Fiona Hill Explains Why Putin Invaded Ukraine

By dianeravitch
March 9, 2022 //
158

You may remember Fiona Hill. She was the nonpartisan Russia expert on the National Security Council who testified in Trump’s first impeachment trial. Politico interviewed her at length soon after Putin invaded Ukraine. Hill provides interesting political and historical insights into why Putin invaded Ukraine. She has been observing both Russia and Ukraine for many years, as well as Putin.

Hill says we are already in the midst of World War 3.

She warns:

Reynolds: The more we talk, the more we’re using World War II analogies. There are people who are saying we’re on the brink of a World War III.

Hill: We’re already in it. We have been for some time. We keep thinking of World War I, World War II as these huge great big set pieces, but World War II was a consequence of World War I. And we had an interwar period between them. And in a way, we had that again after the Cold War. Many of the things that we’re talking about here have their roots in the carving up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Russian Empire at the end of World War I. At the end of World War II, we had another reconfiguration and some of the issues that we have been dealing with recently go back to that immediate post-war period. We’ve had war in Syria, which is in part the consequence of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, same with Iraq and Kuwait.

All of the conflicts that we’re seeing have roots in those earlier conflicts. We are already in a hot war over Ukraine, which started in 2014. People shouldn’t delude themselves into thinking that we’re just on the brink of something. We’ve been well and truly in it for quite a long period of time.

But this is also a full-spectrum information war, and what happens in a Russian “all-of-society” war, you soften up the enemy. You get the Tucker Carlsons and Donald Trumps doing your job for you. The fact that Putin managed to persuade Trump that Ukraine belongs to Russia, and that Trump would be willing to give up Ukraine without any kind of fight, that’s a major success for Putin’s information war. I mean he has got swathes of the Republican Party — and not just them, some on the left, as well as on the right — masses of the U.S. public saying, “Good on you, Vladimir Putin,” or blaming NATO, or blaming the U.S. for this outcome. This is exactly what a Russian information war and psychological operation is geared towards. He’s been carefully seeding this terrain as well. We’ve been at war, for a very long time. I’ve been saying this for years…

What Russia is doing is asserting that “might makes right.” Of course, yes, we’ve also made terrible mistakes. But no one ever has the right to completely destroy another country — Putin’s opened up a door in Europe that we thought we’d closed after World War II.

Categories Evil, Fascism, History, International

New Study Shows Value of Masks in Schools

By dianeravitch
March 9, 2022 //
36

Education Week reported a new study that confirms the value of masking during the pandemic.

Mask requirements still offer one of the strongest tools to prevent COVID-19 outbreaks in schools, say new studies.

The findings come from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and from a nationwide study published this morning in the journal Pediatrics. They land as the latest pandemic wave recedes, federal masking guidelines begin to relax, and education leaders work toward more flexible approaches to masking for staff and students.

In the Pediatrics study, Duke University researchers in the ongoing ABC Science Collaborative—which tracks pandemic mitigation efforts in schools—analyzed masking policies and infection rates in 61 districts, more than 3,000 schools, and more than 1.1 million students and adults in nine states. For the first time, the national study looked at mitigation from July through December 2021, during the delta wave and the start of the omicron waves of the pandemic.

Schools that required universal masking for adults and students saw 72 percent fewer secondary infections—in which students infected with COVID-19 in the community spread the virus to others in school—than did schools that had no mask requirements or partial masking. Once school size, vaccination rates, and other characteristics were taken into account, schools with universal masking had nearly 90 percent lower infection rates.

Moreover, about half of the students and staff in the study had completed vaccination against COVID-19 by the end of the study, and Duke researchers found universal masking policies were associated with fewer infections even among those who were already vaccinated.

As of March 7, just over 26 percent of U.S. children ages 5 to 11 have been fully vaccinated, as have less than 58 percent of those ages 12 to 17, according to the latest CDC data.

Categories Health, Science

Wyoming: GOP Legislators Want to Defund Gender Studies in Higher Education

By dianeravitch
March 9, 2022 //
8

Now that Republican state legislatures have had their way imposing their personal views on what may or may not be taught in the public schools, they are taking aim at what may be taught in state universities. In Wyoming, the legislature wants to defund gender studies.

Legislation to defund gender and women’s studies at the University of Wyoming has stoked faculty fears about how far lawmakers will go to stop public colleges from teaching courses they don’t like.

