Originally Published 
Friday April 08, 2005

DUE PROCESS 

Editors, The Berkeley Daily Planet: 

If I were to ask you, Becky O’Malley, or you, Russ Mitchell, if you believe in due process, I am sure that your answer would be, “Of Course!” Yet both of you seem to support it for everyone except for teachers, the individuals who need to impart an understanding of this very important right to the next generation. 

Public school teachers have no due process rights during their first two years in a district. At that point, they gain what is popularly called tenure but is, in fact, the right to due process (university tenure is substantially different). Tenured teachers can be (and are) fired. Very often without cause. The Education Code of the State of California lists some fourteen reasons for firing a tenured teacher; these include incompetence, unprofessional conduct, and failure to obey reasonable administrative directives. 

Tenured teachers are, however, entitled to a hearing at which the charges against them must be substantiated. Bullshit! The Administrative Adjuntive Hearing is a Farce! Its governing rules set almost exclusively in favor of the "agency." In other words the School District's whims. That is why Governor Brown last year began or said he was, the arduous clean up of that entire Quasi-Judicial system otherwise known as the OAH. The Berkeley Federation of Teachers is legally required to defend the right of a member to due process; it does this. That would make them substantially different than most CTA locals and CTA itself. It (the teachers' Unions) does not defend the actions (or inactions) of a teacher who has been charged under any of the 14 listed causes. WHAT?


Opps! There's my point. They assume guilt at the districts statement and therefore BFT also defys your due process. 


Furthermore, the BFT works with the district (under BPAR) to help (f... ) teachers who are having problems to either improve or, failing that, to understand that perhaps a quiet resignation would be in their interest. Finally, action against a tenured teacher must be filed by the district; it is not within the legal power of the union to initiate charges. 

Unfortunately, the district does not always act in situations in which a teacher should be fired. (Unfortenately, the teachers' unions do not always give a shit about teachers who should not be fired) We all suffer as a result. 

Judith Bodenhausen 

BHS teacher 

Past president, BFT 

Your Union Leaders Are Betraying You

First published Monday, June 04, 2012

in Schools Matter.

Attention All Teachers (Educators): Your Union Leaders Are Betraying You

Though this article is about Massachusetts it perfectly true for California as well. Last year Paul Toner, the ostensible leader of the MA Teachers Association, surrendered his membership by capitulating without a whimper to the first step in the corporate blueprint to replace tenured and experienced teachers with a new generation of untrained neophytes who will cycle through the system after a two to three year stint.  That first step in that process was to establish a teacher evaluation scheme based on student test scores, and to link job security pay to those test scores.  Toner accomplished this feat without a vote by the rank and file--not even an opinion survey. 

This kind of open contempt for the teachers he was elected to represent in 2010 signified a transparent betrayal of teachers and children for the self-aggrandizing goal of cozying up to the corporate foundations and education terrorist organizations like Stand for Children (see Jonah Edelman spill the beans on the real goals of Stand on Children).

Now we find that President Toner has surrendered Massachusetts teachers once more in Step 2 of the corporate education deformers' plan to destroy teacher tenure, job security, and due process .  From Barbara Gordon posted Saturday on Facebook:

This week the Massachusetts Teachers Association's Board of Directors voted to put forward legislation that will end the use of tenure and seniority as the primary factors to use in layoff situations. Instead, the primary criteria will be performance evaluations and "the best interests of the students" with seniority being used only for "tie-breakers."  

This was a "legislative compromise" the MTA leadership worked out with educational terrorists Stand for Children, who had a ballot question that did the same thing and more, ready for the November election. The MTA leadership negotiated this compromise without input or approval from rank and file MTA members. Their position is that there is no way we could have beaten Stand on the ballot question so it was better to compromise and lose seniority rights and involuntary transfer rights than to fight and possibly lose those things and more.  

People are shocked and furious. Does anyone have any ideas for anything we can do about this? They are pushing to get this into the legislature and passed by July 3, the deadline when Stand for Children has to submit the final paperwork for the ballot question. 

We know we might lose the ballot question, but we wanted a chance to fight. If the MTA leadership will not fight for us, where are we? What are we paying our dues for?

And this from Tim Scott:

MTA & STAND FOR CHILDREN: As we know, collective bargaining entails negotiating with our employer over our compensation, hours of work and working conditions (broadly). Under these rules, we often need to organize ourselves to take action to ensure that we strengthen our contracts, while not giving away past gains. 

The current MTA leadership has now decided to take us in a new and very different direction and bargain (secretly in the beginning) with Stand for Children - a private anti-union, corporate front group - not only over contractual issues, but fundamental union rights. Instead of organizing members and allies to fight this aggressive assault by a group notoriously hostile to teachers unions, Toner and company chose to take a pathetic and defeatist stance to enter into "negotiations" with Stand, knowing that teachers rights and the the union's integrity will be significantly damaged.

There is one solution to this problem, and it is the same solution to the problem RIDDLED OFTEN CORRUPT NEA and CTA:  replace the duplicitous cowardly union leaders who have sold millions of dues paying union members down the river in mass, espousing the same at the local level and refusing to allow descent.  But even these measures will not be enough, for the new leaders must be chosen (which would imply the right for members to vote) from those few young men and women with courage and a willingness to lead the FIGHT. Who will restore the social justice mission that unionism was once based upon, a mission that advocates for children's rights to read and learn and grow, parents rights to have a say in school matters (COURAGE ENOUGH TO SAY THE SCHOOL BOARD SYSTEM FAILED AT THAT TASK), and workers' rights to the respect and dignity that is afforded teachers and school staff in other countries as a matter of course.


