Follow the bouncing logic

Karl Dean, Jesse Register, and just about every charter school leader I listen to draw the conclusion that Nashville needs charter schools and more charter schools. Their premise is that "choice" will give Metro Public Schools parents incentive to stay rather than to move to affluent public school districts like Williamson County or to private schools.

Williamson County Superintendent Mike Looney told reporters yesterday that he does not want charter schools in his school district because they dilute the resources that the public schools have. So, the focus in Williamson is not on "choice", but on "infrastructure," since money would shunt from the latter to fund charter schools. So, how can Williamson possibly be one of the most envied district if they do not even wave choice at their parents?

I have argued for some time that, as a public school parent, I am more likely to abandon Nashville schools over the charter issue. I base my view exactly on Mr. Looney's premise: charter schools sap what little money bona fide public schools have. Charter schools weaken already reeling Metro public schools. Hizzoner et al. give parents a false sense of choice because the mediocrity is spread around while wealthy education corporations (and some charter administrators) enrich themselves on the pedagogic blight. Choice is like an opiate that lulls parents into believing they have power in a school district that does not share power with those who do not first have the influence (like that of the Nashville Chamber of Commerce).

I guess sometimes, when the red flags of peon parents in poorer districts are ignored, it takes an affluent (and predominantly white?) school district leader to smack down the bouncing, flawed logic of our own educational overlords. Since few people listen to me, I hope others notice the hot mess of Mr. Looney's logic (and take note that infrastructure seems to take precedence over choice in one of the most Republican-leaning counties in the country). It makes more sense than the bunk we are spoon-fed here.

All Hale the power of teachers

What stands out to me in this year's Nashville Scene Person of the Year is not the admittedly excellent individuals they selected to honor but the way the individuals served the writer's tidy triangulation by casting plagues on both the seeming monoliths of charter school supporters and charter school opponents:

the Scene would like to refocus the discussion of public education not on differences and squabbles, but on the enormous asset that charter and public schools have in common: the teachers who are the most active, direct agents of hope Nashville's children will face outside the home.

Reporter Steven Hale is not being any more postconventional about public education than is either the Nashville Chamber of Commerce or Jesse Register's school administration. Both of the latter strive to get the news media to frame school reform, a.k.a. privatization and tax wealth transfer, as a "bold" partnership that weds market-model charters with public mandates for education.

Hale frames the issue exactly as they have. Following two teachers as illustrations to soften the debate merely supports the dominant line in the district now.

The fact he's merely echoing their drive to privatize education is made clear by the high fives they're giving him for what amounts to free advertising for their project. Federal, state, and local governments fund what Hale is advocating. Democrats and Republicans already agree on it (to the point that Democratic officials, sustained by Gates and Walton family wealth, are abandoning teachers unions across the country). To overplay rancor on the subject among powerful elites is disingenuous. His editorial advocacy hits dead center of the power matrix of education policy. Wealth flows to that center like iron filings line up in a magnetic field.

Hale's framing mechanism is symbolic: teachers, that is, "the enormous asset that both charters and public schools have together". About the only exception that charter school advocates would have to that value-framing is to insist that charter schools are thoroughly public schools.

Otherwise, education reformers are consistent and evangelical in the emphasis placed on the role of teachers in the education process. I have found them loath to talk about the role of parents, the difference that socio-economics and income inequalities have on learning, or the simple matter of children getting enough food for breakfast before they come to school in the morning. They put their speculative, peppy views of the influence and optimism of teachers on such an unrealistic plane that it often defies logic and detracts from the real impact of more profound, everyday drags on student performance. That idealism fits hand-in-glove with the emphasis on calls for "quality teachers" and on demands that testing be the stick by which quality is measured.

Within Hale's writing, current school board member and former Bredesen henchman Will Pinkston pays lip service to the teaching pedestal Hale erects (Pinkston's claim that the "teacher-quality camp" has been missing from the debate is disingenous. I've heard that saw spouted by reformers constantly for years as well as in PTO meetings and in the halls of my kid's elementary school).

The Pinkston seal of approval.

Hale's writing seems like it strives to amount to Pinkston's "teacher-quality camp" myth and to provide an echo chamber for education reformers who scale up the influence of teachers and downplay other factors that affect achievement. Hale also neglects the irony that counsels that if we have or hire high quality teachers they should be proficient enough to organize for their own self-interest without being criticized as self-serving by reformers. More importantly, they should have more influence in determining student achievement than testing does.