The Wyoming Senate voted on Friday to pass a budget amendment that would prevent the university from using state money for its gender and women’s studies program and courses, a move that would effectively eliminate them. While a version of the amendment died in the state’s House and its future is unclear, the mere possibility of its passage has left some Wyoming professors shaken by what they see as an infringement on their academic freedom.

This is censorship, plain and simple. Will they next come after science professors who teach about evolution? Or legal scholars who study critical race theory?

Categories Academic Freedom, Censorship, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Higher Education, Wyoming

You Are Invited to Join Me at Annual Conference of the Network for Public Education

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2022 //
18

Please consider registering for the long-delayed annual conference of the Network for Public Education, April 30-May 1 in Philadelphia.

The speakers and panels will be outstanding. You will meet your favorite bloggers and supports of public schools.

Join us!

Categories Education Reform, Network for Public Education, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund

Jennifer Berkshire: The Rightwing War Against the Woke in Elite Private Schools

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2022 //
77

Jennifer Berkshire writes powerfully in The Forum about the outraged parents of students at elite private schools who want to squash critical race theory and anything that smacks of liberalism.

Bret Stephens had come to Boston’s historic Copley Plaza Hotel bearing an ominous warning: Illiberalism is on the march, and free speech is under siege. As it happens, his claim was borne out by the growing number of states that have now enacted education gag orders, restricting how teachers can talk about race, but this was not the scourge that the New York Times opinion columnist had in mind. No, Stephens’ ire was trained on the schools—or as he described them, “feeders for woke culture in every part of society.”
 

It was familiar Stephens fare, dished up in column after column. But attendees at the Parents Unite conference, who’d shelled out $350 a pop to spend a recent fall weekend commiserating over the rising tide of wokeness in the nation’s elite schools, ate it up. After all, Stephens’ ties to the world of top-tier prep schools run deep. Not only did he board down the road in Concord at the Middlesex School as a lad, but he also serves on its board of trustees. These parents want their schools back, and Stephens was happy to help lead the charge.
 
     In the increasingly crowded market catering to parent outrage, the Boston-based Parents Unite stands out for its pedigree. Yes, Moms for Liberty offers $500 bounties for teachers who violate education gag orders, and Parents Defending Education seeks to root out politics in the classroom via anonymous snitching. But Parents Unite, not to be confused with the pro-charter school, anti-union Massachusetts Parents United, aims for higher ground: “diversity of thought.” The group represents parents of children enrolled at top “independent” schools in New England, and according to its official origin story, the homeschooling measures of the Covid pandemic gave those parents a scarifying crash course in the sort of agitprop fare that their hefty tuition checks were underwriting. More specifically, it was what these parents saw as the over-the-top response by many private schools to the murder of George Floyd that launched them into full-scale revolt. For hundreds of years, parents have sent their children off to the elite precincts of Phillips and Hotchkiss, secure in the knowledge that the Ivy League awaits. And now all of a sudden these same schools wanted them to feel bad about their privilege?

But the outrage didn’t end there. As the proceedings at the weekend-long Parents Unite confab made clear, anti-wokeness is a slippery slope. What began as a howl of protest against “critical race theory” has quickly built to include a seemingly endless litany of conservative complaints about what gets taught in schools and by whom. As the conference wore on, grievance piled up upon fresh grievance. Classrooms were being “racialized, sexualized and politicized,” as one speaker put it. Kids were coming home defeated and deflated, charged another. Schools no longer teach real-world knowledge, complained one of the student attendees. The vast majority of his classmates don’t know the difference between a stock and a bond, he reported in astonishment. Wouldn’t they gain more from learning about that than about how to combat racism?
 
     A panel discussion with the rather too-on-the-nose title “DEI: Under the Hood,” quickly moved on from the alleged excesses of diversity, equity and inclusion to fresh outrages, like social and emotional learning (SEL). This brand of instruction, it turns out, was actually brought into schools at the behest of businesses looking to recruit future knowledge-economy workers outfitted with “soft skills,” like team building and collaboration. But in the hothouse culture-war reveries of Parents United, SEL has taken its place alongside DEI and CRT as another sinister form of woke-ist mind control masquerading as sensitivity and empathy.

What began as a howl of protest against “critical race theory” has quickly built to include a seemingly endless litany of conservative complaints about what gets taught in schools and by whom.     

