An evening at the Capitol Building

“A picture is worth a thousand words” so here’s about 27,000 words, plus just a few I need to add.

The rally was great.  The Capitol Rotunda was packed and there were people lined up two deep all along the second floor, and most of the third, and people were still showing up as the rest of us started to leave.  The energy was amazing.  Now, on to the pictures including a bunch of the better hand-made posters.

Now, we get to see if it did any good.

Another Rally at the Capitol

For anyone who is worried about the state of Public Education in this state, and the valiant effort our Legislators are putting for at dismantling it,

There will be a Pro-Education Rally at the state Capitol next Monday (March 9th).

Sponsored by the Utah Parent-Teacher Association and the Teacher's Union (UEA)

Everyone who is concerned about the fate of Public Education in Utah is encouraged to join us up there on 

Monday, March 9th at 5:30 pm in the Capitol Rotunda.

Plan on getting there early and parking far away - or take TRAX downtown and then just walk up the hill.  I've been to several rallies at the Capitol and they can be very interesting and amusing, and:

The more people that show up the more the Legislators will understand that the bullshit they are pulling on Public Education will not be tolerated.

Please be there if at all possible.

More details from the UEA email can be seen HERE.

More proof?

Want more proof that the powers that be in the Utah Legislature are trying to ruin public education and get (more of) that money into the pockets of their cronies?

HB-197

11          This bill:
12          ▸     requires the State Board of Education to make certain rules regarding administrative
13     or supervisory licensing; and
14          ▸     makes technical changes

---

26          (1) A local school board or charter school governing board may request, and the [State
27     Board of Education] board may grant, a letter of authorization permitting a person with
28     outstanding professional qualifications to serve in any position that requires a person to hold an
29     administrative/supervisory license or certificate, including principal, assistant principal,
30     associate principal, vice principal, assistant superintendent, administrative assistant, director,
31     specialist, or other district position.

---

(c) The board may not require that an applicant described in Subsection (3)(a):
43          (i) have a particular graduate degree;
44          (ii) hold a teaching license;
45          (iii) complete an education leadership graduate program;
46          (iv) obtain a professional recommendation solely from a school with an approved
47     preparation program; or
48          (v) have experience in an education field.

So, if this bill passes, the person running your local school, making decisions that effect your children, identifying good teaching and bad teaching, allocating resources, implementing rewards and consequences, hiring, firing, approving and rejecting educational programs and the million other decisions that require an understand of how students think, act and learn will not need to have any educational experience at all.

Yup.  ‘Cause managing a business with a hundred adult employees that can be fired is exactly like running a Junior High School.  Yup.  Uh huh.

Just when you thought the Utah State Legislature wanted to do the will of the people they serve.

(Ok, I didn’t but…)

When Judge Shelby struck down Utah’s Amendment 3, banning same sex marriages, our legislature screamed “unfair”, this is going against the will of the people.  After all, in 2004 the people voted 2:1 in favor of the amendment, and no activist judge has the right to usurp the will of the people.

Yeah, activist judges, who are employed to interpret the U.S. Constitution, don’t, but seems that elected legislators do have the right to ignore what the people want.

Senate Bill 54 passed an initial vote in the senate with a 13:1 ratio in favor of it.

SB54 gives our caucus system of nominating candidates a slight facelift, but most importantly it directly voids any conclusion to the Count My Vote initiative that would completely eliminate state caucuses in favor of open primaries.

It boils down to this, like Rod Decker of Channel 2 news put it: if SB54 goes into law and the people vote to keep the caucus system, we get the caucus system.  If the people vote in favor of open primaries, we get the caucus system.

Thanks Utah State Legislature, way to do the people’s work!

Finally, the truth comes out.

For years, decades, the Utah State Legislature has been denying the “starve the beast” attitude towards public education in this state.  “Top Priority”, but can’t find the money, gotta keep the rainy-day fund for rainy days and don’t want to foist a tax increase upon the unwilling taxpayers have been their mantras.

