What The NEA Leadership Tells The NEA Rank-And-File

It's or  interesting to see what the leadership of an organization, any organization, says to the rank-and-file. Everybody does it--churches, businesses, organizations like NRA, or...labor unions. OS thinks the folks who turn out this copy, day after day, lull themselves into thinking they are holding a private conversation. They forget that, when they hit than 'Print' of 'Send' button, it actually means 'Publish'.

The following is a sample from today's 'NEA Today' email, which arrives every morning in OS's mailbox. OS, as a public service, shares them with you...with explanatory notes included.

• Ohio Senate Passes Collective Bargaining Overhaul (Those Wascawy Wepubwikans,Winning That Election Without Our Permission)

• Public Adamantly Opposed to Cuts in K-12 Education, Social Security (Sit tight! We've got those conservatives cornered!)

• NEA Kicks Off Read Across America Day

The National Education Association launched its annual Read Across America campaign on Wednesday with a star-studded celebration of reading at the Library of Congress.
A proclamation by President Obama declared today Read Across America Day, NEA President Dennis Van Roekel told the event’s crowd of students decked in “Cat in the Hat” stovepipe hats.“Today, there are 45 million people doing what we’re doing: wearing funny hats and reading!” he said.

You really must must must hit the link to see The First Lady in front of a crowd of Cats-In-Hats. Words fail. Not even Dr. Suess is equal to this occasion.

• Wisconsin Governor is Waging ‘Jihad’ Against Unions (Beheadings? Honor Killings?)

• What You Need to Know About State Pensions (It's all the fault of greedy legislators and the housing meltdown. Stand fast, brethren, we'll get every penny. There is no real crisis...)

• House of Representatives Slashes Education for Low-Income Kids (Those Wascawy Wepubwikans, With Their Dwaconian Cuts!)

Day-in, day-out, year-in, year-out, the copywriters grind the verbiage out. Little wonder they, and their audiences, come to assume that they have a true and unique grip on reality, sharing a unique knowledge with a private audience.

Little wonder we witness the protests in Madison and Providence.

As he types out his thoughts, to be launched in a blog-bottle onto the sea of the internet, OS is watching Waiting For Superman, currently available on DirectTV Pay-Per-View movie service. It is staggering to watch, dismaying to view. The segment showing the lotteries for spaces in the good schools is agonizing to view.

The 4.99 spent keeps the movie going for twenty-four hours, and OS will be viewing it again.

The NEA loathes it, preaches against it, vilifies it at every turn. Little wonder. Prophetically, some of the most damning anecdotes are told about Madison, Wisconsin.

Teacher Protests--Providence Rhode Island

Facing huge deficits in a small city, the mayor took radical action: He fired every teacher in the system, and will rehire in line with what the city will be able to afford.

Understandably, a lot of folks are upset.

From today's NPR Morning Edition:

About 1,500 people jammed the street in front of City Hall in Providence, R.I., on Wednesday to protest last week's dismissal of the city's entire teaching force.

"I thought the only insanity was in Wisconsin, not in Rhode Island," Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, told the crowd, which raised signs and banged drums.

Weingarten calls the terminations insane, but city officials say they had no choice: The city is facing an estimated deficit of more than $100 million for the next fiscal year, or roughly 20 percent of the city budget.

Providence's new mayor, Angel Taveras, says he is considering school closures and layoffs for many city workers, but teachers are feeling the pain first, because of a state law that requires districts to notify teachers by March 1 if their jobs are in jeopardy. He says he chose terminations instead of layoffs, because it ensures that teachers the city can't afford will be completely removed from the city payroll.

"With a layoff, for various reasons, you can be responsible for paying teachers who are not teaching in a classroom," he said. "In addition to that, if they go into the substitute pool, you're paying them their full pay and benefits, and that's costing an enormous amount of money. I can't allow the taxpayers to be on the hook for paying teachers who are not teaching."

OS observes, for what it's worth: The union members, and many normal folks, honestly do not believe there is a real problem, that the states and municipalities are not strapped. 2007/2008 is beginning to fade from memory, and Da Stimulus (which ballooned the federal deficit dramatically) helicoptered money to the school systems, and lulled everyone into thinking that there wasn't a real problem.

In frustration, and in an effort to shock everyone out of their sleepy denial, elected officials take actions like this. What they don't calculate is the tendency of this sort of route to poison the well with people whose future high morale is desirable--teachers, police, firefighters, road crews, etc. After the crisis, those that remain will either come to work feeling like they are part of a greater good, or arrive with an even more entrenched us-vs-them chip on the shoulder. They'll either give that little extra bit of effort for the home team, or resentfully go through the motions--doing just enough to avoid termination for cause, and creating chaos daily. OS has seen this in action, and it is a miserable thing to deal with.

There's a lot of the latter attitude already baked into the culture of many states and municipalitles, to be certain. And, given the human condition, it won't ever completely go away.

But it seems that the art of leadership entails the ability to deliver bad news, and make ugly ugly decisions without pouring excess gasoline onto the fires of resentment.

This is going to be an ugly ugly period, 'cuz the money has run out. Doesn't mean we have to draw knives on one another. That only delays the day when we are prosperous enough to not wring our hands over every budget.

This story from Business Insider gives a picture of the cultural quandry: