Republicans punishing schools for 100% legal union contracts

This week, Detroit Public School teachers ratified a new union contract that staves off the impact of a new Right to Work law that goes into effect tomorrow. While the contract doesn’t give much to the teachers, it at least provides them with continued collective bargaining rights into the future.

With this action, the DPS now joins at least 40 other schools and five universities that face punitive action from Michigan Republicans who seek to deny them and some cities critical funding in a childish act of retribution.

Details and commentary after the jump.

A generation of future entrepreneurs denied essential skills

To hear Governor Snyder tell it, Republicans haven’t reduced school funding. Everything is great for Michigan schools, he will tell you. If you want the real story, however, start attending your local school board meetings and listen to the decision-makers grappling with ever-shrinking budgets that have them choosing between offering our educators the wages and benefits they deserve and shutting down schools and eliminating programs. The reality is that our state government is starving our K-12 public schools and those chickens are beginning to come home to roost.

This past week, the Lansing Public School District announced that it is firing all 50 physical education, music and art teachers.

Details including the unintended long-term consequences of this action after the jump.

Why would you hire a greedy parasite to watch and teach your children all day?

Teaching is a tough profession. It has always been, but lately it has become so much tougher thanks to the anti-union attacks teachers and other public employees. It’s becoming harder and harder to understand why anyone would want to be a public school teacher these days.

The anti-union attacks on teachers have been around for decades, starting with idea that teachers get paid a full-time salary but really don’t work full-time; that their cushy workdays end at 3:00 and they have summers off. This is a very shortsighted view and, if you know anyone who teaches, you know how hard they work and how much of that work goes well past 3:00 and the month of May. Often the lines between their personal life and professional life are blurred. To most teachers, teaching is really a calling more than a job.

And yet, we treat these treat these everyday heroes as if they are not worthy of our respect.

Much more after the jump.

Whoa. Now they’re getting REALLY desperate

Congressman Gary Peters sent out a statement today revealing that the anti-union, pro-Big Business “Protecting Michigan Taxpayers” sued the Michigan Parent Teachers Association (PTA) for their endorsement of Proposal 2, the Protect Working Families ballot proposal that would put collective bargaining protections in our state constitution.

Details after the jump.

“Being a teacher is not what I do, it’s who I am.” – Dr. Jill Biden

This past weekend, the American Federation of Teachers held what can only be described as an energizing, empowering and successful national convention in the Cobo Center in Detroit, Michigan. During the four-day event which concludes today featured such luminaries as Sandra Fluke (women’s reproductive rights activist) and Walmart plaintiff Betty Dukes (both of whom received AFT Women’s Rights awards), Diane Ravitch (education historian, writer), David Hecker (AFT Michigan), Charles Blow (New York Times op-ed columnist), Rev. Dr. Wendell Anthony (Detroit NAACP), Bob King (UAW), Karla Swift (Michigan AFL-CIO), Chris Michalakis (Metro Detroit AFL-CIO), U.S. Rep. Dale Kildee, Dr. Jill Biden and Vice President Joe Biden.

One of the highlights of the week was the keynote speech by AFT president Randi Weingarten who unveiled a new approach for AFT she dubbed “solution-driven unionism”. During her speech, Weingarten talked about the “new normal” facing Americans today in face of severe budget cuts jeopardizing public education, healthcare and other critical services; families losing more than 30 percent of their wealth during the economic crisis; and more than 100 bills introduced in state legislatures to demonize and attack public employees and undermine public services

Much more with lots of photos and quotes after the jump.

We’re failing our children! Last summer I posted a rant against the GOP’s demonization of teachers that gained a bit of traction. It went like this: In any rational society, teachers are not considered “costs”. They are considered assets. Something to be valued. Something to be rewarded. The Republicans have done an amazingly effective job of turning the public’s perception […]

Warning! Warning, Will Robinson! Today, language for three different petition drives to add amendments to the Michigan constitution received the okay from the state elections panel. One would give home health care workers collective bargaining rights. Another would add specific phrases from the Declaration of Independence to the state Constitution. The third is the petition for the Protect Our Jobs […]

What’s the polite phrase for “dick move”? This past week, Michigan Republicans passed House Bill 4929 that prohibits school districts from doing automatic deductions from teachers’ paychecks to pay for their union dues. It was touted as a cost-saving measure by some. How much will it save? See, that’s the thing: Nothing. According to the most recent Senate Fiscal Analysis: […]

We’re not trying to take our country BACK, we’re trying to take it FORWARD Last Saturday night I was invited to make some comments to the audience at Occupalooza. I chose to focus my talk on the need for everyone in the Occupy movement to avoid making the mistake of “staying out of politics”. Here are my comments: (This is […]

Much of the outrage about Public Act 4, the Emergency Manager law centers around its disparate impact on minority school districts and cities. But this law may be coming to city or school near you even if it’s not a so-called “majority minority” area. Take a look at the data that was assembled by Progress Michigan to see how obvious […]

I guess we’re supposed to be thankful for this? Michigan Governor Rick Snyder said this week that he’s done robbing from our children to balance the state’s books after he took $1 billion from the school fund to help pay for an 86% tax cut for businesses. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder said Tuesday that his next budget proposal likely won’t […]