In yesterday’s Tribune, House Speaker Becky Lockhart let the cat out of the bag.

In an article about putting iPads (or something technologically similar) in the hands of every student in the state and it’s $300M-$750M price tag, she was quoted as saying:

“Let’s not try to be so focused on the money.  If this is the vision we want to have for education, if this is where we know we are headed … then we’ll find the money.”

So, since we can in fact find the money for our vision for public education, then that means that our vision for over 20 years has been “lowest funding in the nation, largest class sizes and lowest pay.”  Nice vision.

Clueless at the Capitol

I am a driver, so the lower a gallon of gas costs, the happier I am.  I still think the bill I just heard about on my favorite local news station is absurd.

Consider these:  our roads suck and the pollution in our valley during inversions is the worst in the nation.

So, in year citizens want to  improve the air and the roads, why are our legislators introducing legislation that will encourage more driving?

Their idea: cut the sales tax on a gallon of gas in half, and raise the sales tax (including on food) by another 2%.  Gleefully they announce that this is not a tax increase, in the short run there will be no increase in taxes collected.

So, why do it?  Well, in the long run sales tax revenue increases, whereas gasoline tax revenue tends to stay the same, or even decrease.

Let’s not consider that:

1. Gas consumption tends to increase when taxes go down – more wear and tear on the roads and more pollution in the valley.
2. Why are we shifting the cost of our roads from the people who drive to people who eat food. (Yeah, even drivers eat food, but not all people who eat food drive, and they already pay for roads in the cost of delivering their food items.)

Well, it hasn’t passed and even though I’d love to pay 12 cents less a gallon for my gas, I’m hoping the bill dies.

Unfunded Mandates.

The State Legislature loves giving educators more and more to do.  Every time they meet we sigh a collective sigh and contemplate what new thing they are going to dump on us.  90% of the time without relieving us of something we are already doing so that we have the time for the new stuff.

More often than not, these mandates come without any funding to pay for them, we’re supposed to squeeze it out of our 51^st-in-the-nation per pupil funding.

This year there are a couple things that I actually support, except for their being unfunded.

The first one will require school districts to hold yearly seminars for parents on bullying, substance abuse, mental health and internet safety.  If it weren’t for the fact that funding for these seminars will be coming out of my classroom, I’d be all for it.

They are also voting on a bill to put caps on K-3 classrooms.  It would mandate that kindergarten classes could be no bigger than 20 students, 1^st & 2^nd grade at 22 and 3^rd grade classes would stop at 24.  Wonderful idea, one I have been argued is the #1 issue in education for years.  The problem is that the bill includes no extra money.  Zip.  Zero. Nada. Ziltch. Niente.

This means class sizes in the upper grades are going to have to get bigger.  Having 34 kids in an Algebra class will be a thing of the past.  42, which I’ve had before, will be the new norm.  An article on KSL.com reports Logan High School already having 50+ students in their English classes.

You up on the hill:  The rubber band  is already stretched to the max, the camel’s back is cracking and the balloon is pushing it’s outer limits.  Something’s gonna blow, and it ain’t gonna be pretty.

But hey, we got $500 million to move the Utah State Prison so some developers (aka: friends & legislators) can make a bundle building houses at the Point of the Mountain.

Reader Beware

It is entirely possible that a few, if not many, expletives will creep into this post.  Anyone easily offended by coarse language should probably skip this post.

Woke up this morning, had a cup of coffee, grabbed today’s edition of the Salt Lake Tribune, took my place on the throne and made it to the front page of the Utah section before getting totally pissed off.

Utah Sen. Howard (the Duck) Stephenson is going to sponsor a bill that would privatize failing schools, firing the entire staff of the school.  This I’ve posted about before, but what boiled my blood was the quote by Stephenson they had in today’s article.

