Tag Archives: CEA

We’ve talked an awful lot about Thompson School District recently. And why wouldn’t we? The district and its reform majority are, after all, at the very forefront of Colorado’s ongoing—and increasingly nasty—education reform wars. The board’s attempt to build a smarter, better union contract that does right by both its students has been met with stiff resistance from both the Thompson Education Association and its big political brother, the Colorado Education Association. First CEA stepped into the fray by pushing a phony petition designed to block an attempt at providing the district’s negotiating team with written guidance on how to proceed. Shortly thereafter, the board rejected a laughably bad attempt at a tentative agreement. The negotiating teams were sent back to the table to take another stab at the contract on May 12. The rejection of the first tentative agreement was quickly followed by two relatively small, sadly misinformed student “rallies” not entirely dissimilar to those we saw in Jefferson County last fall. It’s safe to say that things haven’t been pretty in Thompson. Tonight, it all comes to a head.

After observing many of them on the playground, I can say that bullies are interesting creatures. Usually, they figure they can just push you around without any resistance. But stand up to them just a little, and they have to reevaluate. That reevaluation usually involves a two-step process. First, they try out nasty underhanded tactics like those used by the Jefferson County Mean Girlz. If that doesn’t work, or they meet more resistance (as the Mean Girlz certainly did), they often run off to find bigger, meaner friends to back them up. It appears that the Thompson Education Association has been paying attention to the Jeffco edu-blob’s failures on step one of the bullying handbook. The district’s union and its supporters have skipped straight to step two and called in reinforcements from the Colorado Education Association, our state’s powerful and extremely political teachers union.

Late last year, I wrote about the sticky testing issue knot. After a series of weird events on the State Board of Education and the early prospect of a strange alliance between Republicans and teachers unions during the ill-fated effort to reauthorize ESEA, we may be looking at more of a sticky testing issue black hole. Now, though, things are beginning to reach maximum weirdness, with the same strange alliances seen in Congress being observed in Colorado. So yeah, stuff’s complicated. It’s getting tough to make sense of it all. That’s why I was glad to see my Independence Institute friend Ross Izard’s new article, “Strange Bedfellows: Teachers Unions, Conservatives, and Tenure Reform.” I’m pretty sure I’m too young to know what a “bedfellow” is, but I think I see what Ross is trying to convey. The article takes a long, hard look at the differing motivations behind the oddly aligned conservative and union pushes against testing and for opt-outs. We’ll just do a brief overview of the highlights here in order to avoid unnecessary brain damage, but the article is stuffed with links and references for those whose nerdy proclivities drive them to dig a little deeper into the […]

Last Friday, the Jefferson County Education Association (JCEA) president sent an email through the chain to her members about their political refund option in anticipation of the Independence Institute informing them. We’d like to thank her for helping to spread the word, but need to provide a few clarifying comments about her message first: 1. JCEA’s Every Member Option (EMO) political money is $24 a year (or $2 a month) for each member. For those not willing or able to do the math, CEA’s EMO is $39 a year ($3.25 x 12). 2. “JCEA and CEA’s EMO is optional for all members.” Only if by “optional” you mean the union takes the money and promises to give it back if you fill out separate refund request letters to CEA and JCEA before December 15. Find out how here, or go directly to CEA’s online refund request form here. 3. “Contribution” is a funny word to use to describe the EMO. Insisting that “Members agree with the EMO contribution” because most of them don’t ask for it back before a deadline sets a pretty low standard. The point isn’t whether a majority of JCEA/CEA members agree with the EMO, but whether […]