Anybody familiar with the teacher evaluating system in our schools knows that it's a joke. Even Camille Zombro, former president of San Diego Education Association, tells the story of how she repeatedly asked her principal for an evaluation, but her principal would say, "Oh, I know you're doing fine." It was the most honest thing the principal could do for such an active political figure. But other teachers have the same complaint: there are shockingly few observations by principals, and the evaluations are useless political statements at worst, and useless blather at best. Teacher culture, not professionalism, rules the schools.
We need evaluations done by outsiders with no personal or political relationship to the evaluatee. Evaluators should do frequent observations (at least three or four times a year) and should use specific criteria.
Ft. Hood shooter received glowing evaluations before attack
Maj. Nidal Hasan, convicted of killing 13 and wounding several others, was said to have 'great potential as an Army officer.'
By Molly Hennessy-Fiske
LA Times
August 24, 2013
Months before the Ft. Hood shooting in November 2009, the Army psychiatrist convicted Friday of killing 13 and wounding more than 30 was completing a fellowship at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where military supervisors praised his unique interest in Islam's impact on soldiers, according to documents provided to The Times.
Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's supervisors had also repeatedly recommended him for promotion, according to documents.
"He has a keen interest in Islamic culture and faith and has shown capacity to contribute to our psychological understanding of Islamic nationalism and how it may relate to events of national security and Army interest in the Middle East and Asia," supervisors wrote in an evaluation report July 1, 2009.
Among Hasan's "unique skills," the report listed "Islamic studies" and "traumatic stress spectrum psychiatric disorders," concluding that "Maj. Hasan has great potential as an Army officer."
The officer evaluation report, and another from earlier that year, were provided to The Times by Hasan's civil lawyer, John Galligan, who says he believes they are relevant to Hasan's sentencing, which is set to begin Monday. He is eligible for the death penalty.
Hasan, 42, has been convicted of 13 charges of premeditated murder in the Nov. 5, 2009, shooting in Texas. The same jury of 13 officers that convicted him will determine his sentence. For a death sentence to be imposed, the decision must be unanimous.
Galligan, a former military judge, said the reports could be used at Hasan's sentencing to argue against a death sentence. But Hasan, who will be representing himself at sentencing as he did at trial, has yet to submit them as mitigating evidence. Galligan says he is concerned the jury will have an incomplete account of Hasan's service record and the role superiors played in promoting him.
The evaluation reports were filed while Hasan, an American-born Muslim, was earning a master's degree in public health through a two-year fellowship in disaster and preventive psychiatry. A colleague of Hasan's at Walter Reed testified that he pursued the fellowship in order to avoid deployment.
The other report, completed March 13, 2009, said Hasan had "outstanding moral integrity" and that he had selected a "challenging topic" for his master's of public health project: "the impact of beliefs and culture on views regarding military service during the Global War on Terror."
Supervisors recommended Hasan for a position "that allows others to learn from his perspectives," noting his "unique insights into the dimensions of Islam" including "moral reasoning" were "of great potential interest and strategic importance to the U.S. Army."
An Army doctor testified that a month before the attack, Hasan told her that if the military forced him to deploy to the Middle East "they will pay." He was later ordered to deploy to Afghanistan, and began plotting his attack.
Showing posts with label . Zombro (Camille Zombro of CTA). Show all posts
Showing posts with label . Zombro (Camille Zombro of CTA). Show all posts
Monday, August 26, 2013
Saturday, June 02, 2012
Camille Zombro Lashes Out at Her Successor
Voice of San Diego has provided an insightful analysis of former SDEA President Camille Zombro's open letter to teachers in San Diego Unified School District attacking current SDEA President Bill Freeman.
See all Camille Zombro posts.
'Our Union May Be on the Verge of Accepting Deep … Cuts'
May 14, 2012
By Will Carless
Voice of San Diego
...2. Zombro Lashes Out at Her Successor [as President of SDEA]
When my presidency ended in 2010, I proudly passed the torch to Bill Freeman, a site Association Rep. who told all of us he believed in (and campaigned on) our model of strong, member-driven unionism. Unfortunately, it is increasingly obvious that Bill is no longer committed to that vision. Rather than lead an aggressive fight to hold the School Board accountable for their unnecessary layoffs, he is now taking dramatic and abrupt steps to systematically dismantle the very foundation of the powerful union we have built: our democracy, our transparent communication with membership, and our tough stance in defending our jobs and our contract.
The SDEA became increasingly hard-line and isolated throughout the tenure of Zombro and her ally, Leedham. Apart from some subtle hints at reconciliation with the district, however, Freeman hasn’t offered much to suggest publicly that there is the sort of rift at the SDEA that Zombro is alleging. He has appeared in public with Zombro and has continued to say at board meetings that concessions are not the answer to the district’s problems.
3. There’s a ‘Tug-of-War’ Going on at the Union
Zombro writes:
Those of us inside the SDEA building have seen this coming for some time, resulting in a tug-of-war within the office over the fundamental direction of our union. On one side of SDEA’s tug-of-war have been Craig and I and thousands of you, fighting to keep SDEA’s contract closed while saving our valuable coworkers’ jobs. On the other side are Bill, a portion of the SDEA Board and a portion of the SDEA staff who want to “collaborate” with the District, possibly open the contract, resulting in significant salary and benefit concessions in the hopes that the District will reduce layoffs.
Again, this is fascinating because it gives some insight into the decision-making going on within the union. The organization, which has prided itself on presenting a united front in the face of recent financial storms, is clearly wrestling with the latest round of bad news, according to Zombro’s account.
We’ve seen signs before that there is division within the union’s membership. Earlier this year, two teachers sent us an open letter calling for the SDEA to change its firm position against concessions.