“It’s quite interesting that the members of the state school board who say, ‘We don’t want to punish schools’, are perfectly satisfied to keep punishing children by subjecting them to mediocre education.  I’m less concerned about the feelings of educators who run mediocre schools than I am about the future prospects of those children in the school.”

Bullshit, you duckin’ hypocrite.

If his holier-than-thou “won’t someone think of the children” almighty façade had any truth to it;

1. Utah students wouldn’t be crammed into the largest classrooms in the nation.
2. Utah wouldn’t be spending less than any other state in the US, by about $2,000 per student.
3. He would have freaked out when his peers passed a law that earmarked $30,000,000 of new tax revenue to roads rather than education.
4. He would be fighting tooth and nail to not only hold educators accountable, but also to provide them with the tools to do their job at the level he wants them to.

It’s the legislators of the State of Utah that don’t give a flying duck about the education of our children, not the majority of the teachers and administrators that work hard to do the best they can with what they are given.  The proof is in the funding, “starving the beast’, the ever decreasing investment in support of education, despite the 60% (or more, depending on your poll) of voters that would be willing to pay more taxes for increased education funding.  Even though we were last in per-pupil funding, Utah used to be #1 in the amount invested per $1,000 of personal income, we’re now down to 24^th.  Full day kindergarten, proven to help lower income and lower achieving students – denied.  Class-size reduction funding – dried up.

Rep. Howard Stephenson; you and your cronies are the ones punishing the students of this state.  Your quote would be better rewritten as “I’m less concerned about the feelings of state legislators who won’t even adequately fund schools, than I am about the future prospects of those children in the school.”

Finally, I can’t believe anyone, including Rep. Stephenson, really believes that private companies could better educate these same students with the same funding.

Once again, some moron is telling me I’m not a patriotic American.

Page 1, Section B; “UTAH”, Salt Lake Tribune, Saturday, February 5, 2011:

“Committee OKs guns near schools   POLITICS>> A House committee Friday approved a bill that would wipe out a 1,000 foot buffer zone around schools and day care centers that bars people from carrying guns.”

Only in Utah, folks.  Now, the real offensive part is on page 2 of this same section.   Peter Cannon, a member of the Davis County 9/12 Project, is quoted by the paper as having said:

“I think a reasonable All-American teacher would say to his class, ‘Let’s talk about the Second Amendment to the Constitution. … We have the right to carry a weapon, to bear arms.’ … We don’t need to teach our children to panic because they see a firearm.”

Thank you Mr. Cannon.  I must be either unreasonable, un-American, just a bad teacher, or all of the above, because if it were my place to discuss the Second Amendment with my students I would discuss the entire thing, including the clause “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,”, not just the part that says “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

What I love so much about these tea-bagger people is that if you don’t agree with them then you are obviously a long haired hippie-type (shudder) liberal pinko socialist.  Period.  Nothing in between.  Period.

Ok, enough of the close-minded schmucks that have crawled out from under rocks since Obama took office, what about the proposed bill itself?  According to State Representative Curt Oda (R-Clearfield) (as reported by the Tribune) these “zones have created an impossible patchwork and well-meaning gun owners can break the law without knowing it and criminals will just ignore it.”

Here’s my problem;  How many well meaning gun owners have been charged lately for accidentally crossing over into a school buffer zone while on their morning, gun-totin’ health walk?  My guess:  zip.  On the other hand, if this passes, what power does that give the police when the law-abiding gang-banger shows up at my school’s fence with a gun, intending on just standing there, doing nothing other than intimidating a rival gang member?

Right now, schools are allowed to assume anyone at their front door (figuratively speaking) carrying a gun out in the open is up to no good and, rightfully so, immediately lock down the school and call the police.  How much confusion and trouble is it going to cause if administrators have to decide if that person out there with a rifle is a real threat or just coming to pick up their student for a hunting weekend?

Mr. Peabody’s Way-Back Machine: I-80 across the Utah border.

