The question was "penetrating" and pointless

NPR journo Blake Farmer received high fives from other journos and school reformers this morning for his "penetrating question" (as Phil Williams characterized it) to Tennessee's teachers union president Gera Summerford:

What about charter schools? Summerford says they haven’t become “labs of innovation” like they were supposed to, though she admits she’s never been inside of one.

I don't know Ms. Summerford, but let's say she had been thinking like a savvy politico and made the anecdotal and symbolic (some might say cynical) gesture of visiting a charter school so that if a journalist asked if she had been in a charter school she could say, "Yes". If only that were enough. If this were to rise to the level of objectivity, Ms. Summerford would have to pick a representative sample of charter schools to visit, and then could she ever truly visit enough? Or would she like most thoughtful people have to rely on the data needed so that she could keep her daytime job and her union responsibilities? She would practically have to become a sociologist instead of a union leader to satisfy the questions and even then, there is the problem of interpreting the data.

Maybe the questions never end, which makes Mr. Farmer's particular query even more premature and pointless. It was an anecdotal question that would have been useless at the level of policy; although for the ax-grinders and red-meat throwers it was an opened gate to "what's wrong with unions". Journos remain gatekeepers of what counts for news.

But on that point about Mr. Summerford's union responsibilities: I fail to fathom why a journo would expect someone who is personally and philosophically committed to the right of collective bargaining to approach charter school corporations, which have committed themselves to dismantling teachers unions, for permission to access their property. The question is not, "Why hasn't she visited a hostile enterprise?" Frankly, why would she do so? Do we expect any other professional alliances to enter institutions bent on their destruction before we take them seriously?

Do we set the credibility of journalists on whether they are willing to enter the machinery of institutions devoted to dismantling freedom of the press? No. That's illogical and moot. We judge them by their stories and by the quality of their questions and many times by their unexamined biases.

Expecting union members to enter environments that are hostile to their collective bargaining rights is also unreasonable. And teachers are not bound to be politicos making staged appearances for the vivid presentation on the news. (An honest journalist will concede at this point the conflict between news media's commercial interest in provocative drama and canned symbolism vs. the journalistic interest in transmitting mundane, unjuiced information to audiences). That a local journo would expect otherwise is biased by definition. Sometimes you have to think outside of partisan politics rather than be captive to it; at least if you want to be considered by some of us as objective.

The problem here is the typical journalistic fallacy of false equivalence caused by strictly defining two polarizing sides of a debate and setting up interview questions at a mean between them, based on the talking points of each. That mean is often assumed to be objectivity or neutrality. Here is what I consider an expression of the fallacy of false equivalence in journalism in the context of a defense of Mr. Farmer's interview:

However, defining two sides who do not share the same in priorities or character, and then creating a continuum on which one sits between them is itself as subjective and as predisposing as the two sides staking out a position.

The angle of interview questions is fabricated by the ideas the journo subjectively considers significant. Setting oneself up as a pseudo-moderate of sorts is no less partisan than interviewees one pushes to the poles. There are a host of other questions and considerations that should come up for discussion and that are relative to the issue of privatization of public education that also go ignored and downplayed under the false auspices of being neutral. And those questions are buried further by self-congratulation when these journos judge their neutrality as confirmed by criticism coming from the predetermined left and right.

So, even to charge a journo with not asking an objective or relevant question in the end gets one dismissed as "liberal" or "conservative", thus vindicating journalism's otherwise subjective projects. That's no way to handle a legitimacy crisis.

Making a year-end donation to the Nashville Symphony

I have a long-standing practice of donating any Google Ad revenue checks from this blog to worthwhile local non-profits who give so much back to the community. Past causes I've donated to include: Fisk University, Buena Vista Enhanced Option School, Cumberland River Compact, Second Harvest Food Bank, 88.1 WFSK FM, North Nashville Flood Relief Group, Nashville Jazz Workshop, Friends of Nashville Farmers' Market, and the Cheatham Place Kids Christmas Party.