This is the first public recognition that those divisions go all the way up to the top of the union.
4. Zombro Claims She and Leedham Have Been ‘Purged’ From the Union
She writes:
Unfortunately I am writing to you today because our democracy — the open and sometimes raucous debate that defines us — is being threatened as current SDEA leadership shifts the direction of our union while actively working to discredit those who are speaking up against these actions.
Further: The stark reality is that Bill is driving out the opposition — me, Craig, and anyone else who pushes back. Bill has led the SDEA Board to demand Craig’s resignation after two months of unexplained paid administrative leave, and threw me out of the meeting where the decision was debated. Despite a permanent, legally binding contract (much like the one you and I enjoy), and a perfect performance record, Craig is being forced out with no just cause or progressive discipline, no chance to tell his side of the story, and without ever even being told what, if anything, he had been accused of. That should horrify anyone who believes their contract protects their employment status.
For the last two months, I have also experienced a level of personal harassment and villification that I won’t detail, but that no worker deserves to experience in the workplace or in her union.
To recap: Zombro was voted out of office earlier this year in the union’s elections. Leedham was placed on administrative leave, and the union has been extremely tight-lipped about what, exactly, they claim he has done to warrant his removal.
I’ll be pushing the union for more details on Leedham’s ouster in the coming days, in the light of these accusations from Zombro.
5. A Pressure Group Has Been Formed to Push the SDEA in a Certain Direction
Zombro writes:
So how do we get through this with our union intact? We step up our involvement and we stay involved. I sent this email to just about every teacher in the District I personally know. I know a lot of people… and so do you! Forward this email, tell them to forward it, and follow up with conversations because, as I always say, a flier or an email are only as good as the conversations that go with them.
Link arms with other SDEA members — don’t wait for someone to tell you what to do! In just one example, a group of teachers from several schools across SDUSD have formed the “Breakfast Club” (which SDEA leadership will likely discredit as a “splinter group” or a “divisive force”). They are a passionate and articulate pocket of SDEA members who are working together to push back against layoffs AND concessions — the core of the SDEA agenda — and I will be proud to start getting involved with their efforts as they grow.
So, Zombro appears to be calling on her union brothers and sisters to step away from the SDEA and join this new group that she may be willing to lead...
[Zombro’s replacement [as vice-president of SDEA], Lindsay Burningham, has also made clear that she hopes to work more closely in union with the district.]
See all Camille Zombro posts.
'Our Union May Be on the Verge of Accepting Deep … Cuts'
May 14, 2012
By Will Carless
Voice of San Diego
...2. Zombro Lashes Out at Her Successor [as President of SDEA]
When my presidency ended in 2010, I proudly passed the torch to Bill Freeman, a site Association Rep. who told all of us he believed in (and campaigned on) our model of strong, member-driven unionism. Unfortunately, it is increasingly obvious that Bill is no longer committed to that vision. Rather than lead an aggressive fight to hold the School Board accountable for their unnecessary layoffs, he is now taking dramatic and abrupt steps to systematically dismantle the very foundation of the powerful union we have built: our democracy, our transparent communication with membership, and our tough stance in defending our jobs and our contract.
The SDEA became increasingly hard-line and isolated throughout the tenure of Zombro and her ally, Leedham. Apart from some subtle hints at reconciliation with the district, however, Freeman hasn’t offered much to suggest publicly that there is the sort of rift at the SDEA that Zombro is alleging. He has appeared in public with Zombro and has continued to say at board meetings that concessions are not the answer to the district’s problems.
3. There’s a ‘Tug-of-War’ Going on at the Union
Zombro writes:
Those of us inside the SDEA building have seen this coming for some time, resulting in a tug-of-war within the office over the fundamental direction of our union. On one side of SDEA’s tug-of-war have been Craig and I and thousands of you, fighting to keep SDEA’s contract closed while saving our valuable coworkers’ jobs. On the other side are Bill, a portion of the SDEA Board and a portion of the SDEA staff who want to “collaborate” with the District, possibly open the contract, resulting in significant salary and benefit concessions in the hopes that the District will reduce layoffs.
Again, this is fascinating because it gives some insight into the decision-making going on within the union. The organization, which has prided itself on presenting a united front in the face of recent financial storms, is clearly wrestling with the latest round of bad news, according to Zombro’s account.
We’ve seen signs before that there is division within the union’s membership. Earlier this year, two teachers sent us an open letter calling for the SDEA to change its firm position against concessions.
This is the first public recognition that those divisions go all the way up to the top of the union.
4. Zombro Claims She and Leedham Have Been ‘Purged’ From the Union
She writes:
Unfortunately I am writing to you today because our democracy — the open and sometimes raucous debate that defines us — is being threatened as current SDEA leadership shifts the direction of our union while actively working to discredit those who are speaking up against these actions.
Further: The stark reality is that Bill is driving out the opposition — me, Craig, and anyone else who pushes back. Bill has led the SDEA Board to demand Craig’s resignation after two months of unexplained paid administrative leave, and threw me out of the meeting where the decision was debated. Despite a permanent, legally binding contract (much like the one you and I enjoy), and a perfect performance record, Craig is being forced out with no just cause or progressive discipline, no chance to tell his side of the story, and without ever even being told what, if anything, he had been accused of. That should horrify anyone who believes their contract protects their employment status.
For the last two months, I have also experienced a level of personal harassment and villification that I won’t detail, but that no worker deserves to experience in the workplace or in her union.
To recap: Zombro was voted out of office earlier this year in the union’s elections. Leedham was placed on administrative leave, and the union has been extremely tight-lipped about what, exactly, they claim he has done to warrant his removal.
