The following news comes from the AFT:
For Immediate Release
May 3, 2016
Contact:
Janet Bass
301-502-5222
jbass@aft.org
http://www.aft.org
Detroit Educators Get Assurance on Pay
DETROIT—After two days of being locked out of their schools, the Detroit Public Schools’ transitional manager today gave teachers and school employees the assurance they needed that they will be paid for their work. At a membership meeting late this afternoon, the Detroit Federation of Teachers encouraged the school employees to go back to school on Wednesday.
DFT Interim President Ivy Bailey received a letter with the assurance from Judge Steven Rhodes, the transitional manager for DPS.
“We’ve been working 24/7 to secure the assurance that educators will be fully paid for the school year, so they can go back to the classroom and do what they love to do—teach their students. It is a fundamental right to be paid for the work one does. Anything other than that is dead wrong and tantamount to wage theft,” said American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten.
Over the weekend, the DFT heard a rumor that the school system would not guarantee educators at least some salaries from as early as April 28 through June. This would especially affect the people who have their pay spread across 26 weeks of the year—about two-thirds of the city’s 3,800 educators.
“It’s astonishing that teachers and other school employees have been working diligently to educate our kids in under-resourced schools with deplorable conditions, yet they had to fight to get what they’re due. That’s adding insult to injury,” Bailey said. “We’re happy to return to the classroom and finish the school year with our kids.”
Weingarten noted the irony that today is national Teacher Appreciation Day. “At the very least, teachers must be paid for the work they do. Real appreciation would be to fully fund Detroit Public Schools, return the schools to local control, provide a process for accountability and transparency, and start the new school year with the resources and supports needed to help all kids succeed,” Weingarten said.
Weingarten thanked Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, Judge Rhodes and others, including Gov. Rick Snyder, for their help in securing the assurance of payment.
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
The DPS teachers strike is over. The union won. Why? Judge Rhodes was forced to write a letter to the union guaranteeing pay for both the 26 check plan people as well as the 22 check plan people. Whoopee. Most of the teachers seem to think they won a victory by striking. Even Randi Weingarten says so. Solidarity forever. Yep. Solidarity in Suicidal Stupidity. Why? It will harden the out-state Republican hearts of the state legislature.
When the Michigan Legislature does pass a bail-out bill, creating two entities—the debt carrying entity and the new Detroit Community School District—it will most likely ALSO contain:
1) A provision that every single DPS teacher will have to re-apply for their jobs in the new Detroit Community School District. Easy pruning of the deadwood, eh?
2) A provision that the retirement plan will be a mandatory 401k plan.
3 An increase in penalties for striking.
4) Permission to employ (cheap) new hires without certification and after three successful years, student teaching will be deemed to have occurred, and finally,
5) No provision for collective bargaining on calendar or work assignments.
Some victory.
Detroit is a case in which Michigan’s uncapped charter numbers plus funding of schools in the state by per pupil foundation grants plus some grandfathering of local taxes for districts in affluent neighborhoods, have already all but killed the public school system in the city. Think of the guaranteed pay for the rest of this school year as severance pay.
DPS, RIP
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Not sure I get your point, Harlan. Let’s say for the sake of argument that your prediction comes to pass. What are you arguing that teachers should do? Agree to work for free because … reasons?
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The wage issue isn’t the real problem. Public school teachers destroyed themselves years ago by adopting liberal progressivism as their guiding philosophy. They thought that what parents wanted was for them to make little socialists. They lost the market competition.
J. H. Underhill
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The initial post by Harlan is in fact correct. The House is already ramming through a bill that does what Harlan noted and more. It includes provisions that regulate the school calendar among other items.
Oh, and it’s aimed squarely at Detroit and only Detroit. The outstate Republicans, who dominate the legislature, despise everything about the city of Detroit. So vengeance against all things urban is the norm.
The saddest part is that due to gerrymandering and DeVos money, there is no possibility of change on the horizon. In the last state elections, Democrats drew more votes for House elections but ended up with a significant minority. Nearly every House seat is locked into a party. Only the primaries matter. And when a Republican dares to think differently than the DeVos family, they are threatened with a primary challenge from a friendlier candidate.
So yeah, it’s a pyrrhic victory.
