Posts Tagged ‘teacher’

As a 15 year old, I never imagined my activism in politics would translate into controversy for me at school.

My name is Benji Backer and I attend a public high school in Appleton, Wisconsin. I have always supported the public school system and plan to do so for the rest of my life. Many Americans who stand up for the public school system and the unions believe there is no attempt to sway opinion or that students with opposing beliefs are singled out. Unfortunately, experiences I have had with harassment and bullying prove that wrong. This is a timeline of the most extreme cases of harassment and indoctrination I have had in the three different public schools I have attended over the last three years.

I am currently in my freshman year of high school and the incidents are happening more frequently and I believe are more severe. As you can imagine, the ongoing pressure and bullying has been disturbing to me, my friends and my family.

Read more by Benji Backer at FreedomWorks.org

Two years after state legislation rolled back collective bargaining for public employees and reshaped the state’s education landscape, several Milwaukee-area superintendents on Tuesday praised the overall effects, saying that relations with teachers are solid and that they have more flexibility to help improve student achievement.

Read more by Erin Richards of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The dark fiscal clouds are starting to lighten in Wisconsin’s largest school District.

But Milwaukee Public Schools’ fiscal picture could be a lot brighter, had its teachers’ union chosen to open up its labor contract with MPS and agree to some salary concessions.

Tweaking the deal could have saved scores of positions, opening up the opportunity for more teachers in the classroom, more programs to bolster the academic achievement of a school system that has seen its share of failure, and perhaps offering relief to Milwaukee taxpayers.

Life is all about choices, and the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association opted to reject concessions and keep what it had earned through its 2010 negotiations with the district.

Beginning in July 2013, however, if the law that redefined public-sector collective bargaining in Wisconsin holds, Milwaukee’s teachers will be operating under a new system, and the district and its taxpayers are expected to see pronounced savings.

They said, no, no, no

Read more by M.D. Kittle at Wisconsin Reporter

Three unanimous Supreme Court decisions against the government suggest that the administration has a faulty view of federal power.

As the world awaits the Supreme Court’s ruling on ObamaCare, there’s a larger story that the pundits are missing: the court’s rejection of the Obama administration’s increasingly extreme claims on behalf of unlimited federal power.

This term alone, the high court has ruled unanimously against the government on religious liberty, criminal procedure and property rights. When the administration can’t get even a single one of the liberal justices to agree with it in these unrelated areas of the law, that’s a sign there’s something wrong with its constitutional vision.

Let’s take these cases in order:

Rea more By ILYA SHAPIRO at Wall Street Journal

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuPlHNEeSlE

Published on Jun 4, 2012 by CNN

Teachers with opposing views talk about the Wisconsin recall effort against Gov. Scott Walker. Ted Rowlands reports.

True Confessions in Wisconsin

When debate over public unions flared up in Wisconsin last year, educators claimed Gov. Scott Walker’s austere reforms would require thousands of teachers to be laid off.

They were wrong.

With small changes in pension and healthcare contributions while allowing school districts to buy health insurance plans on the open market, Walker’s reforms have resulted in what could be considered a statewide teacher-retention program. School districts such as Wauwatosa, hometown of Governor Walker and the Weekly Standard’s Fox News star Stephen Hayes, faced a $6.5 million deficit and planned to lay off dozens of teachers. But Walker’s reforms allowed all those teachers to remain employed.

Read more by Matt Naugle at Spectator.org

When you send your kids off to school, you expect them to learn all about the “three r’s”: reading, writing and recall efforts? That doesn’t seem right, and it didn’t seem right to FOX6 Investigator Bryan Polcyn either.

It is common practice for elementary schools to take students on a tour of the Wisconsin State Capitol, but how would you feel if your child went on just such a field trip, and ended up being led, quite literally, into the middle of a political protest?

–SNIP– Every weekday at noon, the “Solidarity Singers” gather around the Capitol Rotunda to vocalize their displeasure with Governor Walker’s agenda.

On a Tuesday in late September, FOX6 watched as elementary school children were led into the middle of the protest, and encouraged to clap and sing along.