I’ll be pushing the union for more details on Leedham’s ouster in the coming days, in the light of these accusations from Zombro.
5. A Pressure Group Has Been Formed to Push the SDEA in a Certain Direction
Zombro writes:
So how do we get through this with our union intact? We step up our involvement and we stay involved. I sent this email to just about every teacher in the District I personally know. I know a lot of people… and so do you! Forward this email, tell them to forward it, and follow up with conversations because, as I always say, a flier or an email are only as good as the conversations that go with them.
Link arms with other SDEA members — don’t wait for someone to tell you what to do! In just one example, a group of teachers from several schools across SDUSD have formed the “Breakfast Club” (which SDEA leadership will likely discredit as a “splinter group” or a “divisive force”). They are a passionate and articulate pocket of SDEA members who are working together to push back against layoffs AND concessions — the core of the SDEA agenda — and I will be proud to start getting involved with their efforts as they grow.
So, Zombro appears to be calling on her union brothers and sisters to step away from the SDEA and join this new group that she may be willing to lead...
[Zombro’s replacement [as vice-president of SDEA], Lindsay Burningham, has also made clear that she hopes to work more closely in union with the district.]
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Camille Zombro goes off: she appears to want power for herself, and silence from rank-and-file teachers
See all Camille Zombro posts.
Teachers Union President: No Concessions Planned
Updated: May 25, 2012
By Will Carless
Voice of San Diego
Bill Freeman, president of the San Diego Education Association, just called to respond to claims made yesterday in an extraordinary open letter from Camille Zombro, the former teachers union president.
In her letter, Zombro heaped criticism on Freeman, saying the union was close to offering concessions on pay and benefits, and claiming she and a fellow colleague were “purged” from the union because they refused to follow Freeman’s agenda for negotiating an agreement with the school district to solve its fiscal crisis.
Freeman characterized Zombro’s comments as “sour grapes,” and said several of the claims she made are “absolutely untrue.”
“It’s very unfortunate that Camille Zombro would do this during such troubling and difficult times,” Freeman said. “To take this divisive measure is very sad, particularly for someone who has supported her for many, many years.” Sounding emotional and tired, Freeman said he would talk to me more tomorrow. But I managed to ask a couple of quick, specific questions.
I asked why SDEA Executive Director Craig Leedham was removed from his office. Leedham was placed on administrative leave in March and Zombro claimed that he had been forced out, with “no just cause or progressive discipline.” Freeman would only say that Zombro’s claims are “absolutely untrue.” He said he would elaborate Wednesday on Leedham’s removal.
I also asked about Zombro’s claim that the union is close to making concessions. He said that was not accurate. Freeman said the union’s representative council, made up of reps from around the district, voted overwhelmingly to open lines of communication with the district. Just because the union’s talking to the district doesn’t mean it’s going to make concessions, he said.
Hopefully, I’ll be able to have a more in-depth conversation with Freeman on Wednesday.
A couple of other follow-ups to the Zombro story:
• The Breakfast Club blog, which was started to put pressure on the SDEA, and which yesterday featured Zombro’s letter, has a new post. This one is from union secretary-elect Michelle Sanchez, who claims that free speech is being stunted at the union.
Sanchez raises concern that the union is effectively seeking to censor “subversive” groups within it by changing its bylaws.
She writes:
I honestly can’t believe what is happening to our union or that our leadership is spending time, energy, and money on this when we have more pressing issues to deal with like 1,700 laid off members! I assume that these bylaw changes are in response to Camille’s email, and the efforts of myself and a group of other SDEA members to found the Breakfast Club Action Group… A group we founded only after being told repeatedly at the membership meetings to go organize ourselves to fight against layoffs and keep our contract closed.
We are hardly “subversive,” as we have a public website, and have been explicitly organizing to pressure the School Board to recall layoffs while keeping their hands off of our contract. How can we be “subversive” if we agree with SDEA’s message of “No Concessions! No Layoffs!”?
Teachers Union President: No Concessions Planned
Updated: May 25, 2012
By Will Carless
Voice of San Diego
Bill Freeman, president of the San Diego Education Association, just called to respond to claims made yesterday in an extraordinary open letter from Camille Zombro, the former teachers union president.
In her letter, Zombro heaped criticism on Freeman, saying the union was close to offering concessions on pay and benefits, and claiming she and a fellow colleague were “purged” from the union because they refused to follow Freeman’s agenda for negotiating an agreement with the school district to solve its fiscal crisis.
Freeman characterized Zombro’s comments as “sour grapes,” and said several of the claims she made are “absolutely untrue.”
“It’s very unfortunate that Camille Zombro would do this during such troubling and difficult times,” Freeman said. “To take this divisive measure is very sad, particularly for someone who has supported her for many, many years.” Sounding emotional and tired, Freeman said he would talk to me more tomorrow. But I managed to ask a couple of quick, specific questions.
I asked why SDEA Executive Director Craig Leedham was removed from his office. Leedham was placed on administrative leave in March and Zombro claimed that he had been forced out, with “no just cause or progressive discipline.” Freeman would only say that Zombro’s claims are “absolutely untrue.” He said he would elaborate Wednesday on Leedham’s removal.
I also asked about Zombro’s claim that the union is close to making concessions. He said that was not accurate. Freeman said the union’s representative council, made up of reps from around the district, voted overwhelmingly to open lines of communication with the district. Just because the union’s talking to the district doesn’t mean it’s going to make concessions, he said.
Hopefully, I’ll be able to have a more in-depth conversation with Freeman on Wednesday.