There is no future for educating all children, or parents emmeshed in their children's learning while having Gates and Broad control the voices of Educators by buying off phony leaders like Paul Toner, and ramrodding poorly thought out ideals (extrapolated from reading a lot of books, we're told) but having no significant idea what occurs in the classroom. That's right Neither ever taught. 


Let's not forget GATES built Microsoft on stolen tech that it's self was stolen by JOBS from Bell Laboratorys, and grew the behemoth MS without any real competition. He doesn't qualify as a sociology or education genius in my book. He just has a lot of money. So does the prince of Saudi Arabia. Are the Saudi Royals then education experts as well?

If the teaching profession is to be saved for now and the future, teachers must take back their unions (F... that, union leaders need to reach out to members in meaningful ways, open their accounting books, embrace descent) prepare for the impending fight to come (yes, be prepared to strike!) and reclaim the mission that made them a movement of solidarity among teachers, parents, and students.  There is no other choice, and there is no greater calling.

I know not everyone is a heavyweight boxing fan...

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 I, Praetorian

Joe Frazier's legacy will include more than his battles with Muhammad Ali

Sunday, November 06, 2011, 12:08 AM

  By Jerry Izenberg edited by I, Praetorian

   Former heavyweight boxing champion Joe Frazier, shown in 2009, has been diagnosed with liver cancer.

   Joe Frazier is dying inside a hospice in Philadelphia. He has liver cancer. Soon the Philadelphia left hook that seemed to have a life all its own will have lost every ounce of its thunder. Soon, Joe will be gone.

But Death, be not proud because you will not beat Joe. He will simply have run out of time before the final bell rings. In his last moments, his mind will still have him moving forward with that little bounce in his stride. And it will be as if he's saying:

   "Come on, Death. Show me what you got. You might win, but before you do I got something here for you."

So what follows here is the way I will always remember him. I covered his career. I was there on the night in the Philippines when he and Muhammad Ali left giant footprints as their legacy.

   Perhaps the best way to understand that is to begin in the wake of their first dramatic meeting in New York. This was one week after Joe Frazier had dumped the once and future heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali on his rear end on that long-gone night in Madison Square Garden.

Now we were standing outside a deli not far from the Joe Frazier Gym in North Philadelphia and these three kids, maybe 9 years old each, were running toward us shouting:

   "Joe Frazier ... Joe Frazier ... Joe Frazier."

   And the smile on Joe's face as they came nearer and nearer seemed to light up the tired, gray neighborhood. As they danced around him, Joe sent an aide back to his Rolls-Royce for autographed pictures. He gave one to each and Joe told them: "Now y'all stay in school. Don't make me have to find you."

Two of them laughed, but the third one said:

   

"My daddy says Muhammad Ali was drugged,"

   In that instant a cold, cold mask seemed to slide across the champion's face. "Yeah ... yeah," Joe said, "I drugged him with a left hook." And they saw the look in his eyes and all three of them ran away.

Frazier turned to me and said:

   "You heard that. What I got to do? What the hell I got to do?"

There was nothing he could do. Not then. Not ever. The sheer force of Ali's personality would doom him to a role as destiny's stepchild. The impossible riddle Joe posed that afternoon would follow him through his always courageous and often brilliant career. It was a question with no answer.

This is what Herman Melville meant when he wrote of Ahab's pursuit of the great white whale in Moby Dick. He and Ali would be linked forever inside a crucible of their own making. You could not mention one without the other.

Each time they would push each other to a place where neither had been before. Styles make fights and the very nature of their styles dictated that each time they met, they were not fighting for a belt or a crown. They did not fight for the championship of the world or Paraguay or Manila.

   No matter that Ali had the personality, the charm, the wit to dominate America's memory. Joe had the tools to force greatness upon Muhammad. That's why the thing they fought to claim was the heavyweight championship. The true fight was for claim over the other.

And they both knew it.

   It was never more obvious than on a sweltering day inside the Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City just beyond the Manila skyline. It was at least 100 degrees inside that arena. At the start, Ali was, well, Ali — dancing, jabbing, taunting, winning. But something out of the ordinary happened in the fourth.

For virtually all of his career, Joe Frazier was a one-handed fighter (but what a hand!). His left hook was ferocious. His right hand? Well, you had to wonder whether he could even tie his shoes with it.

   But in the gym in Philly, Eddie Futch, the head trainer, and Georgie Benton, his assistant, worked for weeks on that right hand. "You are going to give him something to think about," Futch said over and over.

And in that fourth, Joe threw a right hand that landed on Ali's head.

   “You ain't got no right hand," Muhammad chanted shaking off the amazement. And then — POP. Another one.

"They told me you old," Ali said, breathing hard.

"They told you wrong," Joe shot back.

   And now suddenly it was a fight. A fight? Hell, it was the greatest heavyweight fight since Cain and Abel.

The ebb and flow was incredible. Guys get up off the mat in a fight and, once in a while, win. But you rarely see one guy losing and then winning and then losing and then ...

Well, you get the idea.

   In the end this fight was decided by anatomy. The shorter Frazier began to experience huge swelling around the eyes. In order to see, he had to straighten up — the exact opposite of his corner's game plan.

Ali now was winning. But in Round 13, he was so exhausted at a time when Frazier stood there with both arms down and legs exhibiting all the power of wet spaghetti. All Ali had to do was walk 5 feet or so and touch him and it would have been over. But Ali was too weak to do it.

   In the corner after 14, Futch told Benton to cut Joe's gloves off. Joe pushed and shoved and threatened, but they came off. Then Ali saw that it was over and collapsed.

   Nobody was tougher than Joe Frazier. Nobody had a bigger heart.

Death will probably win this last fight, but knowing Joe in that hazy limbo that spells the end, he'll probably tell old Death, "Don't gloat. Fifteen years ago, you wouldn't have laid a glove on me."

And forever after, I'll believe Joe was right.