But Hale's pedestal is beset by the same ironies that plague the reformers' arguments. It is notable in a tribute to teachers that Hale mentions teachers unions only once (and then as a foil). He also says very little about giving "great teachers" a freer hand in determining performance. While I can only think of one objection that reformers might have with Hale's framing of the issue, I can think of many that union members might have. One is precisely the point that he does not address the positive influence unions have for teachers and the civics lesson provided to students. Another is that part of the "innovation" that charter schools advocate is not really innovative at all: charters are not regulated to hire certified teachers and they are "free" to use practically anyone they deem as qualified. A third is the drag that flooding public education with less skilled, cheaper workers has on the salary and benefits that may attract qualified teachers who are skilled at navigating government bureaucracy to begin with. The list of objections could go on and on.

And most of these objections defy the Nashville Scene's oversimplification of their views of charter school teachers as "moonbeams". I may be a charter school opponent, but I'm not surprised by anecdotal evidence that there are good teachers in charter schools. But that is hardly the larger point that I am trying to make.

The tribute that Hale pays to teachers is consistent with the idealism of education reform driving both Register's office and the Chamber of Commerce lobby. I'm not saying that the two individuals he lauds are unworthy. They read like outstanding individuals. I do not deny Hale's grasp of their characters. But there are many outstanding individuals in the teaching profession who don't fit squarely in Hale's value frames that box out larger questions that matter in public education and the process of privatization, which he apparently has come to embrace (does he have children in public schools, by the way?).

Those of us who are not journalists rely on reporters to write more level-headed, critical and investigative analyses than Hale's narrational, sentimental riff, which triangulates as if it actually departed from the school reform project. It does not. In spite of his claims, separation is never really achieved, which is exactly why Metro and Chamber flacks have not shivered his commentary. It frames their values perfectly.

Ethics vs public relations: tweets Registered

A series of reporters' tweets from earlier this afternoon that makes me wonder what the Metro Nashville Public Schools Director prefers in leadership. He is more of an ad man or an ethics man?

With all of the backbone necessary to write a letter to the editor

This is priceless. The Metro Schools Director shows just how thin-skinned he is with a critical piece about his ethics from the same newspaper that is usually giving his policies free PR. But instead of facing reporters head on, Jesse Register sent his response in a letter to the editor. Hence, he controls the message hiding behind the gravitas of his title. Sufficiently impressed, John & Jane Q. Public?

Gail Kerr’s March 14 column states Mayor Karl Dean and I disagree about whether Metro Schools’ executive team should file disclosure forms. In fact, we agree. The Mayor wants Metro Schools executives to make financial disclosures, and the district is working on that now.

The existing MNPS ethics policy is modeled after the mayor’s ethics proclamation. The policy does not presently include a disclosure form, but we are working on one now that will do so and will be modeled after Metro’s. The district has sound financial procedures in place, and the disclosures will be an additional measure to promote accountability and transparency. The district’s financial disclosure requirement will be part of a Metro Schools policy and will include a list of positions included.

The implications are clear here: Metro government leaders render local news media their tools; report anything critical on his majesty Register and you won't see any future interview time for follow-up questions. Kudos to the Tennessean for fighting the good fight on this one, because Nashville's "alternative" press, SouthComm (Nashville Scene, Nashville City Paper, etc.) seems to be shying away from investigating the window-dressed Camelot of Metro government.

Left out of Register's spin: the fact that he hired his former employer, Annenberg Institute for School Reform, and paid them $700,000 for consulting work, after which they wrote a glowing report on his professional performance.

Maybe the director intends for us to forget that one. Or maybe he is saving his comments for a future letter to the editor.

MNPS Director failed to follow ethics policy, did not report gifts and favors and hired his own former employer as a consultant

Nate Rau reports that Metro Schools Director Jesse Register went 2 years without filing required disclosure forms:

After The Tennessean inquired about Register’s failure to file the forms, a spokeswoman for MNPS initially indicated he was not covered by the city’s ethics law or Dean’s executive order creating the disclosure requirements. However, Register’s employment contract contains a provision requiring him to comply with the city’s ethics law and Dean’s executive order.

Although his disclosure statements for the two missed years are now on file with the Metro Clerk, taxpayers remain in the dark about what gifts, travel, meals and tickets to events Register has received since he was hired by the district. Citing advice from the Metro Legal Department, Register left that section of the disclosure statements blank ....

Once the provision in his contract was discovered, Register filed the form for 2011 on Feb. 21 and the form for 2010 on Feb. 23.