A couple of other follow-ups to the Zombro story:
• The Breakfast Club blog, which was started to put pressure on the SDEA, and which yesterday featured Zombro’s letter, has a new post. This one is from union secretary-elect Michelle Sanchez, who claims that free speech is being stunted at the union.
Sanchez raises concern that the union is effectively seeking to censor “subversive” groups within it by changing its bylaws.
She writes:
I honestly can’t believe what is happening to our union or that our leadership is spending time, energy, and money on this when we have more pressing issues to deal with like 1,700 laid off members! I assume that these bylaw changes are in response to Camille’s email, and the efforts of myself and a group of other SDEA members to found the Breakfast Club Action Group… A group we founded only after being told repeatedly at the membership meetings to go organize ourselves to fight against layoffs and keep our contract closed.
We are hardly “subversive,” as we have a public website, and have been explicitly organizing to pressure the School Board to recall layoffs while keeping their hands off of our contract. How can we be “subversive” if we agree with SDEA’s message of “No Concessions! No Layoffs!”?
Saturday, May 05, 2012
Camille Zombro is gone, but it seems the top CTA brass in Burlingame have an unchanged agenda
No Signs of Talking, Yet: Checking Up On the Teachers Union
May 3, 2012
By Will Carless
Voice of San Diego
I’m checking up on various recent high-profile stories at the moment, to see how those stories have progressed since we first reported on them.
Earlier this year, I spent a few weeks researching and writing about the San Diego Education Association, the union that represents local teachers. I wrote about the union’s move towards a more hard-line, isolationist philosophy over the last few years, and I covered a couple of big shifts in leadership at the SDEA.
The union’s being watched very closely at the moment because of the dire fiscal situation at the district. San Diego Unified issued more than 1,600 layoff notices to employees in March in order to close a projected deficit of at least $80 million. District officials say the only way to avoid those layoffs is for all employee unions to make concessions on their pay and benefit packages.
A large chunk of that projected $80 million deficit is due to a pay raise currently owed to educators that the school board agreed to in 2010. It comes into effect later this year.
The teachers union is far and away the biggest of those unions, and the school board, teachers and parents are all waiting to see if the recent ouster of two hard-line leaders will result in a softer stance from the union.
Let’s take a look at what’s been happening:
Where We Left It
In March, controversial union Vice President Camille Zombro was voted out of office. Zombro’s ouster followed the removal of SDEA Executive Director Craig Leedham from his position two weeks earlier.
Zombro and Leedham were the architects of the SDEA’s shift towards its more hard-line stance. Under their leadership, the union cut off almost all non-formal communications with the district, drifted apart from fellow unions and even cast off an affiliated group of retired educators.
As detailed in this story, the union’s shift worried several former SDEA officials, who considered the isolationist approach largely counter-productive and urged the union to work with the district to forge solutions to the current crisis.
With Leedham out and Zombro coming to the end of her term, I’ve been watching for a thawing in relations between the union and the district.
Incoming Vice President Lindsay Burningham told me in March that she wanted to push the union in a more “positive direction.” And SDEA President Bill Freeman began to soften his rhetoric.
What’s Happened Since
District officials and board members have told me there has been no movement when it comes to discussing concessions. The union is not meeting with the district to negotiate at all, they said.
Burningham confirmed this Wednesday. But she said there have been several other positive steps forward. Union reps are meeting regularly with district personnel to talk about a whole host of things, she said.
“We’re communicating about the budget, being able to ask and answer questions, and move forward in other areas,” Burningham said. “In some areas, the communication has opened up a little more, as people are more comfortable speaking with each other.”
There are also other recent signs that the union’s ready to start working with the district to find a solution to the fiscal crisis.
During two-and-a-half minutes of public comment to the San Diego Unified School District board meeting Tuesday night, SDEA President Bill Freeman used the phrase “come together” three times.
Wednesday, March 07, 2012
Divisive SDEA Teachers Union Director Craig Leedham Placed on Leave
Divisive Teachers Union Director Placed on Leave
March 6, 2012
By Will Carless
Voice of San Diego
Craig Leedham, the outspoken and controversial executive director of the San Diego Education Association, is no longer working at the union’s headquarters in Mission Valley.
The union confirmed Tuesday afternoon that Leedham had been placed on leave. “San Diego Education Association Executive Director Craig Leedham is on paid administrative leave. It is inappropriate for further comment at this time about what is an internal matter,” President Bill Freeman said in a brief statement.
The union didn't explain the reasons behind the move.
As the SDEA’s top staffer, Leedham has been a divisive figure. Along with SDEA Vice President Camille Zombro, he has been credited with pushing the union towards a more hard-line, confrontational approach in its dealings with the San Diego Unified School District.
Leedham was hired as the union’s executive director in 2009. According to the SDEA’s tax records, he received total compensation of $226,367 in 2010.
As I outlined in this story last month, the union has become increasingly isolated in recent years, and former SDEA leaders have publicly voiced concern about the union’s confrontational approach.
In more than a dozen interviews for that story, people who have worked or still work with Leedham described him as "nasty," "aggressive," "profane" and "paranoid."
Three sources interviewed for that story also described an outburst by Leedham at a multi-union committee as indicative of his divisive behavior:
At a union committee meeting in 2010, Leedham exploded with rage at a school district staffer who was whispering while he was making a presentation, three people present at the meeting said.
Leedham launched into a profanity-laden tirade at the staffer that shocked the union reps present in the room, the three sources said.
"I've been in this business for more than three decades, and I've never seen anything like it. It was totally unprofessional," said one of the sources, who did not want to be named because of their ongoing relationship with the teachers union.