      Then there’s “gender ideology.” Erika Sanzi, who has herself recently transitioned from Obama-era charter school advocate to parents’ rights crusader, explained from the stage, parents who might be too fearful to speak out about CRT are going to revolt when they realize that the schools are trying to turn their kids trans.
 
     What or whom specifically is carrying out all of this indoctrination? Teachers unions are to blame, naturally, along with graduate schools of education—a perennial source of political ire dating back to the early nineteenth century. (That private schools are overwhelmingly union free, and do not require the credentials dispensed by schools of education seemed to matter not at all here.) Most of all, though, it was young teachers—social justice warriors all—who bore the brunt of the ire. These self-styled revolutionaries eschew not just the classic texts but all texts, one panelist bemoaned. Older, tenured teachers—the same reliable villains who’ve been depicted as the enemy of progress throughout the modern era of education reform—are evidently now the last remaining bulwark against wokeism.
 
     For parents rebelling against leftist indoctrination in the public schools, politicians have seized on a favorite conservative cure: school choice. This, too, was a baffling refrain at the Parents United conference: private school parents have already exercised that option. Indeed, one striking plaint running through the sessions in Boston was that parents who send their children to elite private schools are uniquely powerless—victimized by the meritocracy itself. To voice their grievances is to risk not just their youngster’s spot at Groton or Deerfield Academy, but also to jeopardize the great brass ring at the end of the prep school carousel: entrée into the Ivy League.
 
     Desperate times, then, call for desperate measures. Kerry McDonald, the senior education fellow at the liberty-loving think tank, Foundation for Economic Education, proposed that instead of continuing to support “school,” parents return to the time-honored tradition of teaching their children themselves. But rather than going into despairing cultural retreat mode, in the manner of many latter-day evangelical homeschoolers, the refugees from the woke prep academies can count on the largess and thought-leading cachet of Silicon Valley. “Marc Andreessen has been talking a lot about homeschooling,” McDonald reported, citing the great market imprimatur of the Netscape founder-turned-venture-capitalist.

Please open the link and finish reading the article. And shed salty tears for the parents of children in elite private schools who think they have no voice.

Categories Education Reform

Dark Money Funded the Campaign Against School Closures and Masking

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2022 //
49

David Sirota, investigative journalist, former speechwriter for Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, and writer of the hit film “Don’t Look Up,” recently launched a blog called The Daily Poster. It’s well worth your time to read and to support The Daily Poster.

This important post by Walker Bragman and Alex Kotch documents the Koch money behind the campaign to get schools open, regardless of the risks, and to eliminate mask mandates. The goal of Charles Koch and others on the right was to get the economy back to normal.

Here is an excerpt:

The updated CDC guidance signals the Democratic party’s shift from beating the virus to surrendering to it as a fact of life — including in schools. The new approach was likely shaped by a number of factors, including declining COVID numbers, concerns about far-reaching public COVID fatigue, and the fact that many of those now most at risk of severe disease have refused to get vaccinated for non-medical reasons.

But the end of school masking is also in part due to a campaign by right-wing business interests, including the dark money network of oil billionaire Charles Koch, to keep the country open for the sake of maintaining corporate profits. These interests have been meddling in the education debate, first pushing to reopen schools and then fighting in-school safety measures, even as COVID case numbers were rising and children were ending up in hospitals. For nearly two years, these groups have been promoting questionable science and creating wedges between parents, teachers, and administrators in order to get America back to work — even at the risk of the nation’s children.

“Tapping Into The Full Productive Capacity Of The Workforce”

When the pandemic first hit the U.S. in the spring of 2020, Koch-affiliated groups saw an opportunity to reassess American education, moving away from public schools to private and homeschool alternatives. Koch and his brother David, who died in 2019, had spent decades fighting teachers’ unions, pushing school privatization, and attacking state education funding.

On March 13, 2020, Yes Every Kid — a front group founded by the Koch network in 2019 as part of a larger effort to shape K-12 education in the states — launched a #LearnEverywhere campaign promoting remote learning and homeschooling. Three days later, the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank co-founded and heavilysubsidized by Koch, published a commentary declaring that the U.S. could “tap into” charter, private, and homeschooling “if brick-and-mortar schooling is substantially disrupted.”

