Posted on 05/04/2003 1:06:35 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Even before the sky started falling on her union last week, Palmetto Senior High teacher Karen Uhle knew the next few months would be brutal.
She and thousands of colleagues in the United Teachers of Dade have not received raises since 2001. Salary talks have been stalled for months, even though the union contract expires at the end of June.
Health insurance costs are climbing. Scaled-back summer classes will employ fewer teachers than ever. And legislators are still wrestling with a state budget that may leave the Miami-Dade school system scrambling to cut costs.
Then came Tuesday, when FBI agents raided the UTD headquarters to seize a wide range of financial records. In the days that followed, two banks called in $2.5 million worth of loans, casting doubt on the union's financial stability. The American Federation of Teachers, a UTD national affiliate, was asked to take temporary control of the union. More than 100 members quit.
Longtime union chief Pat Tornillo -- who sources say is the subject of the federal probe -- has removed himself until the investigation concludes.
With him on the sidelines and the union distracted by bankers, lawyers and investigators, many teachers say they are worried whether anyone will be able to wring raises out of the district or address the skyrocketing insurance premiums that have left some taking home less money than they did two years ago.
''At a time when we need the most stability, there's even more chaos,'' said Uhle, a special-education teacher who has kept her union membership.
Superintendent Merrett Stierheim says he is bracing for the possibility of cutting tens of millions of dollars from the district's $4.3 billion budget because state funding will not keep pace with rising costs.
Some teachers fear the union's problems could leave them vulnerable.
''If the [School] Board perceives the union has been significantly weakened, they can try to take the money they need,'' said Shawn Beightol, a chemistry teacher at Michael Krop Senior High. ``The School Board could take advantage of this and we could get really screwed.''
'NO EFFECT,' SOME SAY
With nearly 28,000 teachers, paraprofessionals and office staff in the UTD's bargaining unit, a per-person raise of $40 a year would cost more than $1 million a year.
''There's no one who would like to be in a position more than me, on behalf of the board, to grant a salary adjustment to the teachers and other employees,'' Stierheim said. ``Until we know what happens in Tallahassee and meet our primary mission of educating our children, we're not going to know what we can do and can't do.''
Union officials insist they can still be effective at the bargaining table without Tornillo, especially with AFT's help.
''Is it a loss? Of course it is,'' said Merri Mann, a top UTD official. ``But we are strong enough and have been taught well enough to get through.''
`IN A HOLE'
But experts who have studied turmoil in labor unions say UTD probably will be at a serious disadvantage when contract talks restart.
''The union's kind of in a hole looking up,'' said Paul Clark, a professor of labor studies at Pennsylvania State University. ``I don't know how much worse things can get, but it's going to be a while before they can stabilize the situation.''
Rumors about Tornillo's business dealings have circulated for years, and some teachers are suspicious about the timing of the investigation, which coincided with the expiration of their contract.
''All of a sudden it's like they're trying to pull the rug out from under him,'' said Uhle, whose husband and son are teachers and whose daughter is about to graduate with a degree in elementary education. ``Why is it happening at such a critical time?''
Mann said she shares those suspicions, especially after UTD prominently committed so many resources to Democrat Bill McBride's failed 2002 challenge to Gov. Jeb Bush.
''I would be suspicious myself about the timing,'' said School Board Vice Chairman Robert Ingram, one of UTD's staunchest allies on the board.
He said he would try and soothe another oft-repeated fear from teachers -- that district negotiators would deliberately exploit the distractions at the union.
''I will not allow anybody to take advantage of anyone,'' Ingram said.
But neither Ingram nor any district official can protect UTD from another possible threat: a raid by a rival union.
''It certainly provides an opportunity for a competing organization if they can get the trust of teachers and provide some services,'' said board member Frank Bolaños.
Recent efforts to defrock UTD as the teachers' representative at the bargaining table have failed, but the publicity surrounding the investigation and financial problems are feeding upstarts' efforts.