Former Vice President Mark Capitelli had this to say about Leedham when I interviewed him for last month’s story:
"He has his view of the world. For Craig, it's either black or white. You're either with him, or you're against him," Capitelli said. "I wouldn't put him as my friend — ever — but if I was in trouble I'd want to have him on my side. You want the nastiest lawyer around, but you don't want to eat dinner with him afterwards."
The decision to place Leedham on leave was made by the SDEA’s board of directors and comes at a crucial time in district-union negotiations.
Last week, District Superintendent Bill Kowba and school board President John Lee Evans held a press conference in which they called on the union to get in contact as soon as possible. District leaders want the union to consider a slew of concessions that could save as much as $50 million and, they say, could allow the district to avoid hundreds of layoffs.
So far, the union hasn’t budged.
Meanwhile, there have been grumblings about the union's leadership from local teachers in the wake of the union’s apparent backtracking on its cooperation with the district to extend the March 15 deadline for issuing layoff notices to teachers.
Freeman, the president, at first supported the legislation. Indeed, the bill was created by Assemblyman Marty Block after Freeman called Block and pledged support for it.
A day after putting out a press release saying it would support the legislation, however, the SDEA backed off, saying it wouldn’t support the bill without a guarantee that no teachers would be laid off.
Then the union again changed its position. Freeman told San Diego CityBeat that the SDEA would not oppose the legislation, but stopped short of saying the union would support it.
These erratic shifts in direction have led individual teachers to call on the union to sharpen its message and to reinstate support for the legislation, which could lead to a delay in teachers being issued pink slips.
March 6, 2012
By Will Carless
Voice of San Diego
Craig Leedham, the outspoken and controversial executive director of the San Diego Education Association, is no longer working at the union’s headquarters in Mission Valley.
The union confirmed Tuesday afternoon that Leedham had been placed on leave. “San Diego Education Association Executive Director Craig Leedham is on paid administrative leave. It is inappropriate for further comment at this time about what is an internal matter,” President Bill Freeman said in a brief statement.
The union didn't explain the reasons behind the move.
As the SDEA’s top staffer, Leedham has been a divisive figure. Along with SDEA Vice President Camille Zombro, he has been credited with pushing the union towards a more hard-line, confrontational approach in its dealings with the San Diego Unified School District.
Leedham was hired as the union’s executive director in 2009. According to the SDEA’s tax records, he received total compensation of $226,367 in 2010.
As I outlined in this story last month, the union has become increasingly isolated in recent years, and former SDEA leaders have publicly voiced concern about the union’s confrontational approach.
In more than a dozen interviews for that story, people who have worked or still work with Leedham described him as "nasty," "aggressive," "profane" and "paranoid."
Three sources interviewed for that story also described an outburst by Leedham at a multi-union committee as indicative of his divisive behavior:
At a union committee meeting in 2010, Leedham exploded with rage at a school district staffer who was whispering while he was making a presentation, three people present at the meeting said.
Leedham launched into a profanity-laden tirade at the staffer that shocked the union reps present in the room, the three sources said.
"I've been in this business for more than three decades, and I've never seen anything like it. It was totally unprofessional," said one of the sources, who did not want to be named because of their ongoing relationship with the teachers union.
Former Vice President Mark Capitelli had this to say about Leedham when I interviewed him for last month’s story:
"He has his view of the world. For Craig, it's either black or white. You're either with him, or you're against him," Capitelli said. "I wouldn't put him as my friend — ever — but if I was in trouble I'd want to have him on my side. You want the nastiest lawyer around, but you don't want to eat dinner with him afterwards."
The decision to place Leedham on leave was made by the SDEA’s board of directors and comes at a crucial time in district-union negotiations.
Last week, District Superintendent Bill Kowba and school board President John Lee Evans held a press conference in which they called on the union to get in contact as soon as possible. District leaders want the union to consider a slew of concessions that could save as much as $50 million and, they say, could allow the district to avoid hundreds of layoffs.
So far, the union hasn’t budged.
Meanwhile, there have been grumblings about the union's leadership from local teachers in the wake of the union’s apparent backtracking on its cooperation with the district to extend the March 15 deadline for issuing layoff notices to teachers.
Freeman, the president, at first supported the legislation. Indeed, the bill was created by Assemblyman Marty Block after Freeman called Block and pledged support for it.
A day after putting out a press release saying it would support the legislation, however, the SDEA backed off, saying it wouldn’t support the bill without a guarantee that no teachers would be laid off.
Then the union again changed its position. Freeman told San Diego CityBeat that the SDEA would not oppose the legislation, but stopped short of saying the union would support it.
These erratic shifts in direction have led individual teachers to call on the union to sharpen its message and to reinstate support for the legislation, which could lead to a delay in teachers being issued pink slips.
Friday, February 24, 2012
How isolated and hardline has SDEA become?
The San Diego Education Association since 2008 has:
1) stopped attending monthly meetings with district leaders;
2) left committees where it met with other unions;
3) barred union staff from meeting informally with district staff;
4) drifted apart from its retired members, forbidding them to hold meetings in the union building.
SDEA Executive Director Craig Leedham and Vice President Camille Zombro are believed to be driving the union's hardline stance. Of course, it's Emma Leheny, the CTA head counsel in Burlingame, who lines up the support at the highest levels of CTA.
Teachers Union Turmoil: San Diego Explained
Feb 23, 2012.
by Will Carless
Voice of San Diego
School district officials say the district’s finances will be made or broken by local labor unions in the next couple of years. Without concessions from the teachers union on pay and benefits, district officials say they will have to lay off more than 1,100 employees next year. With the concessions, district bean counters say they won’t have to lay anyone off.
Subscribe to the Morning Report.
But the prospect of getting concessions from the teachers union, the most powerful organization in local education, seems slim...
