Assigned Reading

Teachers unions and Department of Education bureaucrats will be seeing a lot of each other in the coming year. Mostly in courtrooms.

The Providence Journal calls one court challenge “inevitable”, and rightly so. Commissioner Gist’s assertion that the Basic Education Program, or BEP, authorizes her to alter the way teachers are assigned to job openings has rankled union leadership. These leaders have been waiting for the first opportunity to challenge Gist’s directive, and have found it with the Collaborative. RIFT, the Rhode Island AFT affiliate, represents teachers and assistants at the Northern RI Collaborative, whose contract expired June 30. Forty-five staff members have been laid off, and will be rehired based on qualifications and seniority, rather than seniority alone.

The RIFT’s Michael Mullane claims the NRIC action “violates the contract”. But with its expiration, this may be another challenge to the law that mandates a contract remain in effect until another is agreed upon.

If the court sides with RIDE and NRIC, the decision could be a final nail in the seniority coffin.

RIFT is planning to file another suit in the coming days. Gist’s overhaul of the recertification process includes the elimination of teacher iPlans. Many teachers have been working for three or more years completing professional development and electronic iPlans in order to renew their teaching credentials. Union leaders will argue that teachers fulfilled the iPlan requirements as directed by RIDE, and the work should be honored. If not, teachers should be reimbursed for the money spent on conferences and other PD. RIFT is seeking at least two teachers from each district to sign the complaint.

From the beginning, the iPlan seemed a bureaucratic behemoth. Teachers required extensive, and expensive, training to understand the process and be able to use the technology. The paperwork alone was enormous, and “professional development” was too loosely defined. The bureaucrats at the Department of Education wasted a fortune putting into place an ineffective recertification tool. Now new bureaucrats have their own ideas, and teachers are left waiting in the dark.

Teachers near completion of their iPlans should be grandfathered, and union is right to argue on their behalf.

**Update: The first Brown poll of candidates for Congress in the first district has David Segal at just 5.7%, dead last.

The Rhode Island affiliate of the AFT made two significant endorsements this week. For governor, RIFT is backing an heir to a family fortune who’s father was an esteemed governor and senator. And for the congressional seat left open by Patrick Kennedy, a man born into wealth who never had a job, the union is backing another man born into wealth, who apparently hasn’t had a full time job since graduating from Brown. The two candidates are, respectively, Lincoln Chafee and David Segal.

Perhaps the union leadership has spent too much time at the State House and socializing on the East Side.

Anthony Gemma, another Democrat candidate, is a plumber who worked his way through college and law school. He them helped to continue the success of his family’s plumbing business as it grew into one of the largest in the state.

It’s not labor, but the politics of labor, that determines the endorsement. Who stands the farthest left.

Incidentally, RIFT head Marcia Reback explained last week that she didn’t interview all candidates for governor because “electability” must be a factor when determining endorsements. Can it be assumed that she believes Segal is electable? Segal is in last in fundraising, some $100,000 less than Gemma, the next highest candidate in the field. Segal’s raised $300,000 less than Republican John Loughlin, and barely a tenth of frontrunner David Cicilline’s $1.1 million. By all accounts, the young Segal is the least known in the district, although no official polls have yet been made public. It would be interesting to know how Reback defines “electability”.

When difficult students behave, teachers shower them with praise. Providing positive attention will hopefully encourage more appropriate behavior.

Education Commissioner Deborah Gist is a teacher at heart, and so she showers the legislative leaders with praise for passing a funding formula this year. Her opinion piece in today’s Journal specifically names the leaders and committee chairs of both houses of the General Assembly, and all legislators in general.

Gist congratulates the assembly for its foresight, leadership, and pioneering efforts in taking “a historic step” to develop this “transparent, consistent education-funding formula”.

Gist is smart to use the old behavior modification strategy, heaping praise on the generally misbehaving legislators. But she shouldn’t expect the General Assembly to suddenly start working for the benefit of everyone. This is Rhode Island, after all.