The travails of a significant source of cultural exposure to music not called "country" prompted my latest donation. A letter I just put in the mail:

December 31, 2013

Nashville Symphony

One Symphony Place

Nashville, TN 37201-2031

Dear Symphony Staff:

Thanks to the patronage of advertisements by readers of my community blog, “Enclave:  Nashville North-by-Northwest,” I am happy to pass on $200 that I recently received from Google Ads to the Nashville Symphony as designated gifts. I have pledged to use advertising profits to support community organizations, particularly those in and near the urban core.

In donating I affirm the Nashville Symphony’s mission “to achieving the highest standard for excellence in musical performance and educational programs, while engaging the community, enriching audiences and shaping cultural life.” This gift is also intended as acknowledgement of the strides that your organization made in the face of daunting challenges in 2013.

In that spirit, I ask that you please divide this donation evenly:

·       $100 should go to the musicians' union, which last August ratified a 15% pay cut to help save the symphony's important role in the community

·       $100 should go to the symphony's education programs for youth, children and public school students because of the potential to enrich the cultural growth of future generations

I trust that this money will help in some small way fulfill your mission to make our community a better place to live, to work, and to visit by enhancing what you do.  And so, I am pleased to be able to give back to my local community.  I also hope that you will consider my donation as a vote of confidence in your worthwhile efforts along with an expression of best wishes for 2014.

Warm regards,

Michael Byrd

If any worthy organization deserves to have a new year better than 2013 it is the Nashville Symphony. Bank of America almost took them under but by summer they were saved from bankruptcy. Unfortunately, the jobs of food service workers who probably needed those paychecks were lost. Other staff had their salaries cut.

For their part the musicians voted against their own interest: they voluntarily took a cut in pay to help the symphony keep plugging. Often, and especially in conservative states like Tennessee, unions are smeared as selfish and destructive. Very rarely are they celebrated when they vote to reduce their own paychecks to help out their employers. Such sacrifice is a service to our local community, and it ought to humble the rest of us, since musicians have to pay their bills too. With this modest donation I celebrate the sacrifice of the musicians.

I also celebrate the important role that music plays the public education of Nashville's children. I am happy to support this project.

I hope you will join me in feeling encouraged to remember the Nashville Symphony when you decide to donate. And thank you for clicking on the ads in 2013. It made this donation possible.

Happy New Year!

Karl Dean bent on closing public schools

In an analysis of education reformer and recent Nashville transplant Michelle Rhee, Nicholas Lemann traces the business model behind this "reform movement":

education reform proposes to take apart the main structures of schooling in America—a network of districted public schools and a unionized teaching corps. It proposes, as an urgently necessary national project, to replace them with a school system governed by metrics, choice, incentive compensation, and personnel reductions. It is roughly the same prescription that activist investors would apply to an industrial corporation of the same vintage as the education system

Nashville Mayor Karl Dean has expressed admiration of Ms. Rhee in the past. The dovetail of his own budget priorities and the proclivity of reformers for corporatist flip of public education was made clear yesterday in Mayor Dean's speech to the Chamber of Commerce.

He intends to close public schools and he is letting the Chamber carry that water for him:

How I plan to vote in the District 1 School Board race

As a North Nashville parent, I am generally unenthused and unenergized by the campaigns in the District 1 School Board race. Ed Kindall has faced ethics questions in the past, including the cell phone drama of a few years ago. Sharon Gentry has struck me in the past as undiplomatic. She was a little too cavalier about and dismissive of parents' concerns at one community meeting in Hope Gardens for me to take her at her current promise that she will be a voice for "ALL parents" (emphasis hers) if we vote for her. At least one parent wrote me feeling ignored by Ms. Gentry after a personal appeal.

While both Kindall and Gentry did the right thing two years ago and voted against Jesse Register's plan to privatize Metro Schools service workers, the union representing those workers unambiguously endorses Mr. Kindall:

“He’s often the only one in the school board meetings who asks the tough questions and tries to hold Dr. Register accountable,” said Cordelia Howard, a school secretary, in the SEIU’s announcement.

