On the Streets
Public Enemy – Fight the Power
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Let me introduce you to Mr. Luong (the one in the white t-shirt), the new history teacher and union rep at our school (we share the same kids), being arrested this past Friday. In the eyes of our 7th graders, he’s now amazingly cool!
Let’s see if I can accurately follow the chain of events that led up to this (a little lesson in civics):
* California enter budget nightmare.
* LAUSD cuts teachers
* Our union calls for a one-day strike (this past Friday) to protest
* LAUSD goes to court and gets a judge to issue an injunction, preventing such a walkout
* Our wonderful union called upon some of it’s volunteers to engage in some civil disobedience downtown at district headquarters, which led to the arrest of 39 of them (including Mr. Luong).
* After school, myself and 30 other colleagues headed downtown for a rally at the headquarters of the district, and soon after Mr. Luong was released and joined us!
I took this photo on the left of a few of my colleagues who are getting pink slipped due to economics. These are GREAT teachers and it would suck to lose them next year.
Now I fully support the idea of a union, but here’s the awful reality: even if the union gets what we want (LAUSD cutting bureaucratic positions rather than teacher positions), all those fired bureaucrats get first dibs on classroom positions, effectively bumping out these new teachers anyway. Since we have a union contract that is based 100% on seniority (and 0% on effectiveness with students) all that we’re doing at the protests can’t really amount to much when it comes to kids. And until our Union, our district, whomever, is willing to admit that, and implement a fair, and effective policy to ensure that quality teachers have job security (rather than simply those with longevity), this district will go nowhere.
Themocracy
Hang in there, Kyle. One of my favorite quotes:
Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality of those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change.
Robert Kennedy