Read more at Fox6 Now

Reforms.wi.gov will show the results from the Administration’s reforms

MADISON – Governor Scott Walker’s office today released a new website, www.reforms.wi.gov that will help inform Wisconsinites about the results from the Administration’s reforms.

“Since our reforms passed a lot of people have wondered what kind of results we’re getting and why the reforms were necessary,” said Governor Walker. “Reforms.wi.gov shows the results from our reforms and how they’re working.”

So far local governments have saved over $450 million because of the reforms. That total is only the beginning of the potential savings. The savings are based on media reports and the Legislative Fiscal Bureau’s estimate on pension savings. For hundreds of governments there is no official estimate of savings from health contributions, but it is likely millions of dollars more.

Governments have seen savings not only from employee pension and health care contributions, but also by having the ability to do design plan changes and shop the market for better rates. So far governments have saved over $73 million through health plan savings.

Reforms.wi.gov goes beyond just the savings from pension and health care contributions to share how the reforms have improved government.

For example, in Baraboo School District is considering using the savings to rebuild the running track and athletic field at the high school, a project that had been on the backburner for years.

In Kaukauna, they turned a $400,000 deficit into a $1.5 million surplus. With the savings from the health care and pension contribution, they were able to hire additional staff to lower class sizes. The district is also now working on a merit pay proposal for teachers.

In Brown Deer, the reforms allowed the district to have teachers in contact with the students for only 310 minutes per day. According to the Finance Director, “if it got to be 311 minutes, they grieved it. You couldn’t even ask a teacher to walk her little first graders to art because that was 312 minutes.”

The website will be updated as more data becomes available and more results become public.

October 21, 2011
For Immediate Release
Contact: Cullen Werwie, 608-267-7303

Oshkosh Area School District committee of employees, administrators recommends dropping union health insurance

The Oshkosh school district could save about $774,000 this year and another $1.3 million next year by leaving its union-affiliated health insurance for a new provider.

A committee of about 30 district employees, union representatives and administrators has recommended the school board ditch its insurance through the Wisconsin Education Association Trust, a non-profit company started by the state teachers’ union, for a cheaper but equivalent benefits plan through the Wisconsin County’s Association Group Health Trust.

The school board will vote on the change Wednesday.

Read more by Adam Rodewald at thenorthwestern.com

On a day when the Green Bay Packers begin defending their Super Bowl title, it seems fitting that Wisconsin public-school teachers have begun running their own version of the famous Packer Sweep to get around the state’s new collective bargaining law.

Just last week, the Associated Press reported that teacher retirements had doubled as a result of Gov. Scott Walker’s new law requiring increased pension and health contributions by state and local government employees. As reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, many public workers feel “under attack” by the measure that required them to pay more for their health insurance and pension benefits and took away most of their ability to collectively bargain.

Yet, as the newspaper reported today, plenty of teachers are apparently willing to weather Walker’s “attack,” as many of them are returning to the classroom with different pay arrangements. The new collective bargaining law gives districts the flexibility to hire back recently retired teachers at similar or reduced salaries, without the districts having to pay the rehired teachers’ health or pension benefits. Teachers feigned offense when retiring, but now they are willing to work in these supposedly oppressive jobs while collecting both a current salary and generous pension benefits.

Therein lies the danger in this situation: Not only are teachers collecting a salary close to their original level, they are “double dipping” by collecting their pensions contemporaneously. Such double dipping arrangements have prompted scandals in other states; in 2010, Florida had to ban the practice altogether after nearly 9,700 workers were found to be benefiting from such arrangements. (The state instituted a six-month waiting period for retired workers to be hired back.)

By Christian Schneider at National Review

The revelation that a vice chancellor at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay retired from his $131,000-a-year position and returned about a month later while continuing to draw his retirement benefit has prompted the state to launch an investigation into whether the move was made legally.

The university’s decision to rehire its top finance official, Tom Maki, also prompted state Rep. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) to cancel a public hearing scheduled for Thursday on tuition legislation that’s supported by UW-Green Bay.

State law bars agencies from making an arrangement to rehire someone who is planning to retire before that person leaves. Nass said he suspects that’s what happened in Maki’s case. The university denies there was an arrangement.

