Saturday, August 24, 2013

Rhee, Ravitch, Randi Too Upcoming in Philly

Ken Derstine from Philadelphia sent this to his email list.

People should be aware that Michelle Rhee's Town Hall in Philadelphia on September 16th (the day before Diane Ravitch's author event at the Free Library) will be a full scale assault on rank and file teachers in the midst of the crisis in the District.

According to this Politico report "Michelle Rhee invites teachers union reps to new town halls":

"Rhee will have company on her cross-country tour, which includes stops in Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Birmingham, Ala.,Steve Perry, who founded and runs the Capital Preparatory Magnet School in Connecticut and former Washington Teachers’ Union President George Parker will both join her at each event.
Also invited — but not yet confirmed: the brass from teachers unions city or state chapters, as well as their rank-and-file membership. An invitation from Parker was sent to those union leaders on Wednesday."


Some background on former Washington DC union president George Parker. I went into his history in my February 24th  article "Who is Eli Broad and why is he trying to destroy public education?"  http://www.defendpubliceducation.net/

In the section "The Broad Foundation and the unions" I said:

"On June 3, 2010, at their union leader’s urging, the Washington D.C. Teachers Union ratified a contract with the Washington D.C. School District, headed by Chancellor Michelle Rhee, which included performance pay linked to test score growth, and a weakening of seniority and tenure. Union President George Parker called the ratification of the contract “a great day for teachers and students.” On November 10, 2010, Parker was voted out of office by the union rank-and-file. On May 20, 2011, Michelle Rhee announced that Parker was joining her corporate reform organization StudentsFirst. Rhee had resigned as Chancellor of Washington D.C. schools on October 13, 2010, and started StudentsFirst soon after. Rhee’s Deputy Chancellor and chief negotiator of the 2010 teachers’ contract, Kaya Henderson, replaced her. Henderson recently announced the proposed closing of 20 schools due to “under enrollment”."

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On Friday, August 23 Randi tweeted this about Diane's author event:
@ParentsUnitedPA @DianeRavitch -i will be there introducing Diane.

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National teachers union leader points to St. Louis as model
St. Louis Post- Dispatch - August 14, 2013 
School Standards' Debut Is Rocky, and Critics PounceThe New York Times - August 15, 2013
Teachers at Green Dot Charter Schools OK Merit Pay
(See immediately preceding article.)
Diane Ravitch's blog - July 11, 2012

These are the Philadelphia School District "contract proposals" to the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers

 
 

1 comment:

phila.ken said...

The contract proposals link which were the initial SRC contract proposals in February, was taken down recently when it began circulating on the internet. It can be found at another link here.

http://thenotebook.org/sites/default/files/teacher%20contract%20summary.pdf

For an article about this "proposal" see:

District seeking to slash, restructure teacher compensation

http://thenotebook.org/blog/135690/union-official-war-has-begun