The Teachers Union Gets Tough, and Isolated
Will Carless
Voice of San Diego
February 6, 2012
The teachers union doesn't talk.
The San Diego Education Association's leaders once met monthly with San Diego Unified's superintendent. Those regular meetings no longer happen. Union workers used to meet routinely with district staff, but in 2008 the SDEA leadership banned them from doing so.
The teachers union has walked out on joint committees with other employee unions, and it's even drifted apart from its retired members' group, which no longer meets at the SDEA offices.
Its employees and board members have been instructed not to talk to the media. Its leaders won't answer questions. They won't even answer the phone. Apart from a threatening late-night phone call from union vice president Camille Zombro — "If you want a relationship with us going forward, you won't write this story," — the union's top leaders wouldn't comment for this story.
But former teachers union leaders and staff are talking. So are representatives from other unions that do business with the school district and whose members have worked alongside the SDEA. And so are district officials who have watched the union's attitude and stance thicken over the last few years.
Here's what they say: Driven by charismatically tough, old-school leaders, the union has metamorphosed into a hardline organization that's become ever-more confrontational.
Staff who stood up against the hardline approach have felt compelled to leave the union in recent years. That's left the SDEA increasingly deaf to criticism of either its politics or its methodology, former union officials said. In short, it's become a more insular, less reasonable organization, they said.
This shift in the union's philosophy couldn't come at a more critical time for San Diego Unified.
Late last year, mild-mannered school Superintendent Bill Kowba grabbed headlines when he announced the district might go insolvent. Despite surviving the fiscal year, district projections show a $150 million operating deficit over the next two years.
Almost two-thirds of that $150 million projected deficit is attributable to a union-negotiated deal that restores five unpaid days off and grants teachers a series of pay increases starting this year.
Concessions on these two points, the district argues, are its only realistic way out of the current financial crisis.
Talking is therefore essential, especially since the more-than-8,000-member-strong teachers union dominates labor negotiations. But at the district, there is little hope that the union will engage in negotiations any more in the crucial coming months than it has thus far.
"I think their answer is just 'No,' before they even know what the question is," said Donis Coronel, who spent years negotiating for the district and now works with the union that represents district administrators. "They've kinda become the bullies on the block."
The teachers union's shift has also been catalyzed by factors beyond its leadership.
A frustrating relationship with the district and a stagnating economy have led politically active teachers and parents to distrust San Diego Unified's ability to provide an accurate assessment of its budget.
For several years, the district provided inaccurate or untimely information to unions about the state of its finances. Suspicion has been exacerbated by the district's budget process, which leads to wild fluctuations between projections and reality. Teachers and parents have become tired of hearing predictions of doom and gloom that never seem to come true.
The teachers union has played to that distrust, galvanizing contempt for the district's bean counters and propagating a mantra that the district still has secret pots of money hidden away.
But for some former top officials at the SDEA, that message stopped ringing true a long time ago.
Forced Out by Dogma
Former SDEA Vice President Marc Capitelli stepped down from his leadership position at the teachers union about a year ago.
He said he couldn't keep repeating the SDEA's claims about the district's budget in good conscience.
For years, Capitelli said, the union's instant response to San Diego Unified's woeful budget projections has been to accuse the district of making up numbers and hiding money.
Bill Freeman, the SDEA president, used that line of attack in a September interview about the budget.
"They use fake numbers," Freeman said. "We don't know where the district is right now because of a lack of honesty providing data."
Last month, after Kowba sent out a district-wide memo spelling out the district's latest budget woes, the union responded immediately. In a letter to members, Freeman lambasted the superintendent for putting out misleading, premature forecasts that painted a worst-case scenario.
Capitelli said he doesn't think that's an intelligent or productive way to do business. Nor does he believe it's the truth.
The district is fiscally incompetent, certainly, Capitelli said. But he believes at this point it has also cut out most, if not all, of the fat it may once have had and is now deadly serious about its deficits.
"I could no longer honestly say that the district was hiding money," Capitelli said. "At one point, we had to realize that what the state had done to education funding was real. There aren't just piles of money lying around."
This stance put Capitelli at odds with the union's leaders. The message at the union was clear and rigid, he said, but he wasn't willing to keep trumpeting it. So he had to leave.
Increasingly, the union has been less willing to negotiate or even discuss realities outside its dogma, Capitelli said. It has gradually closed itself off from dissent, he said.
This shift started gaining steam in the mid-2000s. Former SDEA Executive Director Robin Whitlow said she remembers a time when the district and teachers union worked together to solve San Diego Unified's budget problems.
Throughout her tenure, Whitlow and the sitting union president held monthly meetings with the superintendent and other district committees. Whitlow said she was in constant contact with district staff, negotiators and leaders. They spoke every few days by phone, she said.
Will Surbrook, the district's former chief negotiator, concurred.
"Even in the worst of times we would have those monthly meetings," Surbrook said. "A lot of things were accomplished in those meetings, they were very productive."
That era of cooperation was fading fast when she left the union in 2006, Whitlow said.
A new wave of hardliners led by former teacher Camille Zombro had come to dominate the SDEA board, Whitlow said. She increasingly felt there was no place for her style of bargaining.
So she quit.
"They would've fired me if I hadn't," she said.
Whitlow, who is now the chief negotiator at the Administrators Association of San Diego, the union that represents school administrators, said she's watched in dismay as the teachers union has become further entrenched in its attitude of non-negotiation.
An education union's job is to educate its members about the financial realities facing the school district, Whitlow said. That means being honest with the union's members about what they can do to work with the district to forge possible solutions.
The teachers union isn't doing that, she said. Instead, Whitlow said, by reiterating the argument that the budget situation is fine and the district is being dishonest, it's keeping its members "enslaved" to inaccurate information, cheapening the negotiating process.