On all three of his forms to date, Register has elected not to disclose trips, gifts, meals and other benefits provided to him because of his role as the director of schools.

This apparently looks infectious to Mayor Karl Dean, up until now Register's partner in education reform crime, because the Mayor's media herald, Gail Kerr, followed the story with an editorial distancing Dean from Register (Kerr even goes so far as to spin Dean as a reluctant Register supporter, much like he was once spun as a hesitant candidate for the Mayor's Office).

Just as troubling as the information about which Mr. Register is not being transparent in 2010 and 2011, is 2009 report that he hired former employer Annenberg Institute for School Reform and paid them $700,000 for consulting work. In 2011 the Annenberg Institute issued a report about MNPS that gushed in its evaluations of Jesse Register, according to the Tennessean. Register had recommended Annenberg to the school board to conduct the evaluations.

These events smell rank to me. The news is rife with conflicts of interests, and until we see the full ethics report, the conflicts could be judged as unethical. If Metro Nashville Public Schools is going to wipe away conventional education and implement "reform" (an ironic word when fraught with these ethical dilemmas), they better make sure that all of the analysis performed and the data collected is not tainted by favoritism and cronyism.

LEAD given benefit of the doubt with double standard public schools cannot overcome

MNPS Director's echo bouncing off a reporter and then off the charter CEO

Rather than asking difficult questions of Metro Nashville Public School Director Jesse Register and LEAD founder Jeremy Kane (who is also an alumnus of local elite private school, Montgomery Bell Academy), the news media is reporting plans for a new LEAD charter school at Brick Church Middle School with the typical double standards:

The conversion is already taking place at Cameron Middle School. Like Brick Church, students struggled academically. The statistics are not from a lack of trying, but Metro and State leaders stress the turnaround has to come faster.

At Cameron College Prep, the new school created as part of the conversion, every student is expected to graduate from high school and attend at a four year College or University. Located on the top floor of Cameron Middle School, for now, LEAD is taking over the fifth grade and will add an additional grade every year.

"Our fifth graders this year were the lowest performing fifth graders to come into any district school," Jeremy Kane, founder of LEAD Public [sic] Schools said.

To achieve the high expectations the fifth graders at Cameron spend an average of six more hours a week in class.

"They're really trying hard," Social Studies teacher Declan Tansey said. "They're thinking through questions. And they're showing they're committed to getting those questions correct."

The early success at Cameron and LEAD's other schools is what Dr. Register and state leaders hope to achieve at Brick Church Middle School.

The double standard is clear: judgment passed against Cameron Middle School because of low test scores, while Cameron College Prep is said to be succeeding without reference to any test scores at all. In its former generation, Cameron failed based on hard statistics that do not apply to the "converted" Cameron (quasi-evangelical language noted). The new LEAD school's "success" is based on squishy, malleable, interpretive categories like setting high expectations and graduating and on personal anecdotes like the students are "trying hard" and "showing they're committed."

If we applied the same unrealistic expectations to charter schools as we do to bona fide public schools (which are obligated to accept and to educate everyone, even those who resist education) they would probably crack under the same pressure.

But reporters do not want to ask the hard questions of the school district's PR machine, backed by beaucoup private donations and federal dollars.

Kane told another reporter that with LEAD (backed by the fiat of State of Tennessee and Mayor Karl Dean, who is a Montgomery Bell Academy parent) he has discovered "a secret sauce for a win-win" in public education with no losers. I agree that privatization is a huge win-win for corporate elites and the politicians who love them. In other words, everyone with money and power wins in the equation.

But there are losers: kids who don't get accepted to LEAD academies because those institutions can do exactly what Mr. Kane's alma mater does (pick and choose its students); students, teachers, and parents at bona fide public schools who enjoy fewer resources as government money is diverted to charters; and the bona fide public schools themselves who lose balance as their best students are skimmed off and away. It is a zero-sum game with clear-cut losses.

What brings me the most sadness is that the news media fails to cut through the PR to call this what it is: institutionalized and engineered social Darwinism that is judged by an entirely different and favorable set of rules than truly public education is.

A culture war on the unions: a common tongue

In her state of the the state address last month, South Carolina Republican Governor Nikki Haley asked legislators present to give businesses that located to her state a standing ovation, and then she ripped into unions who in her mind discouraged business relocation. Note how she plays the culture war card against labor organizing to defend its interests:

Our agencies have taken strides ... to change the culture so that every single employee understands that if government is costing our businesses time, we are costing them money .... I love that we are one of the least unionized states in the country. It is an economic development tool unlike any other .... the unions don't understand that. They will do everything they can to invade our state.