''For years, UTD members have financed the lavish lifestyles of UTD officers,'' Damaris Daugherty, a lawyer who started the Teacher Rights Advocacy Coalition to challenge UTD, wrote in an e-mail to teachers last week. ``Are you paying dues for collective bargaining and contract representation or to further enrich a despot who has been laughing at the membership all the way to the bank?''
HERE TO STAY
Decertifying an entrenched union is difficult -- booting UTD would have required the signatures of more than 8,000 members of the bargaining unit, all collected within one year and filed in Tallahassee during a 60-day window that closed in March.
Daugherty's group failed that task, and another window will not open for at least a year.
''The danger of decertification is very low,'' said Bruce Nissen, a professor of labor studies at Florida International University's Center for Labor Research and Studies. ``The union is a stronger institution than any particular incident.''
But in Florida, a right-to-work state where teachers are legally prohibited from striking, a union's power rests largely in its ability to get votes and sway elected officials. As membership fades, so does the union's muscle.
WHAT'S NEXT?
The first step toward recovery, Clark said, is to stop the bleeding of UTD's membership. The day after the raid, 30 teachers quit the union, followed by 31 on Thursday and 41 on Friday. Though only a small part of the membership, it is a precarious trend.
One of AFT's goals in administering the UTD is to increase member participation, both in the schools and at union headquarters. It has been years, for example, since anyone launched a credible challenge to Tornillo for the presidency.
Now Artie Leichner, a teacher at South Dade Senior High, has mounted a campaign to run against acting UTD president Shirley Johnson, Tornillo's top lieutenant, when the union holds elections next year.
''People need to feel they have power in decision-making,'' said Brian Lopez, a science teacher at Richmond Heights Middle. ``One of those should be to choose who you want representing you.''
Even some UTD critics -- especially those who objected more about the leadership than the ideology -- said the union could emerge with a broader base and larger membership.
''We're all optimistic that this is the beginning of the kind of cleansing that needs to happen,'' said Beightol, the Krop High chemistry teacher. ``Maybe this means we have another chance for a step forward.''
AFT regulations require all locals to conduct audits every two years and file them with the national organization, lawyers for the AFT told U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan at the hearing. But the lawyers then insisted that the AFT had no legal obligation to review the audits or even verify that they were received. These assertions were self-serving, given that the WTU had not filed an audit with the AFT since 1995. Seven years transpired before the AFT finally got around to commissioning its own audit. It did so only after receiving complaints from D.C. teachers about excessive dues deductions. Meanwhile, from 1996 to 2002, the finances of the WTU were being systematically looted.
After listening to the blame-shifting explanation of the AFT lawyers, Judge Sullivan declared the situation to be "outrageous," noting that it "didn't make common sense." Calling the AFT's position "a sad commentary," the judge observed, "It seems everyone in a responsible position fell asleep at the switch. The only ones who were vigilant were the thieves, who took everything that wasn't nailed down."
The AFT's own audit revealed that Esther Hankerson, who served as general vice president under WTUPresident Barbara Bullock, acknowledged receiving a phone call from the union's bank way back in 1997. The bank believed that Mrs. Hankerson's signature had been forged by Miss Bullock, who was attempting to cash an $8,000 union check payable to herself. After telling the bank to cash the check, Mrs. Hankerson later confronted Miss Bullock, who admitted forging Mrs. Hankerson's signature.
Mrs. Hankerson, who was not accused in an FBI affidavit of misspending union money, became interim union president after Miss Bullock resigned last year. However, as the AFT's audit noted, Mrs. Hankerson failed to report the forgery, a negligent oversight that permitted the looting to continue unabated. Despite this fact, the AFT retained Mrs. Hankerson after it took over the WTU and installed George Springer as administrator. Only after teachers raised strong objections did Mr. Springer finally place Mrs. Hankerson on administrative leave in mid-March, although she continued to receive her full $90,000 salary - to the dismay of many teachers.
Also last week, the FBI and Miami-Dade's Public Corruption Task Force raided the headquarters of the AFT affiliate in Miami. As in Washington, investigators in Florida are probing whether the president of the financially troubled Miami affiliate, which has been dogged by corruption rumors for years, embezzled union dues.