Lately, Sharon Gentry has said and done nothing to change my sense of ambivalence about her, and she seems less willing to speak truth to power. In fact, she talks about public schools as if she is now one of those ideologues who believes the school district should be managed like a business, right down to reciting jargon about "portfolios":

What are your priorities for the Metro School system as a whole?

Fostering more proactive methods for including charter schools into the choice portfolio for MNPS that focuses on identify charter school programs that help address the needs within the district.

It is straight out of the Chamber's school reform playbook. Keep in mind that Ms. Gentry is also married to Howard Gentry, who has had close professional ties to the Nashville Chamber of Commerce. She received large campaign donations from Chamber big shots in the past. This all seems to beholden her to an organization which is setting up shop and hawking its products in Metro Nashville Public Schools.

The goal of maximizing private profits is not always commensurable with democratic values of public education. Financial and personal ties to the Chamber of Commerce suggest to me that a candidate will be more prone to cow to the special business interests who treat children as more a future compliant labor force than a potential democratic citizenry. In that vein, John Dewey knew what he was talking about 100 years ago in Democracy and Education:

Democracy cannot flourish where the chief influences in selecting subject matter of instruction are utilitarian ends narrowly conceived for the masses, and, for the higher education of the few, the traditions of a specialized cultivated class. The notion that the "essentials" of elementary education are ... mechanically treated, is based upon ignorance of the essentials needed for realization of democratic ideals. Unconsciously it assumes that these ideals are unrealizable; it assumes that in the future, as in the past, getting a livelihood, "making a living," must dignify for most men and women doing things which are not significant, freely chosen, and ennobling to those who do them; doing things which serve ends unrecognized by those engaged in them, carried on under the direction of others for the sake of pecuniary reward.

It is pecuniary reward (plainly put, "the big money score") that the Chamber of Commerce is committed to and the means by which it sells others on supporting its narrow goals.

I believe a school board candidate should strive toward a larger vision of public education than selling it to private charter school companies or reducing it to "Academies" for vocational training. Sharon Gentry strikes me as just a bit too zealous about charter schools and a lot too embedded with the Chamber's business class to exert herself toward the larger vision. I'm not saying that I believe fervently that Mr. Kindall will not resort to old-school political patronage or to supporting charter schools, but I do believe that the Chamber's influence begs to be checked and balanced, that Jesse Register ought to continue to be held accountable and that Mr. Kindall is more likely to do both than is Ms. Gentry.

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?

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.

There is a power in naming

Earlier tonight from the Twitter stream of the Nashville City Paper's local politics beat reporter

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?

Education reformers attempt to soft-pedal embarrassments by revising history

On its Facebook page, Stand for Children - Tennessee promoted its organization's assimilation of the Education Equality Project (popularly associated with celebrity John Legend) and in the process exercised a revision of its own history:

Unlike some reform groups that frequently challenge teachers unions, Stand For Children, founded in 1996 in Oregon, has prided itself on generating local support and collaborating with unions as it promotes legislative change. That reputation was challenged this summer after the group was revealed to have lobbied aggressively against Illinois teacher unions to get a reform bill passed.

Jonah Edelman, Stand For Children’s founder and CEO, said today that the new partnership with EEP would help the groups extend their influence in more states, particularly southern states where the influence of reform groups has been less strong.

“Together, we’re positioned to shape the national debate on public education while building powerful statewide organizations across the country that will make a profound impact for students, from the state capitol to the classroom,” Edelman said in a statement.

That is an interesting gloss on what happened in Illinois and a complete omission of what happened in Oregon. Mr. Edelman is obviously using the occasion as another form of damage control to the embarrassing mess he and SFC left of their track record.

Observers acknowledge the common values that bind Stand for Children to the more conservative and dominant elements of Democratic Party culture, which share affinities with Republican politics:

The most engaged in this neoliberal education campaign are organizations focused on school choice: Democrats for Education Reform (and their 501(c)(4), Education Reform Now Advocacy), Education Sector, and the Progressive Policy Institute; as well as service-oriented groups like New Leaders for New Schools, the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) and Green Dot charter networks, Teach for America, The New Teacher Project, Stand for Children, the New Schools Venture Fund, and even the leadership of the Harlem Children’s Zone.