Contrast the appeal to culture on the union question with Jesse Register's more candid comments to a TV reporter last week, comments that he thought were not on-air and which he said he would not publicly express. Register himself insinuates the same language of culture war against unions on behalf of municipal government:

I don't guess I'll say this publicly, but [the decision to end the school district's Labor Negotiations Policy with service employees' and bus drivers' unions] it's really a culture change. It's going from a system where people really felt entitlement [in labor contract discussions and negotiations].

Who would not be repulsed by misanthropes intent on killing growth or in believing they are entitled to what many people feel lucky to have? Under such logic, this is not just a simple matter of balance sheets and cash flow. It has been conflated with a primordial struggle between deeply held value frameworks in the expressed logic.

However, appeals to culture ignore more straightforward explanations. Unions can never effectively defend the rights of laborers unless they organize people to defend rights. They don't seek to kill growth, but insure that workers enjoy a fair share of the wealth they generate. If critics want to reduce questions of fairness to claims of entitlement, I acknowledge their right to be wrong, because they are wrong.

But, then again, those who wage culture wars should be ready for some blowback. If that is entitlement, then it is just as much entitlement when executives lay claim to what they believe is their share of the wealth. Register's base pay alone is in the hundreds of thousands. Is that an entitlement? If not, then how can that of a cafeteria worker--making a minuscule fraction of his salary and not enjoying raises at the same clip he has--be entitlement? So, maybe Director Register is the savvier pol in stifling publicly what he really thinks about his workers.

In her speech Governor Haley also mentioned Tennessee as one of her state's primary competitors for economic development. She was emphatic about maintaining a competitive advantage by any means necessary. When it comes to enmity toward hard working people banding together to protect themselves from being taken advantage of, the competitors must have to resemble each other to compete. The main difference between South Carolina's governor and Nashville's schools director is that the former is simply willing to be more transparent in her hostility toward unions.

Metro Nashville Public Schools Director caught on tape saying modestly paid MNPS employees have sense of "entitlement" he intends to change

Via Joey Garrison comes a video of Jesse Register speaking plainly when he does not realize he is caught on tape. He also seems to suggest that he would not own up to his more honest characterization on tape. The Human Resources Assistant Superintendent even enables Mr. Register by agreeing openly that he should not say "entitlement" with reference to employees on tape, even though that is what he really means.





Despite the public relations machine at the school district, once in a while brutal honesty cannot be contained. That was a Reaganesque moment. He might as well have called cafeteria workers "welfare queens".



UPDATE: NewsChannel 5 had YouTube scrub the video on the basis of copyright violation. Let's hope that this wasn't an attempt to bury Jesse Register's belittling comments about MNPS workers.

News media. They just don't get it.

They can scrub the video, but they cannot scrub the fact that many of us witnessed the Metro Schools Director and Assistant Superintendent of Human Relations make the following comments:

Jesse Register: "I don't guess I'll say this publicly, but it's really a culture change. It's going from a system where people really felt entitlement. Uh, I don't know whether I'll say that on the air or not, but that's what it is, isn't it?"

June Keel: "I wouldn't say that on the air."

SEIU responds to Register after council vote

The folks at SEIU sent me the following response to MNPS Director Jesse Register's allegations to council members regarding the memorandum of understanding between the union and the school district:

This is the first we're hearing about any issues that Dr. Register had with the MOU. Neither he or any of his executive staff have expressed these concerns to us since Register arrived in Nashville. The point of having an MOU is to be able to have a framework to discuss the conditions of employment and other things crucial to making our schools function. It is Dr. Register's responsibility to bring things like this to our attention - whether it's during bargaining or not. He hasn't. We are and have always been more than happy to work with the administration to improve quality and service to the public, but in this case, Dr. Register was uncommunicative.

As to the validity of what MNPS' claims are... we are still investigating them. There are no dates or names given here so we don't know if these things happened recently, if they happened before the workers even had a union, or if there are some extenuating circumstances in these examples that were not mentioned in MNPS' statement.

In any case, we continue to maintain that Dr. Register should sit down and talk to employee groups, including Local 205, to address concerns on both sides of the table. Our members' children attend Metro Schools, so they want to see them succeed as well. We can do that together, as we have for the last decade with previous adminstrations, though the meet and confer provisions that have been laid out in the MOU. As we saw last night, the Metro Council sees the value in having a process that encourages cooperation between employer and employee. We hope that the School Board sees that as well.