The AFT has clearly demonstrated that it is incapable of monitoring its affiliates. For the sake of the public trust and Washington teachers, who have already seen $5 million of their dues drained while the AFT looked the other way, a court-appointed monitor is necessary. [End]
Second bank calls in loan to teachers' union - School district freezes collected dues*** A second bank is calling in a loan to the United Teachers of Dade, prompting the Miami-Dade school district to freeze hundreds of thousands of dollars in union dues collected through payroll deduction.
Those developments raise further questions about the union's financial stability during the same week the FBI raided UTD headquarters as part of a federal embezzlement probe focusing on its longtime leader, Pat Tornillo.***
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State by state the NEA and the AFT are merging into one. An example:
April 5, 2000 - Teachers' Unions To Merge In Two More States*** Members of the two teachers' unions in Montana were poised to celebrate late last week as their organizations cemented a long-planned merger.
The new union, in the works for two years, is the second state-level merger of affiliates of the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers. In 1998, state affiliates in Minnesota came together to form Education Minnesota. And next month, members of the Florida affiliates will hold a founding convention to launch a 100,000-member unified organization.
"When we stand before the legislature, the governor, the board of regents, and the board of public education, we'll be one, we'll speak with one voice," said Eric Feaver, who was running unopposed for president of the Montana Education Association-Montana Federation of Teachers. Mr. Feaver had previously served as the head of the 10,000-member NEA affiliate. The association is combining forces with the 5,500-member federation affiliate, whose president, Jim McGarvey, had no challenger for vice president of the new organization. ***
_____________________________________
Teachers' Unions in Power and Politics***This book is an effort to describe the structure, operations, and influence of teacher unions, especially the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). The context should make it clear whether the organization titles include their state and local affiliates. The authors believe that an NEA/AFT merger will take place in the 1990s, but whether or not this happens, the emergence of strong teacher unions is an important development in education, in the labor movement, in the economy, and in American politics. Because their role is so pervasive but also so widely overlooked, a brief comment on the subject may serve as an introduction to this book.***
The 23 percent failure rate is an improvement from last year, when 27 percent of the state's third-graders didn't pass the reading test. But the stakes this year are much higher.
Gov. Jeb Bush, who has made reading one of his top priorities, says Florida's third-graders must demonstrate adequate reading skills or repeat the grade. Starting next week, the state's teachers will sort through test scores and a new state law while making heart-wrenching decisions about their 8- and 9-year old students.
Not all of the students who failed the test will have to repeat third grade. They still have other chances and other tests to show they are capable readers.
"I want to avoid this natural assumption that all these students will be retained," Education Commissioner Jim Horne said Friday.
Horne and Bush plan to release the results in a news conference Monday. But scores arrived early in some school districts, and the news started dribbling out Friday. Though Horne was uncomfortable discussing specifics before a formal announcement, he was happy to note the obvious improvement.
"These results are great news," Horne said. "It surpasses our expectations."
The improvement of 4 percentage points means 7,300 more kids passed this year than last, even though slightly fewer third-graders took the reading test.
The focus on third-grade reading skills marks a dramatic new step for Florida. Prior to this year, the stakes in Bush's "high-stakes" testing program have been focused on schools.
Schools where students performed well on tests got rewards, and schools where students struggled were sanctioned.
But now, in keeping with Bush's pledge to end social promotion, the consequences of lackluster achievement will be felt by the students themselves.
The laser-beam focus on reading is based on the widely held belief that if students can't read by third grade, they will fall behind and struggle throughout their school careers. As Horne likes to say: "In third grade, you learn to read. In fourth grade you read to learn."
Though 27 percent of the state's third-graders failed the reading section of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test last year, only 3 percent were retained. Both Bush and Horne declared that figure unacceptable.
By state law, third-graders who fail FCAT reading must be retained unless they can show they are capable readers in other ways.