By Sharif Durhams of the Journal Sentinel

by Kyle Olson, biggovernment.com, 6/24/2011

This is one part of a running series entitled “Indoctrination Fridays,” a weekly review of leftist propaganda incorporated into public school curriculum, much geared towards elementary students. For more of the series, please visit PublicSchoolSpending.com.

In typical union and socialist propaganda, employers are depicted as cruel and uncaring business owners who never miss an opportunity to cheat and mistreat workers.

Big Labor’s “us versus them” worldview is so entrenched that they can’t recognize the fact that most successful companies value their employees, and do whatever they can to retain their best workers. That reality, of course, undercuts the relevance of unions.

So what’s a union to do?

Like their fellow travelers in the “man-made” global warming community, the unions know they have to indoctrinate the young with their propaganda. But when you’re dealing with kindergartners, you have to insert the concept of unionizing subtly into lessons.

Read more at http://biggovernment.com/kolson/2011/06/24/indoctrination-fridays-curriculum-teaches-kindergartners-to-unionize/

by Chip Wood, personalliberty.com, 6/17/2011

For a moment, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Thousands of residents of Harlem, a New York City neighborhood, had taken to the streets to protest the NAACP. And yes, virtually every one of them was black.

What was it all about? Apparently, a huge number of parents in Harlem believe the quality of education their children are getting is more important than the color of the skin of their teachers. They were demanding better schools — even if that meant a bunch of black teachers lost their jobs.

You won’t be surprised to learn that many of our inner-city schools do a terrible job of educating the young people entrusted to them. More than half of the children who start first grade in inner-city schools drop out before they graduate. Many of those who do make it through 12 grades can’t read above a see-spot-run level. Nor can they do such simple math as making change for a purchase of a Big Mac and fries. No wonder the graduates of inner city schools are virtually unemployable.

Read more at http://www.personalliberty.com/conservative-politics/civil-liberty/blacks-picket-the-naacp/

“In Harlem, charter school parents and students target NAACP” at http://gothamschools.org/2011/05/26/in-harlem-charter-school-parents-and-students-target-naacp/

By Karen Herzog and Tom Tolan, JS Online, 6/15/2011

Teachers unions are asking teachers for bank account information so their union dues can automatically be deducted once the state collective bargaining law goes into effect later this month.

The state’s largest teachers union, the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC), has asked school districts for teachers’ home addresses — both email and street addresses — so local union leaders can contact them. The new law states school districts no longer may collect union dues on behalf of unions through payroll deductions.

Teachers now will have the option of whether to continue paying dues.

The typical Wisconsin teacher who belongs to WEAC pays $450 per year for the state and national portions of their dues, WEAC spokeswoman Christina Brey has said.

But the additional amount in local dues paid varies by district. Teachers in the West Allis-West Milwaukee School District and Wauwatosa School District pay $217 a year in local dues, for example.

Read more at http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/123946399.html

That’s a Democrat Governor urging broad limits to NY Public Pensions!

Cuomo Urges Broad Limits to N.Y. Public Pensions
By DANNY HAKIM and THOMAS KAPLAN, NY Times, 6/08/2011

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, joining a parade of officials from across the country who are seeking to rein in spending by limiting public employees’ pensions, proposed Wednesday to broadly limit retirement benefits for new city and state workers in New York.

Mr. Cuomo said New York State and New York City simply could no longer afford to offer new employees the generous benefits their predecessors received.

Among the most significant changes the governor proposes is to raise the minimum retirement age to 65 from 62 for state workers, and to 65 from 57 for teachers.

“The numbers speak for themselves — the pension system as we know it is unsustainable,” the governor said in a statement. “This bill institutes common-sense reforms to bring government benefits more in line with the private sector while still serving our employees and protecting our retirees.”

–SNIP– Unions have been fighting pension changes around the nation, particularly in states like Wisconsin and New Jersey, which have Republican governors.

Read more at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/09/nyregion/cuomo-proposes-tough-limits-on-pensions.html

So a democrat NY Governor is doing what Scott Walker is doing??