These groups, it should be stressed, are very careful to avoid being characterized as politically on the Right or affiliated with Republican political efforts. Their collaborators, however, do not show any such reluctance. Right-wing, free-market think tanks have joined with neoliberal education groups in pushing for choice and privatization policies. These right-wing think tanks and similar organizations are active in every state, and many more are pursuing a national agenda. Together, these groups have launched a potent attack on the progressive foundations of American schooling, and they are framing this attack as a “civil rights struggle.”

After years of hammering home the theme of “failing public schools,” the campaign is now increasingly focused on teachers’ unions and the existing system of teacher education, preparation, and certification.

Stand for Children - Tennessee plays up school choice without leaping in with both feet to the constellation of other conservative values, but they do not forswear any challenge to teachers. They have fallen silent on recently publicized ambivalence toward teacher evaluations. Whether SFC cares to concede it or not, they have built strong ties to anti-union groups, and they leave open the option of going after teachers as they have elsewhere.

In Los Angeles, as the teachers' union joined Occupy Wall Street, Stand for Children joined the opposite side, a coalition of otherwise disparate non-profits (like the United Way and the Urban League) committed to education reform. The reformers, backed by corporate donations in contrast to the grassroots empowerment of occupiers, encouraged an ad campaign addressed to the union a couple of weeks ago: "Don't Hold Us Back".

The campaign drew the appropriate retort from a local teacher:

Of all the factors that have contributed to the struggles of our students, we the teachers, THE TEACHERS, are the ones “holding students back?” Not the economy. Not the crime. Not the violence. Not the hunger. Not the fragmentation of the nuclear family. Not the lack of medical care and fresh food in the South Central community in which I work, but me, the teacher.

They really spent thousands of dollars to buy this ad, buy a webpage? Couldn’t the money used for this ad have helped the students that are hungry and homeless stay in their apartment for one more month, get that tooth taken care of?

Who are the experts in what is best for students? Educators or billionaires? Teachers or journalists? Unions or astrotorf orgs? I may be a parent, but when the doctor tells me how to take care of my daughter, I yield to the expert. When her 5th grade teacher shared his expertise on how to approach her math work, I listened and implemented. Parents play a huge role in the success of their children but we each have our own job to do; and it differs.

SFC LA is not an isolated case. Seattle's SFC has endorsed school board candidates who are financed by union-busting venture philanthropists in the Great Northwest.

In all of these cases, Stand for Children may not appear to be in full-blown assault of teachers unions, but they are aiding and abetting forces aligned against public school teachers. I also worry that one day they may find it more convenient to mobilize against Tennessee teachers than stay noncommittal toward them.

The inept left

I've said it over and over again: the shallow, milquetoast liberalism restricted to progressivism on social issues (identity and gender issues, for instance) and hobbled by dependence on partisan Democrats will never be a broadly inclusive movement. It can never be more than a limited, status quo echo ignoring basic reform of power structures and larger visions of justice.

But don't take my word for it. A history professor provided a comparison of American populism, left and right, in last weekend's New York Times, and he effectively articulates the limits of liberals that block progressive goals:

the left must realize that when progressives achieved success in the past, whether at organizing unions or fighting for equal rights, they seldom bet their future on politicians. They fashioned their own institutions — unions, women’s groups, community and immigrant centers and a witty, anti-authoritarian press — in which they spoke up for themselves and for the interests of wage-earning Americans.

Today, such institutions are either absent or reeling. With unions embattled and on the decline, working people of all races lack a sturdy vehicle to articulate and fight for the vision of a more egalitarian society. Liberal universities, Web sites and non-governmental organizations cater mostly to a professional middle class and are more skillful at promoting social causes like legalizing same-sex marriage and protecting the environment than demanding millions of new jobs that pay a living wage.

