote contrary to your best interests, the interests of your friends, and the interests of your family.  A vote for Rick Snyder is an act of self-immolation.  Save that gallon of gas for 2016.

Seeking Higher Ground

            One of the most hurtful developments of the last few years has been the demonization of teachers, and the denigration of what teachers do by those seeking political advantage.  Most teachers care deeply about their students and their schools, but we’ve all been colored by the same broad brush:  teachers are lazy; teachers are overpaid; teachers are responsible for all of America’s problems.  It has been debilitating, yet somehow we’ve managed to stay faithful to our students and our profession.

            Fidelity doesn’t always mean agreement, however.  Sometimes it means having the courage to say ‘no’, and that was exactly the mentality the bargaining team assumed when we began discussing wage improvements earlier this spring.  We have a wage structure that is no longer sustainable under current fiscal realities.  The seniority system that wage structure is based on no longer exists, but that structure hasn’t been replaced with an alternative, and as a result, the loss of steps over the last three years has made life especially difficult for teachers at the bottom of the scale.  Some improvement in the district’s financial outlook occurred with the passage of the technology millage, but uncertainty is the plague of school budgeting.

            Changes to existing laws have occurred which we felt were to our advantage, namely the calculation of professional development hours.  School districts in Michigan are required to provide 1098 hours of instruction this year, but unlike previous years, professional development hours that could once be counted as instructional time can no longer be included in that calculation.  That meant that the level of professional development proposed by the district this year would require time added to the day in order to meet the 1098 requirement.  Knowing this, we determined that our best course of action in negotiating a wage increase was to link approval of the school calendar to discussions about compensation.  That has been our strategy throughout the summer as negotiations progressed.   And they have progressed.  Discussions have been open and respectful, and the message has been consistent:  the status quo is not acceptable.

            Necessity is a mother, however, and last Friday, faced with the need to provide parents and students with some kind of calendar to begin the year, we met with the superintendent in an effort to resolve the impasse.  We were prepared with at least two possible alternatives to the district’s proposed calendar, both of which would be problematic for planning purposes.  The first would have involved removing two half-days scheduled for first semester and moving them to second semester, while waiting to add the additional time to second semester as well.  The second involved removing several of the scheduled late starts.

            Neither of the alternatives we offered would further our goal of obtaining some relief for our cash-strapped teachers, however, and the longer we discussed the issues at hand, the more we came to realize the need to stay focused on that goal.  Had we pressed the issue, the perception would again be that we are adversarial.  We don’t care about Oakridge kids, we only care about ourselves.  As ludicrous as those accusations are, the public perception has been and continues to be that fidelity always means agreement, and that perception would win in the end.        

            So we’ve been asked once again to trust: to trust that the next couple of months will favor our cause; to trust that our efforts to maintain a positive and respectful approach to negotiations will prevail; to trust that all of the talk about how much we are respected will prove to be more than talk.  As your leadership team, we took a pretty significant risk, and one that may very well prove to have been foolhardy.  If that proves to be the case, our credibility will certainly take a hit, but not nearly as damaging a hit as that experienced by those whom we’ve been asked to trust.  

D-Day for Education

     This Friday, June 6, marks the 70^th anniversary of D-Day, when Allied forces landed on the beaches of Normandy to launch the liberation of western Europe in World War II.  The reason I mention it is because I’ve been reading Rick Atkinson’s history of that portion of the war, The Guns at Last Light, and am continually overwhelmed by the level of courage and fortitude it took to accomplish this invasion.  Casualties on June 6 alone totaled 12,000 dead, wounded, or missing.  LSTs approaching the beachheads witnessed wholesale slaughter as Nazi gun emplacements riddled the men leading the advance, and yet, the men on those landing craft stepped off the gates and rushed into the surf in spite of what it meant to them as individuals.  The Nazis had terrorized the free world for five long years, and Allied soldiers were willing to forfeit everything to change that reality.

     There are no modern day parallels to what those soldiers and sailors faced in June of 1944, but teachers are not oblivious to the costs of political terrorism.  Since the beginning of Mr. Bush’s second term, educators have been the lightning rod for any ill that can somehow be linked to the system of education in this country.  Since Rick Snyder’s election four years ago,  we’ve seen our standard of living decline, been subjected to assaults on our right to organize and bargain collectively, and fallen prey to evaluation processes that are so transparently arbitrary that they border on the obscene.  November 4, 2014 is D-Day for educators and public education in Michigan.  If the current imbalance of power in Lansing continues, it will be Katie bar the door for Rick Snyder and his pals in his second term. 

     The only question that remains is:  what are YOU going to do about it?  Will you head home on June 6 and bury your head in the sand until August wanes?  Ignore the fact that the only way change takes place is when we all collectively shout NO MORE, and rise up to resist?  There are many things you can do.  Commit to an hour a week for Colleen Lamonte.  Spend two hours of your week on an MEA phone bank.  Call your legislators.  Attend a community forum.  Sign a petition.  Show some fortitude and be courageous for your profession, for your students, and for your colleagues.  Instead of making excuses for why you aren’t involved, get involved.  If you don’t, there will be no one else to blame for what unfolds on November 5^th.  In spite of the personal sacrifice change will require, it’s time for each of us to step into the surf and face that entrenched enemy on the beachhead.  The cost of doing otherwise may be your job, your home, and possibly worse, your dignity and self-worth.