Tag Archives: majority

Our own appointed U.S. Senator and former Denver Public Schools superintendent Michael Bennet conducted a recent Q & A on federal education reform with Linda Kulman for Politics Daily. Here’s his answer to one question about incentives not matching objectives in the education system: We have not updated our theory of human capital, which is a fancy word for saying how do we attract and retain people to public education, since the labor market was one where women had two professional choices: being a nurse or being a teacher. We say to people, “We’d like you to come be a teacher, we imagine that you’re going to teach “Julius Caesar” every year for the next 30 years, we’re going to pay you a really terrible wage compared to what you could make doing almost anything else. … The way most school districts and states pay teachers in this country (is) if you leave any time in the first 20 years, you leave with what you’ve contributed to your retirement system … but if you stay for 30 years, you (get) a pension that’s worth three times what your Social Security is worth. No matter what else you want to do, […]

Nancy Mitchell of the Rocky Mountain News has reported that Denver Public Schools (DPS) plans to cut the budget by 2 percent. To its credit, DPS already has made some moves toward financial transparency, but not to the degree that Senate Bill 57 (PDF) would have DPS and every other Colorado school district and charter school do. At least the original version of SB 57. I told you last week how many citizens came to testify in favor of school districts adopting the relatively simple and cost-effective approach of posting expenditures online in a user-friendly, searchable format. But a majority of legislators on the Senate Education Committee hijacked the bill and made it merely a suggestion – a worthless way of pretending to support transparency. Tomorrow morning (Tuesday, February 3) SB 57 will be debated before the entire state senate, and we’ll get to see whether our legislators support real transparency or the phony-baloney kind. Over at YourHub, Lakewood citizen and transparency supporter Natalie Menten says the debate provides an opportunity to send a strong message to state lawmakers:

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 […]