The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing nonprofit heavily funded by the Charles Koch Foundation and Charles Koch Institute, also published articles in March 2020 in favor of using public school funds to pay parents to homeschool their kids. Heritage senior policy analyst Jonathan Butcher wrote a policy brief for the Koch-founded-and-funded Mercatus Center, a free-market think tank based at George Mason University, calling to funnel state funds into for-profit charter school companiesproviding virtual learning.

The message was blasted out by other groups in Koch’s orbit, including his flagship political advocacy outfit, Americans For Prosperity (AFP); the Independent Women’s Forum, a dark money group bankrolled by Koch organizations and the heirs to the Walmart fortune; and the State Policy Network, a web of libertarian state-based policy organizations.

But within a few months, the school narrative out of Koch world began to shift, coinciding with growing concerns about labor shortages and changing workplace dynamics caused by nationwide school closures. According to Education Week, a staggering 55.1 million students were impacted by the closures at their peak.

The closures meant a loss of childcare for many parents, which contributed to plummeting labor force participation early in the pandemic. An April 2020 guide to school reopenings from the consultancy McKinsey & Co., whose clients include many of the world’s largest companies, estimated that 27 million Americans were dependent upon childcare in order to work.

“Where a significant proportion of workers rely on schools for childcare, reopening schools (at least for younger children) might be a prerequisite to tapping into the full productive capacity of the workforce,” the report noted.

The tight labor market changed the relationship between employers and their workers, who began demanding moreflexibility and better work-life balance. Companies were forced to respond by raising wages — albeit inadequately — in order to attract workers.

Enterprises like Koch’s were eager to force a return to the old paradigm. These interests had already begun employing the same think tanks and quasi-academic networks they had pioneered a decade before promoting the anti-government Tea Party movement to fuel and legitimize attacks on pandemic safety measures, so they could force a return to normalcy and boost corporate profits.

Now, these interests began to use the same playbook to try to force schools back to normal.

“Keeping Children At Home Might Expose Them To Considerable Risks”

The very groups that had celebrated remote learning as an opportunity for public school alternatives began demanding that schools reopen, citing concerns about learning loss as well as student mental health. These groups downplayed the risks of the virus and slammed teachers’ unions for holding up the return to normalcy.

In May 2020, two months after the World Health Organization declared COVID a global pandemic, the Hoover Institution, a right-wing think tank based at Stanford University that has received substantial backing from Koch over the years, held a virtual conference at which senior fellow Eric Hanushek argued that remote learning was causing learning loss among low-resourced students and damaging “teacher accountability” through the elimination of standardized testing.

The Koch-backed reopening push kicked into high gear after President Donald Trump, facing reelection and a slowing labor market recovery, tweeted in early July 2020, “SCHOOLS MUST OPEN” in the fall.

The Koch-affiliated right-wing think tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI), meanwhile, published a “blueprint” for reopening schools, citing the need to get parents back to work. The State Policy Network and its affiliates also started pushing for school reopening.

Two days after Trump’s tweet, Yes Every Kid published a playbook for reopening schools. Soon after that, Hoover senior fellow Scott Atlas, a radiologist who Trump would soon tap as his senior COVID advisor, called for reopening schools in an interview published that same day. Atlas argued that schools were an “essential business” and that the risk COVID presented to anyone under the age of 18 was incredibly low.

A few days later, the Heritage Foundation joined in, claiming in an online article that in-person learning was possibly “one of the safest activities the nation can restart,” and that “keeping children at home might expose them to considerable risks to their educational progress, their mental health, their nutrition, and alarmingly, even their safety and welfare…”

The drumbeat to return to in-person schooling continued throughout the summer and into the fall. Koch’s flagship group, AFP, put out an online recruiting call for people to reach out to Kansas state legislators and urge them to give school districts and schools the “flexibility” to reopen. A week later, the Mercatus Center published a policy brief warning of “educational scarring” if schools remain closed. Mercatus would later start funding the work of Brown University economics professor and parenting blogger Emily Oster after she began publishing controversial research and articlessupporting school reopenings and downplaying concerns about children and COVID.

On August 12, 2020, the Independent Women’s Forum called on schools to reopen across the country, citing detrimental impacts on student learning and mental well-being. And in October 2020, Hoover’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes released a study estimating that in spring 2020, students lost 57 to 183 days of learning in reading and 136 to 232 days of learning in math.

Big industry groups also fought school closures, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s premier corporate lobby group. In September 2021, Chamber executive vice president and chief policy officer Neil Bradley said that “we have to have the schools fully reopen” in order to help solve the labor shortage.