To what era would you attribute these comments:

“We’re dropping [our] moral and ethical standards in favor of a more national [set], and I don’t like it,”… they contain “code words for socialism.”?

• A) 1950’s U.S. Senate Committee Hearings
  
• B) 2011 Utah Senator
  
• C) Both of the above, because there’s really no difference between the two.

If you chose C) then you are right, because they really sound like something Joe McCarthy would have said back in the 50’s and yet they were said just this week by Chris Buttars, a Utah State Legislator.

Reported in the Salt Lake Tribune article, Buttars was referring to a new set of academic standards that 39 other states also plan to adopt.  Developed by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers, not mandated by the Federal Government, the idea is that states need to become better aligned in their math and English curriculum because of an ever increasingly mobile population.

Personally, I agree with the goal.  I’m definitely not for the ultra micromanaging I’ve heard of in other cases, where every teacher should be teaching the exact same thing, with the exact same vehicles, on any given day.  Individualism aside, that doesn’t even allow for adapting to classes that learn faster/slower than others and would mean moving ahead even if the majority of students still don’t get it.  But, at least in math, to know that any student coming into my class has already gone over monomials, inequalities and other things that I have covered, would be quite helpful.  There may still be things that I have covered that their old teacher didn’t, or vica-versa, but at least common standards would help minimize these.

And, regardless of whether or not you agree with them, playing the communism/socialism card is just sooooo 1950’s.

Q: What does industry, the seagull, a blue spruce, sego lily and a .45 caliber pistol have in common?

A: They are, or soon will be, the official motto, bird, tree, flower and handgun for the State of Utah.

Yup.  Utah State Representative Carl Wimmer is proposing legislation that will make the Browning 1911 .45 caliber pistol the official state handgun of Utah.

I have just one question for the illustrious representative: Will using an official state handgun increase or decrease the penalties for armed robbery?

(Yes, I did pick the goofiest picture I could find of Wimmer, not that one was hard to find.)

Don Quixote de la Mancha, R-Herriman

Tilting at windmills. Utah legislators are infamous for this. We have fought many a so-called moral battle which have done nothing but cost taxpayers millions of dollars. The worst thing is that they pass these laws knowing that they are going to be taken to court and fully aware that they have very little chance of winning. Whether you agree with the law on principle or not, it is irresponsible to waste other people's money knowing you are going to lose. What is more than irresponsible, what is reprehensible, immoral and should be criminal is doing it in the first year in decades that the state has had a budget shortfall. We are asking department after department to cut back on expenses, cutting back on services to the poor, and yet we are poised to battle another futile war on abortion. Rep. Wimmer, are you and your cohorts willing to fund the defense of this law with your own money, without any taxpayer assistance? No? Well, then how can you reconcile defending it with my money, with money that has a million better uses in this time of economic downturn?

Voucher Math

Some incredibly brilliant person wrote this letter to the editor that was printed in today's edition, and I just thought I'd reprint it here - with permission of the author, of course.

Pro-voucher advocates continue to refer to excess money left with public education for every student that leaves the system. The argument is that since the state spends some $5,000 per student and the voucher has a $3,000 maximum, that means, in worst case, that the schools are left with an extra $2,000. If my understanding of school funding is correct, then that $2,000 does not automatically stay in the system. Schools are funded by something called the Weighted Pupil Unit, a set amount of money per student in the public school system. That's where the $5,000 figure comes from and that number is set by the Utah Legislature. Pull a student out of the system and you pull the full WPU out of the system. So, even if the difference did end up going to the public schools, it would have to wait until the following year for the Legislature to increase the WPU, assuming they didn't find some road project or sports arena more compelling to fund. In addition to all the other assumptions you have to accept to support school vouchers, you also have to trust our Legislature in matters involving the public schools.

Personally, I'm not one that trusts them to do what's best for education.....