A reconnection with ordinary Americans is vital not just to defeating conservatives in 2012 and in elections to come. Without it, the left will remain unable to state clearly and passionately what a better country would look like and what it will take to get there. To paraphrase the labor martyr Joe Hill, the left should stop mourning its recent past and start organizing to change the future.

I've been told before that a local journalist once described me as "to-the-left-of-left". If the reporter said that to my face I would reply that there is not much left here to be left of. There is no popular movement for challenging the system. I may be "to-the-left-of-left" but it is meaningless relative to what passes for progressivism: fractured, reactive and desperate; dependent on party wonks and politicians who could take or leave movements or the interests of regular people.

Tennessee teachers' caucus "very contentious" on Obama endorsement

The Labor Notes blog mentioned the state's labor union contingent at a recent meeting of the National Education Association. Tennessee Education Association was reportedly more factious than they indicated on their website:

major controversies at the gathering in Chicago last month received national visibility. First was the early endorsement of President Obama’s re-election bid, advocated by the national leadership despite some resistance from several state affiliates, including the California Teachers Association.

Most of the debate occurred within the state caucuses, which was very contentious in some states, such as Tennessee ....

The context for the union’s debates is all too evident. Public education is the major battlefield not only over adequate funding for public services but also over the very ideology of government: How do we value government-run services and the workers and unions who provide them?

Teacher unions are portrayed as rigid and intransigent, attempting to protect members (often the most senior) who are “incompetent.” We are labeled as obstacles to “real reforms” that would help students and parents, many of them facing blatant economic and racial discrimination.

Rarely do we hear about how curriculum has been bastardized to conform to numbing standardized tests or about how charter schools are massively subsidized, taking public money while showing little accountability to the public and fighting teachers’ attempts to unionize.

Instead, the ills of public education are supposed to be solved by instituting divisive merit pay to reward “good teachers,” undermining seniority, and ousting “bad teachers.”

All this, while more and more working-class young people are pushed out of the education system and have their opportunities severely curtailed. At the center of these policies is the Obama administration and its Department of Education, using its “Race to the Top” funding mechanism to further this agenda.

Some of these themes that so concern labor are air-brushed into a Gates Foundation-funded marketing video, which includes comments from the TEA president, a gaggle of Tennessee Republicans and a few red-state Dems, and Francine Hunt, a leader with Stand for Children, which was one of the sponsors of this video.

Truth For A Change from TN Truth on Vimeo.

That is quite a production. We will see if the glossy, feel-good expectations materialize or whether "education reform" saps resources, maintains a firmly stratified caste system that allows only a few without wealth scant chance to succeed and eventually lowers the boom on the teachers it includes in it marketing campaign now. And campaign is the right word. This is a political campaign and the teachers unions should be concerned if not just a little unhinged.

Company the Mayor's economic development director called "great" for Nashville mass-fires Canadian workers, may be bankrupt

Karl Dean's man for growth, Matt Wiltshire, called unanimous council support for subsidies for the relocation of technology business IQT, "evidence that it's a great deal for the city." According to published reports from the Great White North, IQT has not been a good deal for Canadian workers. IQT laid off a thousand workers in Quebec and Ontario immediately on payday even though Canadian law requires employers to give two weeks notice and severance pay.

Some reports allege that IQT's actions are retribution for worker attempts to unionize. That would be ironic, given that Mayor Dean considers IQT's relocation a feather in his cap and that the Mayor has been endorsed by labor groups, which themselves may not actually be welcome at IQT headquarters on 2nd Avenue. If the move was made because Tennessee is a right-to-work state, then that might effectively make the workers hired here scabs. 900 Nashville workers forced to take whatever they can scrounge are cheaper than 1,200 Canadians with a higher standard of living.

A simpler explanation suffices

Dem Party blogger Braisted wrings his hands over the local service union's local endorsements and tries to portray them as conservative because they weren't embracing his candidates. He also compares them to the other unions in an attempt to single them out for their lack of conformity.