Metro Council votes to urge Jesse Register to return to previous terms with service workers

The council passed a memorializing resolution earlier this evening, 25-9, encouraging Nashville schools Director Jesse Register to return to its previous practice of negotiating with the unions representing service workers and bus drivers. A month ago Mr. Register appeared to move on from the previous memorandum of understanding with the unions, encouraging employees to break from the unions and thus settle for a distinct disadvantage to the school district, which is not vested with protecting service workers' best interests ahead of those of district executives and corporate patrons of the district.

Tonight's resolution passed overwhelmingly. CM Emily Evans voted for it, calling Mr. Register's break with previous union arrangements "needless" and the breach between the district and the unions a "gratuitous fight". She described the MNPS decision to discard unions one "without any documented benefits for students". Council conservatives--who rarely stand with workers--were predictably cool toward the motion urging the school district to reengage the unions. Duane Dominy bemoaned the strained relationship between the district and its workers, but he based his opposition to the bill on the unfounded conjecture that it would cause greater strain.

SEIU photo of former MNPS board member
& current CM Karen Johnson
meeting with union members

However, there is not much more the council can do with a non-binding, toothless resolution to drive a wedge between the workers and Jesse Register than he has not already done himself. Mr. Register seems more engaging of  "CEO Champions" for his new "academies" than of the workers at the base of the MNPS pyramid:

Register ... [and] the school board’s “executive staff” decided to discontinue the MOUs entirely by deleting the school system’s Labor Negotiations Policy.

Register referenced Tennessee’s Professional Educators Collaborative Conferencing Act, which was passed by the state legislature last year and replaced teachers’ collective bargaining rights with “collaborative conferencing” ....

“In recognition of state law regarding teachers’ unions, and the non-binding nature of any MOU with support unions, my executive staff has met and voted to rescind HR 5.129, the Labor Negotiations Policy.”

The move didn’t go over well with SEIU Local 205 president Doug Collier.

“Dr. Register is now trying to use those laws — which do not apply to school support employees — as an excuse to overreach his authority and silence the voices of thousands of loyal city employees who voted to form a union,” Collier said in a press release.

The USW and SEIU sent complaint letters to Metro Board of Education Chairwoman Gracie Porter earlier this month.

Gracie Porter never replied publicly. At least there is no indication in online news searches that she did. I received tips a couple of years ago that Ms. Porter cast the deciding vote for Mr. Register's plan to privatize the service workers' jobs in exchange for the position of board chair. And no good deed goes unpunished, as SEIU had already canvassed for Ms. Porter during her campaign for office four years before that. I can understand how speaking out publicly on Mr. Register's rejection of unions might put Ms. Porter in an awkward position.

Given the district's terse reply to the media tonight, Jesse Register does not appear too receptive to the council's resolution. I am Jack's total lack of surprise.

Local blogger exposes sexist emails allegedly sent out by MNPS male supervisor

Over at Gemna Speaks, Gemna Holmes broke some rather provocative news regarding an email allegedly sent by Metro Nashville Public Schools Food Services Director Jay Nelson (I added the emphasis below):

Recently, a Metro Nashville Public School (MNPS) male supervisor sent an email to female subordinates that has gone viral. In the food service department, the female to male ratio is 9 to 1. An email with a cartoon depicting a caveman telling another caveman that he has decided to teach the woman to talk and asking “what harm can it do?” is not funny. Period ....

I contacted several MNPS food service staff members at area schools to ask them about their work environment which the email made me question right away. No one wanted to go on record for fear of losing their jobs but all agreed that email that I read was a glimpse behind the drawn shades of a school system that has become synonymous with devaluing its support staff.

Jump to Gemna's blog to see the offending cartoon and get more details. These allegations are chilling for MNPS given that they come on the heels of a complaint filed against Jesse Register for "overreaching" and attempting to "silence" MNPS support staff. What kind of climate do service workers weather under the MNPS umbrella?


By the way, this is not the first time Director Nelson has had his oversight scrutinized. In 2004, MSNBC found conditions in Metro school cafeterias in bad shape under his watch:

...unlike last year [when new crews popped in], there were no mouse droppings under food service lines. But mice still roam other parts of some Nashville school cafeterias.

