In brief, Ohio Governor Kasich (I voted for the guy, so I know full and well what I was getting myself into!) and the Republican side (?) of the Senate is pushing a bill to eliminate collective bargaining across the board for its police, fireman, teachers and other employees. As a "union" busting bill, it's supporters are hoping to bargain with the teachers (and others) on budget, health care and wages without having to bow down to salary demands from the union. There's other issues at stake here as well. The bill also wants to eliminate step increases and salary schedule by imposing pay based on merit (more on this later), proposing workers to pay up to 20 percent of their (our) health costs and for teachers, eliminating class size proposals too (more on that later).
Now with everything happening in Wisconsin, it's becoming apparent that both the teachers and the politicians are not going to budge. Schools are closed with teachers claiming that today's kids will learn that somethings need to be fought for (when they are probably getting in their X-Box games in large volumes) and the Democratic senators leaving the state so they wont have to vote on the bill. And here I am again at a crossroads. How does not teaching prove your worth and how is running from the fight into another state going to help prove your side?
I hope this doesn't happen in Ohio. Some of it is. Some of my colleagues have taken a day off last Thursday to march and speak alongside the numerous other state employees. No one seems to be willing to budge, and perhaps this is part of the problem. Our governor fired the first salvo by saying he would punish striking workers. Our side fired back, and have been pretty much on the defensive end all year. In fact, our union prints a newsletter once a week, and anyone can find at least one instance of the language we use to supposedly work together into condescending diatribes. Every school's business is there to see? How is reporting a grievance of another school's principal relevant to how I'm going to do my job better? They want me to vote a certain way and will sometimes editorialize their feelings about our district. Hey, we all do at times, but the conversations in my teachers' lounge are not printed for consumption (and I'm beginning to feel I need to just stay in my own room for lunch lately).
Now, much of this union busting business is stemmed from state's budgets that have been spiraling out of control for some time. I don't expect the government to figure out the states' spending in a logical manner considering myself and millions of other Americans have thousands of dollars of debt of their own. But when your finances are a mess, you make the cuts that are necessary. On a personal note, you try to cut out the frivolous things and focus on the necessities. This means less movies and dinners out and more on groceries. Simple. Now states don't necessarily think this way. Many are unwilling to cut personal projects and earmarks and are looking to bite into the unions of the state as part of their means. Healthcare spending is high too. I'm not an expert on states' budgets, and if I were I wouldn't be a teacher considering I would need to invest more time in that instead of my own lesson plans.
So old union agreements such as pensions were promised when the economy was fruitful. Now that every state is feeling the fiscal pinch, something must be cut. Do I agree that it should be the pensions of our cops, firemen and teachers? And maybe it isn't exactly the pensions but the step increases that are already in place and are exponentially larger each year. Our healthcare is going up and the state wants us to pay more of our costs. Why couldn't this be negotiated on bit sides before rallies had to be made and tempers flared? Seems silly.
Now, teachers and unions are also projected as a protector of a bunch of lazy workers. Negative stories of bad behavior and tales of "rubber rooms" paint the profession in a negative light. I cannot speak for teachers nationally or what their union fights for or not, but I do know that there is something wrong and broken with the current state of education. There's a tremendous amount of waste in the school system (much on the end of the administrators as well). Do you want to know how many teachers teach from the back of their desks? Do you really want to see the work packets that are printed out and how much seat work really goes on? If it happens at one school, imagine it multiplied throughout and entire district, a state, a nation.
Does the union protect these teachers? To a certain degree. Worse is that we protect our own. We see the ones we want to work with, the teammates who you would have your own kids being taught by. We see them yelling in the halls and we say nothing. We see them take almost every Friday off while the rest of us are working. We hear them complain in the lounge and realize that seniority is the only thing keeping them employed.
I'm ready for a merit-based pay scale. I welcome it. I don't want to lose my job to someone who has had more years which makes them better. I am aware of the ramifications. First, there is no rigid, proven way to evaluate my worth as a teacher. It's almost like parenting. Is there a test that proves I'm raising my son right? Will a test score prove my worth or the worth of that parent who makes sure their child is doing their homework instead of being on facebook. Batelle has come up with a convoluted method called "value-added" and if you can understand their charts and graphs and measurements, it shows a child's progress. Will that be the key to unlocking a merit-based system? Will it be like the NCAA BCS super computer calculations? Like, will the # of office referrals, test scores, days absent, degree earned and # of students in my classrooms create a score that ranks me in my building? Maybe I should be against Senate Bill 5 on those reasons alone, but why isn't my union doing more to base pay and layoffs on merit rather than years? This doesn't even take into account the cops, nurses and firemen!
As a taxpayer myself, I'm also feeling the pinch. My daughter's school keeps raising the prices of sports and is cutting teachers and services district-wide because of failed levies and budget constraints. A no vote is somehow anti-schools and a yes-vote means I just voted for the next tax increase to come. Where is the end? I would pay for more cops and firemen and health care. Why can't I just come to the table, without striking, without fear of being fired and work these things out? The suits on both sides are to blame. If the schools are this bad, why are the suits still holding their jobs?
I don't see the bill passing regardless if I rally or change my profile on facebook to show my allegiance to my union. It is though, a sign of things to come. What do I want to do? I just want to teach.
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