“The Dangers Of Masks”

As schools started reopening under the new Democratic administration, Koch-affiliated groups adopted a harder line. In the lead-up to the 2021 state elections, the organizations began opposing in-school mask requirements for students and teachers in addition to closures…

Meanwhile, Koch groups and their affiliates have also quietly worked to support grassroots efforts to end mask mandates.

The Maine Policy Institute put up a petition on its website opposing mask mandates in schools, arguing that “many parents are uncomfortable with their children being required to wear masks in schools” and that “families deserve a choice.” The Federalisthelped promote a lawsuit against Indiana state officials over school mitigation measures brought by parents who erroneously claimed COVID wasn’t infectious in children.

The Koch network also has ties to the shadowy nonprofit Parents Defending Education (PDE). Founded in early 2021, PDE promotes private schooling and combats liberal “indoctrination” in public schools around the country, often by ginning up anger at school boards. The nonprofit’s vice president, Astra Nomani, as well as its director of outreach, Erika Sanzi, have been vocal critics of school mask mandates, and the organization keeps a directory of conservative parents groups that support ending such mandates and other conservative causes….

Please open the link and read the full article. Before reading it, I was unaware of this well-funded, well-coordinated campaign. I was also unaware that the work of Professor Emily Oster at Brown University was funded by the Koch-related Mercatus Institute as well as the Walton Family Foundation, and the Arnold Foundation.

Categories Dark Money, Education Industry, Health, Koch Brothers

Minneapolis: Union Plans Strike on Tuesday

By dianeravitch
March 7, 2022 //
9


For Immediate Release
March 7, 2022

Contact:
Natasha Dockter
Minneapolis Federation of Teachers and
Education Support Professionals
natasha.dockter@gmail.com
651-387-5681


Minneapolis educators to strike Tuesday for safe and stable schools

MINNEAPOLIS, March 7, 2022 – The educators of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers and Education Support Professionals will go on strike Tuesday for the safe and stable schools students deserve. Despite days in public bargaining and mediations, including more than 65 hours in the last week, the district continues to refuse to work with MFT to create systemic change and remains entrenched in the unacceptable status quo. 
 
President Greta Callahan of the MFT teachers chapter, President Shaun Laden of the MFT ESP chapter and the presidents of Education Minnesota, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association will attend a news conference at 7:30 a.m. Tuesdayoutside Justice Page Middle School, 1W. 49th S., Minneapolis.
 
The members of the MFT will begin picketing outside their schools and other worksites at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday. The membership will come together for a large rally at 12:15 p.m. at the Minneapolis Public Schools Nutrition Center, 812 Plymouth Avenue North, Minneapolis, before marching approximately 1 mile to the MPS Davis Center, 1250 W Broadway Ave, Minneapolis.
 
Logistics:
Picketing begins at schools and other worksites at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday
News conference with MFT presidents and state and national presidents 7:30 a.m. Tuesday at Justice Page Middle School, 1W. 49th S., Minneapolis
Rally starting at 12:15 p.m. Tuesday at Minneapolis Public Schools Nutrition Center, 812 Plymouth Avenue North, Minneapolis
Laden said:  “This bargaining campaign started with the very simple idea that for the education support professionals who are told every day that our schools can’t run without us, one job should be enough. We’re the most racially diverse group of educators in a district with administrators who say they care about racial equity. We have been demanding that the administrators at the bargaining table put their money where their mouth is and they have refused. Now is the time for the school board to intervene and settle a deal that pays ESP a starting wage of $35,000 a year.”
 
Callahan said: “For almost two years, we’ve been trying to reach agreements around safe and stable schools for students and those closest to them, but the administration has stubbornly defended an unacceptable status quo. We are the defenders of public education and we’re not going to slow down, or give up, until we make real progress addressing the mental health crisis in our schools, reducing class sizes and caseloads so students are receiving the individualized attention they need, and increasing educator compensation so that we don’t continue to lose staff, especially educators of color, to surrounding districts and other professions.”
 
Denise Specht, president of Education Minnesota, said: “Nearly 90,000 educators across Minnesota are standing with our union family in Minneapolis because what they’re fighting for is what we’re all fighting for: Schools that will give every student the chance to pursue their dreams. The same issues are being negotiated all over the state, from living wages for ESPs, to more mental health supports for students, to managing the crushing caseload for SpEd teachers, to recruiting and retaining more teachers of color,  to creating time for educators to give their students enough individual attention. We’re in a rich state with a $9.25 billion surplus. No educator should have to fight this hard for the schools our students deserve, but if that’s what it takes, we’re with you.”
 
Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, said: “With over $250 million in pandemic relief funds, the time is now to invest in the safe and stable schools that Minneapolis students need now more than ever. The three million members of the National Education Association are proud to stand with our siblings in Minneapolis. The last two years have demonstrated that the status quo is not good enough. Minneapolis students and their families have weathered a pandemic, continued police violence, and an economic system that has left students, their families, and educators behind. These students deserve class sizes small enough for one-to-one attention as well as investments in mental health services and social-emotional learning.  MPS must also invest in systematic changes that improve the recruitment and retention of educators of color as well as a living wage for education support professionals. Education support professionals represent a critical workforce in our schools providing essential supports students depend on. MPS has the resources to make these investments. The question is whether they value Minneapolis students as much as their educators do.”
 
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said: “The federal government has provided an unprecedented amount of recovery funding to school districts to address problems related to the pandemic, including student recovery, staff shortages and school safety. There is no excuse for districts to make cuts in light of this historic infusion of funds. And the economy is showing real signs of growth. Indeed, Minnesota just announced a $9.25 billion surplus.
 
“Our kids, their families and educators have been through tremendous challenges in the last two years; they have done their share to navigate the rough seas together. Educators and students should be the priorities, and districts should provide the conditions and environment they need to succeed. School districts should respect their educators and ensure that students have the programs and services they need to thrive,” Weingarten said.
 
The union’s safe and stable schools agenda includes:

  • Paying a living wage for education support professionals to stabilize this critical workforce, because students need the stability of working with one paraprofessional throughout the school year. For ESPs, this means raising the starting salary from about $24,000 a year to $35,000 through increases in hours and rate of pay.
  • Making systemic changes to improve the recruitment and retention of educators of color, which benefits all of MPS.
  • Improving student-to-mental health professional ratios because students shouldn’t have to wait weeks for an appointment with a counselor or social worker.
  • Lowering class sizes because students learn best when their classrooms aren’t overcrowded and underfunded.
  • Paying competitive salaries for licensed staff to stop the exodus of teachers from MPS. State data show the average salary of Minneapolis teachers is ranked 28 out of 46 districts in the seven-county metro area.

###

Categories Minneapolis, Unions

Virginia: Collective Bargaining Rights Survive Rightwing Assault

By dianeravitch
March 7, 2022 //
6

Thanks for Donald Cohen of “In the Public Interest” for drawing my attention to this important victory in Virginia.

Members of AFSCME (American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees) mobilized to repeal an attack on their newly-won right to bargain collectively as a union. Unions offer a path to a secure middle-class existence. We need them now more than ever.

AFSCME members in Virginia are rejoicing in their success in protecting collective bargaining rights for local public employees across the commonwealth.

Their actions helped persuade the Virginia Senate to first defeat anti-worker bills filed in the Senate and, in February, to block House-passed anti-worker bills.

Members celebrated on Feb. 21 after the Senate Commerce and Labor Committee voted to defeat Del. Kathy Byron’s bill, which would have repealed a 2020 law that empowered localities to give their employees the freedom to collectively bargain for a contract.

Since taking effect last year, Del. Elizabeth Guzman’s HB 582 and Sen. Dick Saslow’s SB 939 have triggered a slew of collective bargaining ordinances. In Northern Virginia, AFSCME members began organizing during the pandemic and helped pass the first collective bargaining ordinance in April in the city of Alexandria. Arlington County soon followed suit in June.

Luis Velez Sr., an Arlington County construction management specialist and a member of AFSCME Local 3001, recounted the spring and summer he began organizing for collective bargaining rights.

“As a resident of Alexandria, I was proud to stand with Alexandria city employees as they won a strong collective bargaining ordinance. I was even more excited, a few months later, as an Arlington County employee when we passed our own collective bargaining ordinance,” he said. “We have a lot of work to do as our localities continue to recover from the pandemic and we are stronger when public employees are respected, have a voice on the job, and strong unions to advocate for the communities that we serve.”