The Scorned Teacher
Photo by Sam Hodgson
SDEA vice president Camille Zombro at a board meeting in January.
Ask former SDEA leaders, other union representatives and current district officials where this shift started and they all point to one person: Zombro.
Several people who have worked with Zombro said her distrust of the district started back in the early 2000s, when she was still working as a teacher at Baker Elementary School in Mountain View.
Elected as the school's site representative for the teachers union, Zombro aggressively pursued workers' rights, falling afoul of both the school's principal and district leadership.
In 2004, she and eight other district teachers were involuntarily transferred from their sites to new schools. The move, widely considered a punishment for her activism, angered Zombro and forged a suspicion of the district that has stuck with her, said Don Crawford, who worked at the SDEA for 11 years before retiring in 2008.
"She was mistreated and that made her angry," Crawford said.
From those early days, Zombro worked her way up the union ladder, eventually becoming SDEA president in 2006. Her style of leadership became clear during a 2008 dispute between the union and the district.
After the school board reneged on an agreement with the union, a furious Zombro responded by canceling all meetings between the district's human resources staff and her union team. A letter was drafted for employees to sign, stating they would no longer be attending these regular meetings.
Those meetings had previously served as a useful forum for union and district staff to settle disputes in an informal setting, Crawford said. He refused to sign, saying the move would be counterproductive.
"That's indicative of an approach that's more directly confrontational," Crawford said.
A few months later, Crawford retired.
Soon after that, Zombro gained a key ally in the form of the SDEA's divisive new executive director, Craig Leedham.
'You're Either With Him, or You're Against Him'
In more than a dozen interviews for this story, people who have worked or still work with Leedham described him as "nasty," "aggressive," "profane" and "paranoid."
Leedham was hired in 2009 after the SDEA went through two executive directors in quick succession. He fit perfectly because his hardline political philosophy aligned with Zombro's, said Capitelli, who helped hire him.
"He has his view of the world. For Craig, it's either black or white. You're either with him, or you're against him," Capitelli said. "I wouldn't put him as my friend — ever — but if I was in trouble I'd want to have him on my side. You want the nastiest lawyer around, but you don't want to eat dinner with him afterwards."
Zombro stepped down as president of the SDEA in 2010 and now serves as the union's vice president. As executive director, however, Leedham has taken Zombro's fervor a step further, Capitelli and other former and current union officials said.
They said he has created an atmosphere of tension and even fear among union staff, who have been warned that they must represent the district's hardline philosophy.
That high-strung approach has at times spilled outside of the four walls of the teachers union.
At a union committee meeting in 2010, Leedham exploded with rage at a school district staffer who was whispering while he was making a presentation, three people present at the meeting said.
Leedham launched into a profanity-laden tirade at the staffer that shocked the union reps present in the room, the three sources said.
"I've been in this business for more than three decades, and I've never seen anything like it. It was totally unprofessional," said one of the sources, who did not want to be named because of their ongoing relationship with the teachers union.
Leedham and Zombro both declined to be interviewed for this story.
Fomenting Distrust
Photo by Sam Hodgson
San Diego Unified CFO Ron Little presents the district's budget to the school board in January.
If the SDEA's new direction has been driven by leaders like Zombro and Leedham, the wheels for that move have been greased by the district's own actions.
Through a combination of ineptitude, poor communication and a failure to properly explain its complex budget process, district leaders have given the SDEA fertile ground to attack their credibility.
School board trustee Richard Barrera remembers, for example, the budget negotiations of his first term in 2008.
"Literally, in one week, there was a revision of our numbers that made a $180 million problem turn into a $100 million problem almost overnight," Barrera said.
Revisions and recalculations like these cemented the view for the union's leaders that the district didn't have a good handle on its finances, Barrera said.
These budget faux pas were also being noticed by the union's members.
Deborah Hoeltgen, a current SDEA board member, said the notion that the union's leaders have pushed the union in a certain direction is false.
Hoeltgen said the power wielded by the union's executive director and president is overplayed. She said the organization is truly run by its members, who control the union's bargaining tactics. Those members have spent the last few years getting increasingly upset and frustrated with the district, Hoeltgen said.
Every year for the last few years, the district has issued hundreds of pink slips to teachers, only to then rescind the bulk of the layoff notices a few weeks later. That's grated on teachers, Hoeltgen said.
"They're pissed off," she said.
The rise of the union's new leaders also coincided with the ouster of controversial superintendent Alan Bersin, whose near-decade of reforms fueled dissent among teachers during the state's last financial crisis.
The "Bersin Era" as it is referred to in San Diego Unified circles, caused deep divisions between the district's leadership and its staff. Though many of the senior officials who served under him have now moved on, the wounds inflicted by Bersin's tenure are yet to fully heal.
More recently, California's complicated budget procedures have helped perpetuate the district's image among teachers as a bumbling, misinformed bureaucracy.
For each of the last four years, the district's initial budget forecasts have predicted doom, gloom and hundreds of teacher layoffs. Each year, thanks to a combination of risky budgeting by the district and financial shenanigans by the state, the eventual pain has been limited.
The union has responded by calling out the district's accountants as charlatans, arguing that the district has consistently lied about its budget in order to win public approval for layoffs.
That's resonated with teachers and parents alike, who often show up at school board meetings to boo and hiss as financial staffers make their presentations.
This atmosphere of distrust has reached fever pitch in recent weeks as the state has continued to cut into education funding and the school board has again produced a budget calling for more than 1,000 layoffs.
