The Real Face of the Evil Union

In one form or another, most people have pretty strong opinions about unions. They either love them or hate them.

Behold, the evil UNION!

The Union: guardian of the little people.

As soon as contract negotiations caught the public's attention this summer, people (and by "people" I mean PSD and their ever forth coming Q & A  messages) began shouting these warnings:



"We don't want the union taking over our schools."

"The union wants to decide what books your children read."

"The union is using scare tactics to stir up public anger against the district."

"There is no problem with curriculum. The union has tricked the teachers into striking."

"The union is trying to make an example of PSD as part of a national power grab."

"The union has taken over Pasco."

"The union ate my baby."

Eventually things settled down. The district agreed to resolve the curriculum issue, and teachers went back to work. That should have been the end of it.

But it wasn't.

Strangely enough, there are still board members bemoaning the evils of the union. Still.  Now it'd be one thing if an average uninformed citizen was spouting off about how unions are the devil. But a board member isn't just anybody. They are elected to represent the public and inform decision making at the highest level of the school district. So when board members (yes, more than one) talk about he union like it's some type of evil boogie man, that is something worth noticing.

Is the union the root of all evil in Pasco? Has the union been sent by the devil himself to stir up contention and unrest? I decided to take a closer look at see exactly what kind of devil we are up against here in Pasco.

Behold, the face of EVIL!

The evil union in all it's might!

Ahhhhh!!!!

Pretty hideous right? I mean could anything be more frightening than a smiling, young woman wearing mittens and a mid-calf length skirt, spending her free time out on the street corner encouraging voters to support a school levy?  GROSS!

What about these monsters?

Wow, showing up to work and pretending to be happy. What Creeps!

Attending a community prayer meeting and praying with school board members.
Where does this kind of scum even come from? Seriously!

Oh gross! Not more levy supporters. These monsters just don't know when to quit.

So are unions really evil? The fulfillment of prophecy sent to usher in the apocalypses?

?????

Here's the thing about things: they are just things.
Things aren't good or evil, they just are. A blanket isn't inherently good or evil. It can do good things, like warm you up when you are cold. It can do bad things, like transmit disease to susceptible populations. A blanket is just a blanket. It's what you do with it that matters.

A union is just a union. They aren't inherently bad or good. The people in them may do bad or good things. But the thing itself is just a thing.

So let's not talk anymore about whether unions are good or bad (let the politicians duke that one out). Instead let's talk about whether PAE (the Pasco Association of Educators) is good or bad.  Let's judge it by who is in it and what they do.

Well, we all know who is in it. Teachers. These loving, smiling, amazing people who take care of our children every day, and who even take time outside of the classroom to fight for what's best for our kids (even if it's so cold you need mittens).

And what has PAE done? I mean besides come to work every day ready to do their best to love and teach our children and prepare them for the world ahead of them?

• They participated in a number of activities including a state-wide walk out in hopes of persuading our legislator to fully fund our schools and stop over-testing our children.
• They shed a giant spotlight on Pasco's atrocious lack of curriculum forcing the district to finally take action on an issue they've been avoiding and denying for more than a decade. Although the district continued to try and persuade teachers with money, the union held strong and refused to return to work until the district agreed to a contract that included books for all children, in all grades, in all subjects.
• They worked side by side with parents to help pass a much needed levy.
• They demanded (and are getting) much needed repairs to schools such as New Horizon's High School, as well as getting hot water back on in the bathrooms at Pasco High.
• They fought to keep the heater running in the winter and the air conditioner running in the spring in classrooms where children were being forced to learn in nearly uninhabitable classrooms (yeah, that really happened).
• They have been strong advocates fighting for safe and age appropriate playgrounds for students.
• They are continuing to fight the district on a number of issues including using our children for guinea pigs to line the pockets of researchers (Literacy Squared) and to fight illegal hiring practices that can lead to huge disparity in quality between schools (like when administrators narrowly tailor job listing in order to hire their unqualified friends instead of hiring actual teachers with job appropriate qualifications).