The students, for example, already have taken another reading test - one the state uses to make national comparisons - and the results should be released Monday. Though the standard on that test is tougher than the FCAT's, it should enable perhaps 5 percent of the failing students to earn passage to fourth grade.
Students who already have been retained are likely to be promoted because research shows that multiple retentions make it much less likely that a child will finish school.
Students who can show adequate reading skills through a portfolio of class work and other test results will be allowed to move on.
And students will have one more chance to take another tough test, either before or after summer school, to show their reading skills.
The work of figuring out exactly who should be retained will start as early as Monday, when the test results arrive at schools.
Many third-grade teachers have been dreading the task ahead of them. They will need to see who failed the test and then look at their performance on the other test. If they fell short on both, the teachers will have to see if the student's portfolio is impressive enough to get into fourth-grade. In most districts, teachers already have been collecting material and scores for the portfolios.
If the student falls short on all three, the teacher will have a difficult phone call to make to the student's parent.
The retention question has stirred parents like few other education issues.
Some mothers in the Palm Harbor area became activists, and stood outside the community library with a petition. Earlier this week, Sally Caron and three other women with children at Ozona Elementary School went to Tallahassee. They met with the governor to talk about the issue and how it affects their children.
"The schools are anxious, the parents are anxious, the kids are anxious," said Sandy Ramos, assistant superintendent in charge of instruction for Pasco County schools. "Everyone knows to clear their plates off when this comes in. We've got a lot of work to do."
For complete statewide FCAT writing results, including comparisons to last year's scores, go to www.tampabay.com/fcat [End]
They will if they stay in public education.
My mother, in a nonunion job in the private sector, hasn't gotten a raise since 1996. The UTD can take their whining and SHOVE IT. I'd be perfectly content to see the entire system shut down and replaced with nonunion labor.
There is a hardcore leftist agenda and this union (like most) is just the ATM to fund their social engineering
And they talk about Enron!
May 20, 20032 - Education Intelligence Agency ******4) Miami Union Communications Director Arrested. For 28 years, Annette Katz labored in relative obscurity for the United Teachers of Dade (UTD). As the union's communications director, she is responsible for presenting UTD's position to the media, and she also edits UTD Today, the union's monthly organ. But in a period of 48 hours last week, Annette Katz became the best known communications director in both NEA and AFT.
On Monday, May 13, Katz was excoriated here in the EIA Communiqué for comparing a dissident union shop steward to Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. On Wednesday, May 15, Katz was arrested for trespassing in the press room of the Miami-Dade County school board. Katz has always had access to the room in the past, but the board issued a new policy restricting access to reporters of "general circulation" publications. The Miami Herald, according to its own account, and several other news organizations had complained about Katz's presence because the union "is often the subject of news stories being prepared in the room."
Katz was told on Wednesday she would not be allowed into the press room. When the door was locked against her, she pounded loudly on it until a reporter let her in. Soon after, district police officers entered and placed her under arrest. She was later released on her own recognizance.
For its part, UTD claims Katz's ejection was "months in the making" -- a vendetta of two school board members and a reporter for Miami's Channel 10 who has broken a number of stories critical of the union. A lengthy account of the vendetta appears on the UTD web-site -- an account almost certainly written by Katz herself, though there is no byline and she refers to herself in the third person.
EIA has no opinion on the merits of Katz's case, but the verdict on her journalism is in. Katz's reporting of her own arrest is unintentionally hilarious. Amid the idle speculation about other people's identities and motives, the story contains such gems as:
* "Katz read his lips."
* "Some time passed and then, like thunderclouds crossing a mountaintop, Joe Arriola, a large burly guy, emerged and marched into the pressroom."
* "An absolute calmness came over Katz and instead of kicking him in the teeth, which was her first inclination, she turned and said 'I don't believe we've met; my name is Annette Katz. How do you do?'"
* "Jilda, who was watching and has yet to put one bit of this entire incident on the news, screeched out, 'Where did you get your press pass, Annette, Las Vegas?' Again, Katz was inclined to tell her where to go, but refrained and ignored her."