But the Nashville school district had its most serious problems with food temperatures, worse than any other city we visited. When checking hamburgers, one of the most dangerous foods if not cooked thoroughly and held at 140 degrees, inspector Steve Crosier couldn't believe his eyes as the thermometer needle fell. It finally bottomed out at around 78 degrees.

Hansen: "How quickly does bacteria grow, bacteria that could make a kid sick at 78 degrees?"

Prof. Berg: "It grows really, really quickly. 78 degrees, 110 degrees, these are optimum temperatures for bacteria. Not for us."

Cold pizza may be a staple around college dorms, but health officials say it could pose a danger for a young child if not kept at 140 degrees to kill bacteria. At 60 degrees the pizza was 80 degrees too cold.

Prof. Berg: "It is that cheese. It's almost like a Petri dish with bacterial growth."

At McGavock High, inspectors saw something a lot scarier than cold pizza -- shards of glass mixed in with fruit in a cooler. Apparently, the light shield, the metal cover that goes over the glass dome shield, fell.

Jerry Rowland, Health Director: "I can't remember the last time that I saw an inspection where there was glass inside a food in a school cafeteria or in a restaurant."

Inspectors also found a fifty pound bag of USDA-donated flour in a storage room infested with bugs. Jay Nelson is the head of food services for Nashville schools.

Hansen: "Don't the people look around and say, this needs to be cleaned. This has bugs. This is rotten. This is at the wrong temperature. Before kids come in to eat in these rooms?

Jay Nelson: "Chris, I would have fully expected that happens. But as we can see it doesn't."

Hansen: "How can you guarantee that the next time we come down here, we won't see some of these very same things?"

Nelson: "Chris I'd be a fool to guarantee you that you're not going to see some of the very same things. What I want to see is our total scores of all the schools improving, and continually improving."

Maybe it's good news that the MNPS dining services brain trust is no longer having to defend alarming food conditions in its cafeterias. Is it too much to expect that Mr. Nelson find a way to stop imposing demeaning cartoons on rank-and-file workers?


UPDATE: MNPS's cartoon fiasco hits the airwaves.

Is Jesse Register union-busting to save a buck?

Metro Nashville Public Schools officials won't confirm or deny, but Nashville's service employees' union, SEIU, charges that MNPS Director Jesse Register has tried to convince service employees to quit the union. SEIU has filed a complaint with the School Board:

"This is not a dispute over wages, funding, or benefits," said Doug Collier, President of SEIU Local 205. "Last year, the state legislature passed laws which affected teachers' right to bargain collectively. Dr. Register is now trying to use those laws – which do not apply to school support employees - as an excuse to overreach his authority and silence the voices of thousands of loyal city employees who voted to form a union."

Didn't Register already overreach a couple of years ago by using private contractors as advisers for privatizing public service positions, outsourcing the jobs, and effectively cutting the labor force after many workers were not rehired by those contractors?

Mission accomplished: Metro Nashville Public Schools leaves their service workers in rubble

Some of us warned months ago that Nashville's public school service workers would be worse off once Schools Director Jesse Register's secret mission to outsource jobs and to bust the union was accomplished. It did not take very long at all:

Hundreds of former Metro School custodians now working for a company outsourced to do the work said they're getting a raw deal.

One woman, who didn't want to be identified, worked for Metro Schools for nearly a decade.

In June, when the custodians were laid off and the work was outsourced to GCA Services, she was hired back on.

In exchange for the contract with Metro Schools, GCA Services promised that it would hire on some of those laid off custodians.

But out of 600 workers, only 200 were given jobs. GCA also promised to pay comparable wages, and offer benefits. But workers who were hired saID they took a 30 percent pay cut.

"I can't afford to pay the bills it's a drastic cut from 16 all the way down to 13 that's a drastic cut," the woman who didn't want to be identified said.

Metro School Director's quid pro quo?

I received a couple of tips overnight that Metro School Director Jesse Register has anointed school board member Gracie Porter to be board chair in exchange for her swing vote to support Register's privatization of Metro Schools service workers. She will be elected today.

This is not what I had in mind when I originally supported Ms. Porter over Kay Brooks, whom Davidson County Republicans helped appoint over the wishes of voters. Of course, as a conservative, Kay Brooks could have just as easily voted to bust up the local service workers union, cut wages, erode benefits that Metro employees enjoy, and subsidize private corporations.

Another progressive success story plays out today, because "progressive" turns out to mean anything anyone wants it to mean.

As board chair maybe Ms. Porter can help Mr. Register take down the teachers union next time. Kay Brooks would not have it any other way.