I'm not going to defend SEIU's endorsements because I don't agree with them. However, it is plain to me that the problem of a union not falling in lockstep with other unions on Metro endorsements may have more to do with the vacuum of populism among the council's social progressives, who seem more likely to ingratiate themselves to Karl Dean than represent communities. Dean's newly discovered "neighborhoods" fundraising focus will not change his autocratic, exclusive style of leadership that sucks up the rather feeble, utterly reliant leadership styles on the Metro Council.

Tennessee Republicans don't even bother to couch the carnage behind fake jargon like "education reform"

At least with Republicans it's clear who the enemy is. They're the destroyer of worlds:

Tennessee teachers are losing their collective bargaining powers while corporations can now contribute directly to state and local political campaigns under two GOP bills signed into law Wednesday by Republican Gov. Bill Haslam ....

The Tennessee bill abolishes collective bargaining now conducted in 92 of 136 school districts .... It replaces traditional bargaining by affiliates of the Tennessee Education Association with a concept Republicans called “collaborative conferencing.”

Under the plan, school boards would be required to meet with teacher representatives approved by local educators. They could only strike limited agreements on some wage and benefit issues ....

But local school boards are under no obligation to agree to enter such agreements.

“The more we dig into the actual contents of this legislation, the less we like it,” said Jerry Winters, chief lobbyist for the Tennessee Education Association. “I think there’s more politics behind this than education reform.”

So, we rescue effective teachers from the execution-style politics of Republicans only to hand them over instead to the slow twisting-in-the-wind of Tennessee Democrats' "education reform"? Neither party is going to save good teachers or public education. But maybe the extremist TNGOP will hasten a more revolutionary organizing from the grassroots to beat back the partisan hooks.

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.

Local union alleges that public schools director met for months w/private contractors and relied on their projections before proposing to privatize

From SEIU Local 205, the union that represents Metro service workers:

SEIU Local 205 released a series of internal emails that reveal that administrators at Metro Nashville Public Schools have been working behind closed doors to push forward a plan to privatize custodians and groundskeepers as far back as November, 2009. The union also found that Dr. Register’s statements of a $5 million dollar cost savings to the district were based on a claim made by one of the contractors who is bidding on the project, not through a scientific cost-benefit analysis or impact study (see page 1 of Attachment, Item #3).

As a result of an information request from MNPS, union officials discovered that school administrators have been contacting and meeting in secret with representatives of GCA Services Group, based in Knoxville, with regards to outsourcing as far back as November 18, 2009, though even those emails indicate that there had been previous communications before that. Register had not mentioned any interest or inclination in privatizing these two departments until he released his budget on March 11. “Register has said that the reason he wants to outsource 700 custodial workers’ jobs is because of the economy, but he was negotiating with a contractor months before anyone even knew what the city’s revenue was,” said Doug Collier, President of SEIU Local 205, who represents support staff in Metro Schools. “Keep in mind that Register has privatized custodial services in his previous positions in Chattanooga and in North Carolina. He didn’t use the economy as his excuse then because he couldn’t. Now he could, and he has.”

Largely because of assurances by Dr. Register and School Board member Steve Glover that a savings would be seen, the Board narrowly voted to accept the budget by a vote of 5-4. “Dr. Register has not been a straight shooter with the School Board who hired him or with the public,” says Teresa West, a food service employee at MNPS. “He is claiming some kind of dire economic emergency, but now we know that he was just out to privatize our jobs.” West says that the $5 million savings that Register claims will happen from the privatization will have to be paid by taxpayers anyway since many custodians will have to go on public assistance once they lose their jobs or see their pay and benefits cut. “Because of his drive for privatization, Register has opened the district up to lawsuits since 88% of the workers affected are minorities and because GCA may have been given an unfair advantage in the bidding process.”

GCA Services, the company that school administrators were in contact with, is expected to bid on the custodial and groundskeeping contracts since their representatives were present at a March 26 question and answer session for prospective contractors. The bidding period on the contracts close this Friday.

Mayor Dean has yet to present his schools budget to the Metro Council and he has not taken a position on whether or not he will support the School Board’s proposal to outsource nearly 700 custodians and groundskeepers. He has until May 1 to present his version of the budget to the Council.