So the next time you find yourself face to face with that awful scary evil union, be sure to thank them.  After you, they are your child's greatest advocate. They are our partners in educating our community. 

So to all my friends in PAE, thank you.

The Hero of the Levy

Hurrah, hurrah! Levy passed! We have succeeded! We beat the odds, literally! We collectively put our money where our mouths are and passed our levy!  

A Party For The Levy Passing! Gold stars for everyone! Congratulatory party and doing the limbo for a solid week! (Okay, maybe that's too much. Three days of limbo are far more sensible.) 

Party!

Party!

Party!

I’ve seen posts and comments abounding in the last twenty-four hours with this general theme, but in all this congratulations and praise, something is missing. SOMEONE is missing. There’s a big someone here who deserves the credit more than anyone else. That someone is one of my favorite people in the world. 

You, Pasco. You.

This is my love for you, Pasco. It's big, it's shiny and it might make you a little uncomfortable. 

To you and no other, Sir Alastair Pemberton tips his hat.
He's from Alabama so you can trust him. 

Here’s the thing. We can nod our hats to the levy committee, we can nod our hats to the editorial writers of the Tri-City Herald, and we can certainly give a well deserved nod to the parents, children and teachers who stood out on street corners waving signs in the frigid cold. But we all know they aren’t the real heroes here. We, they, and all of us should give credit where credit is due. And if we’re going to be really honest with ourselves, that credit is due entirely to the people of Pasco. To you, my friends. All of you.

I know what you did, and I know what it took for you to do it. I want you to know that I know it wasn't easy.

Voting for something you believe in is easy. Voting for something you believe with all your heart when there’s a high likelihood of success at the other end of that yes vote is likewise simple. But we, myself included, asked something far more complicated and difficult of Pasco. We asked you to give PSD another shot despite all previous evidence. To take a leap of faith. To vote yes even when you’re worried your vote will be abused. A yes vote, with trepidation and fragile hope for the future, though there’s no guarantee that hope is going to be fulfilled.  

Ugh. I want to give the school district money for clubs,
but I gave them money for curriculum for like fifteen
years and they didn't buy curriculum. Ugh.

We’ve asked a lot of you, and I don’t want you to think I didn’t notice. You had some serious, very real and very pertinent worries going into this levy vote. You felt betrayed and ignored by the people asking for your money. You might have felt fed up with this district after having witnessed its complete disregard for integrity during the strike-- But you came through anyway. You swallowed your pride and put the kids first no matter how painful it was to check that yes box. I’m not going to try to pretend it wasn’t conflicting for a whole lot of you. That’s ridiculous. There is a good reason why almost every single place where there’s been a recent strike, levies fail afterward. People are upset. Things have obviously gotten off track somewhere.

We will not fail levies without a fight!

But not here. Not today. We did not go quietly into the night, we did not surrender without a fight. We moved on. We pushed through the doubts and dismay because we all know at the end of the day, that all Pasco kids are worth it. The city is worth it. We are worth it. And those crazy invading space aliens are going DOWN. ...wait. That's not right. That’s for my other blog.

Pasco, I thank you. The kids thank you and the future of the city thanks you. But today I am thanking you, personally, right now. Pasco, you did it. Nobody but you could have done it. So take that celebratory lap, stand a little taller, limbo a little lower, eat that extra slice of pie. You did it.  

Blame the general not the soldiers

When Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo, was it because his soldiers just weren't that good?

When the Cleveland Browns are 2 and 10, who is more likely to lose their job? The players or the coach?

In polite society we have a specific way of laying blame. No matter who screws up, we send the blame strait to the top.   No matter what the situation is, we have an unspoken agreement that we blame the general and not the soldiers.  After all, chances are the soldiers were probably just doing what the general told them to do in the first place.

This is the norm.
And we all like it.

When this norm is violated, we get grumpy.

Only social parasites would sink so low as to violate this unspoken rule (i.e. politicians looking for a scapegoat or big businesses laying off thousands of workers while the CEO floats away on a golden parachute).


During bargaining this summer there was a lot of blaming going on. Unfortunately our district administrators and school board chose to take the low road by continually placing the blame on teachers.