"Lawmakers seek to strip school board of it's authority" - SL Trib, B1, today.

Seems we've got some ego maniacal lawmakers that are irked at the fact that the Utah State Board of Education did not buckle under to their demands and immediately implement school vouchers. Despite the fact that the school board was waiting for the Utah Supreme Court to make a decision on it, which ended up vindicating the actions (or in this case inactions) of the school board, there will still be bills up on the hill to strip the board of it's powers. But right v. wrong is irrelevant to these power crazed legislators. "You didn't play by my rules, so now I'm going to take my marbles and go home, pbbbblllttt!" Time and time again these people have proven the wisdom of the separation of powers build into our system. Time and time again they try to circumvent and eliminate these separations, and hopefully, since this involves a change to the state constitution, there are enough level-headed people up there to block this BS. I'm going to e-mail my representatives, you can find yours easily by going to this web site "Legislator Lookup", it will even give you links to their e-mail addresses. I think I'll be a little less, um, negative when I e-mail them than I am here on my blog. Maybe just comment on how important a concept I think the separation of powers is and how I feel that it would be wrong to enact a change in the Constitution that eliminates some, or one, of these checks and balances. Yeah, that sounds good.

Here is what I sent :

Dear Mr. Wiley,

Dear Mr. Romero,

In the Salt Lake Tribune this morning I read an article titled “Lawmakers seek to strip school board of it’s authority”. As one of your constituents I just wanted to let you know that even before I became a public school teacher I firmly believed in the principle of separation of powers, and that too much power in the hands of any one governmental entity is dangerous.

I realize that the next legislative session is still a way off, but I just wanted to express my opinion that the way the State School Board operates should be left alone, and I consider shifting the powers they have from them to the Legislature would be a mistake and contrary to the idea of governmental checks and balances.

Thank you for your time,

School Vouchers : You mean rich people from out of state won't be deciding for us?

Yup, the sad thing is we Utahns are going to have to decide for ourselves. Stupid Supreme Court. Taking the decision out of the hands of the lobbyists and legislators and putting it in the hands of the people. Bad Supreme Court! Naughty, naughty Zut, uh I mean Justices. (Let's not take that Freudian slip to fruition).

Front page of the Salt Lake Tribune : "Vouchers : You decide" In a somewhat unheard of turn of events, the Utah Supreme Court issued it's ruling the same day as it heard arguments. The November referendum WILL decide the fate of school vouchers in Utah; if the people of Utah vote against school vouchers it will kill BOTH bills passed by the legislature. None of this "well, you voted down the one bill, but by some quirky circumstances this second bill, passed just to fix things on the first bill, will stand on it's own and we will still implement the vouchers you voted against. Sorry about that folks."

Just in case my bias has not come through so far - I am against school vouchers. Not just because I'm a public school teacher, or because $3,000 isn't going to help a family of 6 living on $26,000 afford the $10,000 for private school tuition or because (this is a theory of my sisters' that I adopted) we could see a whole bunch of fly-by-night private schools pop up out of nowhere that will "educate" your students for little more than that $3,000. My main argument against school vouchers is that they are supposed to foster competition, but how can you have competition between to entities that play by different rules? Public schools have physical boundaries, in which we are required to take every student that resides there, regardless of their mental, physical, parental and economic capabilities. We cannot say "oh, sorry, our school is full, find some other place for your kid", we have to make the room somewhere. We have to provide services for the students that have special needs, we have to provide free lunches and other financial help for required fees to students that do not have the economic means to pay for them. Private schools may, and I know some do, give this extra support, but they are not required to do it. I could go on all day citing requirements on the public school system that give private schools the advantage in a competitive market, (other than cost, of course), but it boils down to the fact that because of state and federal regulations private and public schools do not play on a level field, giving private schools the overall advantage. Which is why people are willing to pay the tuition in the first place - private schools are less encumbered by the distractions inherent in public schools.

There's your topic - discuss.