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The Detroit teachers repeatedly believing what turn out to be phony promises reminds me of the Otto Preminger movie THE CARDINAL, released in 1963.
A Boston-bred bishop (& future cardinal: spoiler) is a rising official in the Vatican. In 1938, the pope sends him Vienna to address to Vienna’s cardinal’s apparent collaboration with The Nazi’s in their takeover of Austria. Hitler made all kinds of empty promises to the Viennese cardinal that Catholic institutions, youth groups, and schools will be protected and left alone … in return for Catholic leaders’ support in the Nazi takeover, and in backing a referendum or plebiscite that would give that takeover the patina of legitimacy. This idiot Viennese cardinal even gives the “Heil Hitler” salute while voting.
The American cardinal tells Vienna’s cardinal that he’s being played for a chump, that Hitler’s promises are bogus, and that even if they weren’t, his actions are a violation of principles.
Vienna’s cardinal refuses to face these facts, until … well … Hitler repudiates everything he promised, and the Nazis eventually engage in a violent siege of the cardinal’s rectory. Like the diplomats in the film ARGO, the American cardinal escapes through a secret tunnel, but the Viennese cardinal won’t flee along with him. He stays to face his fate: death and/or a concentration camp (you never actually find out.)
On YouTube, there’s a hilarious, but highly useful 8-minute summary of the movie THE CARDINAL, where its 3 hours is condensed into 8 minutes of rapid-fire edits. Cliff’s Notes has go nothing on this. Viewing this also spares you the pleasure or agony — as the case may be — of having to watch the whole thing. As for myself, I’m a life-long Catholic, so I find the entire movie a total blast. (It’s also one of Hollywood’s first-ever mentioning of abortion, but that’s another story)
The relevant clips — just 2 minutes & 20 seconds — are here:
( 5:13 – 07:43 )
( 5:13 – 07:43 )
Any-hoo, all that brings to mind the Detroit teachers and their union leaders believing last fall’s promise from management that teachers’ pay — held back temporarily due to “a fiscal crisis” — would be delayed until the following spring, if only the teachers kept on the job.
“We promise to pay you next spring. Just keep working for the time being. Okay?”
Yeah, right!
This happened in Chicago as well, in 2011, when Mayor Rahm unilaterally cancelled a promised raise that was supposed to go into effect, in exchange for extending the school day.
“Just extend the school day, and we promise to pay you for it” …
… was the gist of that part of the negotiated teachers’ union contract.
The school day got extended alright… but the raise was unilaterally cancelled by Rahm, a total violation of the negotiated contract between CPS & CTU. This outrage helped lead to the successful Fall 2012 strike by the Chicago Teachers’ Union, and, in turn, to Rahm’s retaliatory move — payback for the strike that so humiliated Rahm — to close 50 public schools the following spring.
It’s happening now in Boston as well. The pro-privatization, anti-public-education Mayor Marty Walsh has repeatedly claimed for the last two years:
“Oh, no. We’re not going to close 40% of our public schools, and replace them with unaccountable, privately-run charter schools. We’re not deliberately gutting the funding and programs of the existing public schools so that parents will read the writing on the wall, avoid the deliberately-designed death spiral of public schools, then (COUGH! COUGH) ‘choose’ to send their kids to charter schools. Those claims are all just lies being spewed by some loudmouth at Esquire Magazine, and by some obnoxious parent groups allied with the teachers’ unions.”
Here’s that Esquire piece that prompted an angry reply from Mayor Walsh:
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a39565/boston-mayor-charter-schools/
As with the Viennese cardinal in the movie above, many of the parents and and those in the Boston community (and yes, the Boston teacher’s union) bought this baloney, and believed Mayor Marty Walsh’s assurances.
However, as it just turned out last week, one of those trouble-making parent groups spent a year of filing repeated Freedom of Information suits — fought tooth-and-nail by Mayor Walsh —- to uncover a sealed government report that proves that yes indeed, Boston’s mayor is, in fact, out to close 40% of Boston’s public schools, and replace them with privatized charter schools.
Read about this (and the gutting of public schools to make it happen) HERE:
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2016/04/ma-how-to-gut-schools-boston-edition.html
and HERE:
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