* "Subsequently, she began removing her jewelry in anticipation of the arrest..."
* "She immediately took a defiant 'media only' cookie, took her seat and waited."
As Ms. Katz happily munches away on her defiant cookie, EIA leaves you with one question: Why does a school board need a press room? ***
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UTD web page: UTD Official Gets Apology As Union Wins Court Costs in Trespassing Case *** Eight months after sitting by as school police arrested the United Teachers of Dade's veteran communications director, Annette Katz, for trespassing in the district's pressroom during a public meeting, seven school board members agreed to reimburse the union $19,500 for legal fees and costs as part of the settlement in the subsequent federal case.
Member Frank Bolanos referred to the incident as an embarrassment, and apologized to Katz and the union at the January 15 board meeting. "In the heat of battle things are often said and done which we are sorry about later," he said.
With Marta Perez out of the room when the vote was taken, only Board Member Frank Cobo opposed the settlement.
The board action ended the conflict that began when several officers, called in by a district administrator, had escorted Katz from of the glassed-in pressroom back in May in full view of the board and superintendent and an auditorium filled to capacity by union members and others attending the meeting.****
ASSISTANT GENERAL COUNSEL*** LEGAL DEPARTMENT LESLIE MEEK, joined the UTD STAFF in 1995. Prior to coming to UTD, Meek was the labor law attorney for the State of Florida Comptroller's Office.
MEEK is the "in-house" counsel for UTD and is responsible for providing legal representation to Union members who have been dismissed from employment with Dade County or charged by the Department of Education and the Education Practices Commission. Meek is also responsible for providing to UTD, legal representation before courts and agencies as directed by the Executive Vice President and under the supervision of the General Counsel. In addition, Meek litigates arbitration hearings for UTD members.
MEEK'S HUSBAND, Kendrick is the State representative for the Florida House of Representatives District 104. They have two children.
DIRECTOR, MEDIA AND PUBLIC RELATIONS ANNETTE KATZ has been a member of the UTD staff since 1974. Prior to coming to UTD, Katz was the main education writer for Knight-Ridder's newspapers local suburban division. It was the forerunner to the Miami Herald's Neighbors section.
SHE AND HER STAFF are responsible for the production of UTD's regular and special publications, including the UTD TODAY, resource materials, bargaining bulletins, posters, brochures, and calendars, among many other items. UTD's web site design and updating are also part of her department's responsibilities. The UTD web site address is http://www.UTofD.com.
IN ADDITION, Katz maintains regular communication with area media, seeking to ensure that UTD's involvement in the Teacher of the Year, Principal of the Year and Sallie Mae (Beginning Teacher of the Year). She also heads up the annual UTD/McDonalds Student Poster Contest and has been active in special anti-violence programs such as Stop Day which she initiated.
KATZ is the staff liaison for the Jewish Educators Labor Committee and is a member of the Temple Judea Board of Trustees.
KATZ' HUSBAND, Stephen, is an attorney. They have two children.
IN ADDITION to the production of regular publications, the daily activities in the Media And Public Relations department include the development and dissemination of programs, special projects and materials to enhance professional development among the membership and to assist in the recruitment of new members. Lessons for Life, the Young Educators Caucus, marketing of New Teacher Orientation, the Professional Development Seminars and QuEST are but a few of those programs and special projects.***
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Communist Party USA***In the House, gains include: Arizona (7 CD), progressive Democrat and community activist Raul Grijalva will be Arizona's second ever Chicano Congressman, joining Ed Pastor who easily carried his Phoenix inner city district; the defeat of Republican incumbent Connie Morella by Chris Van Hollen in Maryland (CD8); the defeat of Republican incumbent Felix Grucci by Timothy Bishop in New York (CD 1); the election of Kendrick Meeks in FL (17 CD) Miami-Dade to the seat held by his mother Carrie Meeks who just retired, the and the election of Joseph Hoeffel ( CD 13), in an open seat, despite a racist campaign directed against him and the African American mayor of Philadelphia in opposition to Section 8 housing.***
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