The 2022 legislative session saw two versions of a total repeal of collective bargaining, and a series of bills introduced by Del. Nick Freitas that would have chipped away at collective bargaining and union rights. These bills sought to redefine a union election, eliminate automatic dues deductions and force employees to pay for any time and resources employees used while engaging in union work like representation during work hours. Freitas also wanted to dictate how and what localities could include in their collective bargaining ordinances and agreements.

Harlie White, a traffic and lights technician for the city of Alexandria, submitted written testimony twice.

“I stand in opposition to any bill that would repeal my collective bargaining rights and take away my freedom to join a union,” he said. “I am glad Senator Dick Saslow was willing to protect the 2020 law that empowers localities to give public service workers the freedom to join a union, and local municipalities the autonomy to enact union agreements as they see fit.”

The threat of losing collective bargaining mobilized AFSCME Virginia activists. Aside from testifying via Zoom and submitting written testimony, many sent letters and called their delegates and senators to make clear how important collective bargaining rights are for public employees, especially as cities and counties slowly recover from the pandemic.

Charlotte Malerich, an Arlington public library assistant, wanted Virginia elected officials to understand that chipping away at rights meant employees would lose their voice on the job.

“My co-workers and I need actual, concrete support: sick leave, child care, flexible schedules, teleworking for the things we can do at home …  and PPE for things we can’t do at home,” she said, referring to personal protective equipment. “And we need to have a voice at work to tell our managers what those needs are. Collective bargaining and union rights give us that freedom.”

Categories Democracy, Unions, Virginia

Chris Hayes: Why Putin Did Not Invade Ukraine Sooner

By dianeravitch
March 7, 2022 //
47

Chris Hayes explains Putin’s strategy in Ukraine. He identifies Putin’s enablers in the U.S., starting with Paul Manafort, who reaped millions as a lobbyist for Ukraine’s pro-Putin president.

This is a must-watch.

Categories International, Trump

Leonie Haimson: Legislative Hearings on Mayoral Control of NYC Schools Were “the Best Ever”

By dianeravitch
March 7, 2022 //
17

Leonie Haimson watched five hours of a legislative hearing about mayoral control of the NYC public schools. She writes that it was “the best ever” because legislators asked tough questions and did not accept the party line from the Chancellor, who was appointed by the new mayor Eric Adams, who naturally wants mayoral control. Governor Kathy Hochul has proposed a four-year extension of mayoral control.

When Michael Bloomberg was elected in 2001, he said he would take control of the schools and fix everything. The legislature gave him what he wanted.

Mayoral control was passed by the legislature in 2002, at Bloomberg’s request.

NYC has had mayoral control for 20 years, and its problems remain critical. Thus, legislators were in no mood to hear rosy promises.

Haimson wrote:

I’ve testified at countless mayoral control hearings since it was instituted nearly 20 years ago. Yesterday’s joint Senate and Assembly hearings far surpassed any of them. You can watch the video here. Sorry to say there were very few news stories about it, because most of the education reporters were covering the Mayor’s announcement about lifting the mask mandate in schools. It was their loss, since the questioning by legislators was sharp and had a new seriousness about it, and the testimony from parent leaders was passionate and incisive.

In recent years, the opposition to Mayoral control has grown, here in the city and nationwide. As I point out in my testimony, the system has never been popular among average voters. But the evident dysfunctionality of the system and the way it allows autocracy to override the wishes of parents and the needs of children, no matter who is Mayor, is now more widely recognized. Many districts such as Detroit and Newark that once suffered under mayoral control or worse, state control, have returned to an elected school, and Chicago will soon do so.

This was the first time in my experience that influential legislators seem really intent about making improvements to the law. Sen. John Liu, chair of the NYC Education Senate committee, and Sen. Shelley Mayer, chair of the NY State Senate Education Committee, along with Assemblymembers Harvey Epstein and Jo Anne Simon, closely questioned Chancellor Banks about what changes could be made that would ensure that parents have a real voice in the system. Yet he seemed strangely unprepared for their pointed questions.

Chancellor Banks had the chutzpah to claim that the new mayor and he had brought down the COVID positivity rate. Supermen. The legislators weren’t buying it.

Another problem that both Mayor Adams and Chancellor Banks encountered is a glaring contradiction in their rhetoric . Both repeated their now-familiar refrain about how terrible our schools are, especially for Black and brown kids. But of course, if true, this failure persists after twenty years of mayoral control – the very system that they claim is necessary to solve the problem.

Categories Accountability, Bloomberg, Michael, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Education Reform, New York City
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