I think we can all agree those were ugly times.

Fortunately as a community we saw through the smoke and mirrors and recognized the truth. Leadership in PSD has been failing for quite some time, and our children deserve better.  And now that the district has had to admit that they do in fact have major gaps in curriculum, outdated text books, non-compliance with state regulations, and sickening conditions of neglect in several of our schools we can all move forward toward solutions right? Right?


Then a funny thing happened last week. And by funny I mean it would be funny if it weren't real life, with thousands of children and millions of dollars at stake.

It snowed.

Blessed, beautiful white stuff! How I adore thee! You delayed that calculus test!
You prevented me from having to give that presentation at work! You...
...Oh nuts, I'm out of toilet paper and the car is buried. 

Okay that's not the funny part.
It snowed and PSD couldn't decide whether to close school or not because "we can't afford a snow day" because of the teacher strike.

If you missed this gem from KEPR, here it is. Though I have to warn ELA teachers, you may have a small stroke if you read the whole thing and most other aficionados of the Queen's Grammar will feel oddly dirty when you're done.


http://keprtv.com/news/local/pasco-hopes-for-good-weather-they-cant-afford-more-days-into-the-summer

Miriam wants you to group your thoughts into paragraphs and have subjects in all your sentences. Miriam does
not want to have to use the broken pencil again, KEPR. But Miriam will do what she must.

So! Beyond grammatical quirks,  let's point out a couple of teensy weensy fact issues there are in this article right from the start. "The district has already added two weeks onto the school year because of the strike." Um... the strike was 9 days, not two weeks. This is a relatively minor detail I know, but facts are facts and this is a professional news organization for crying out loud.

"...Balancing out on the 19th of June , which would be the last day of school if there are no snow days." Okay and here, the last day of school is cited as being on June 19. I don't have my school calendar in front of me, but I can say with a certain amount of confidence that the 19th was never going to be the last day of school since the 19th is a Sunday. And Father's Day, but I digress. So as a last day of school, June 19th seems unlikely since, per board policy, we like to keep our kids home on weekends.  ;)   Again, a minor mistake but when you make 80K a year as the public relations rep for the district, you ought to be able to read a calendar and give out good information. And if you want to be taken seriously as a news organization, you ought to be better at fact checking.

Enough about that though. Let's get back to the meat of this issue. Blame.

Teacher, this is entirely your icky fault. You
never should have asked for crayons,
copies and curriculum when you knew very well that
sometimes snow falls from the sky.
Shame on you.

The gist of this article is basically that PSD can't afford to have a snow day because of the teacher strike. That's right, that strike the teachers totally are to blame for. The one where they maliciously twisted their mustaches like somebody with a striped red and purple beaver skin hat or a monocle. Kids' safety is at risk because of it.  And now seniors may not be able to graduate on time. We will have to have mandatory Saturday school (so much for that coveted family time) if our seniors are going to get enough school days in before graduation.

We're doomed. Doomed. DOOMED I SAY!!!

Where is the district pointing their finger? Teachers. Teachers are once again the reason for all our problems.



BUT!! There is a very shiny silver lining in this dark and gloomy snow cloud.

Parents. Parents have once again shown their love for the teachers who spend every day caring for their children.

When this news article posted, the comments following it on Facebook were amazing. Parent after parent posted the other obvious reason for the delay-causing-strike. Simply put, PSD had a hard time with giving teachers basic supplies and curriculum, so the teachers decided to hold out for it.  "Because the district forced the teachers to go on strike, our children now have to go to school later into the summer," said one parent. It's a subtle distinction that makes all the difference in the world. It places the blame where it belongs, back on the generals.

Those comments give me hope. Those comments remind me that even though we may not have a lot of common sense coming from our district administrators, we at least still have some common sense in our community.  That is very good news.

Pasco School District has been void of quality leadership for a very very long time. I don't know when a real leader will step up but the good news is we will know them when we see them. How? They will be the only person standing in the Booth saying, "It's my responsibility, and I'm actually going to do something about it."

Until that day, carry on brave soldiers, carry on.