When Times Get Tough, Get Tougher
File Photo by Sam Hodgson
Current SDEA President Bill Freeman has issued strongly worded rebuttals to the district's latest budget projections.
Last October, as district officials started to raise the specter of insolvency, the union barely blinked. It's so far refused to come to the bargaining table and shows no signs of changing that stance.
Political consultant Larry Remer, who has worked extensively with the union, said its position has served it well. It's currently sitting on a contract that guarantees teachers raises as Gov. Jerry Brown threatens billions in education cuts.
And despite the district's threats, only a couple of hundred teachers have actually ended up losing their jobs, Remer said. Instead, the brunt of layoffs has been borne by classified employees like landscapers and custodians.
"The classified union has been a lot more reasonable and what good has it done them?" Remer said.
But as the teachers union remains silent, the chorus of voices speaking out against its dogmatic methodology, even within labor circles, has started to grow.
Jeannie Steeg, former executive director of the school administrators union, said the district's senior financial team isn't just frustrated, it's seriously worried about keeping the district afloat over the next couple of years.
"There's no hidden agenda," Steeg said. "The teachers union has to, at some point, realize that these numbers are real."
Whitlow, Capitelli, members of the school board, senior district management and even officials at the administrators union couldn't agree more. They said the time has come for the SDEA to stop pretending and to start engaging in the realities of the district's crisis.
For their part, the teachers union could be thinking the same thing.
But they're not talking.
1) stopped attending monthly meetings with district leaders;
2) left committees where it met with other unions;
3) barred union staff from meeting informally with district staff;
4) drifted apart from its retired members, forbidding them to hold meetings in the union building.
SDEA Executive Director Craig Leedham and Vice President Camille Zombro are believed to be driving the union's hardline stance. Of course, it's Emma Leheny, the CTA head counsel in Burlingame, who lines up the support at the highest levels of CTA.
Teachers Union Turmoil: San Diego Explained
Feb 23, 2012.
by Will Carless
Voice of San Diego
School district officials say the district’s finances will be made or broken by local labor unions in the next couple of years. Without concessions from the teachers union on pay and benefits, district officials say they will have to lay off more than 1,100 employees next year. With the concessions, district bean counters say they won’t have to lay anyone off.
Subscribe to the Morning Report.
But the prospect of getting concessions from the teachers union, the most powerful organization in local education, seems slim...
The Teachers Union Gets Tough, and Isolated
Will Carless
Voice of San Diego
February 6, 2012
The teachers union doesn't talk.
The San Diego Education Association's leaders once met monthly with San Diego Unified's superintendent. Those regular meetings no longer happen. Union workers used to meet routinely with district staff, but in 2008 the SDEA leadership banned them from doing so.
The teachers union has walked out on joint committees with other employee unions, and it's even drifted apart from its retired members' group, which no longer meets at the SDEA offices.
Its employees and board members have been instructed not to talk to the media. Its leaders won't answer questions. They won't even answer the phone. Apart from a threatening late-night phone call from union vice president Camille Zombro — "If you want a relationship with us going forward, you won't write this story," — the union's top leaders wouldn't comment for this story.
But former teachers union leaders and staff are talking. So are representatives from other unions that do business with the school district and whose members have worked alongside the SDEA. And so are district officials who have watched the union's attitude and stance thicken over the last few years.
Here's what they say: Driven by charismatically tough, old-school leaders, the union has metamorphosed into a hardline organization that's become ever-more confrontational.
Staff who stood up against the hardline approach have felt compelled to leave the union in recent years. That's left the SDEA increasingly deaf to criticism of either its politics or its methodology, former union officials said. In short, it's become a more insular, less reasonable organization, they said.
This shift in the union's philosophy couldn't come at a more critical time for San Diego Unified.
Late last year, mild-mannered school Superintendent Bill Kowba grabbed headlines when he announced the district might go insolvent. Despite surviving the fiscal year, district projections show a $150 million operating deficit over the next two years.
Almost two-thirds of that $150 million projected deficit is attributable to a union-negotiated deal that restores five unpaid days off and grants teachers a series of pay increases starting this year.
Concessions on these two points, the district argues, are its only realistic way out of the current financial crisis.
Talking is therefore essential, especially since the more-than-8,000-member-strong teachers union dominates labor negotiations. But at the district, there is little hope that the union will engage in negotiations any more in the crucial coming months than it has thus far.
"I think their answer is just 'No,' before they even know what the question is," said Donis Coronel, who spent years negotiating for the district and now works with the union that represents district administrators. "They've kinda become the bullies on the block."
The teachers union's shift has also been catalyzed by factors beyond its leadership.
A frustrating relationship with the district and a stagnating economy have led politically active teachers and parents to distrust San Diego Unified's ability to provide an accurate assessment of its budget.
For several years, the district provided inaccurate or untimely information to unions about the state of its finances. Suspicion has been exacerbated by the district's budget process, which leads to wild fluctuations between projections and reality. Teachers and parents have become tired of hearing predictions of doom and gloom that never seem to come true.
The teachers union has played to that distrust, galvanizing contempt for the district's bean counters and propagating a mantra that the district still has secret pots of money hidden away.
But for some former top officials at the SDEA, that message stopped ringing true a long time ago.
Forced Out by Dogma
Former SDEA Vice President Marc Capitelli stepped down from his leadership position at the teachers union about a year ago.
He said he couldn't keep repeating the SDEA's claims about the district's budget in good conscience.
For years, Capitelli said, the union's instant response to San Diego Unified's woeful budget projections has been to accuse the district of making up numbers and hiding money.
Bill Freeman, the SDEA president, used that line of attack in a September interview about the budget.
"They use fake numbers," Freeman said. "We don't know where the district is right now because of a lack of honesty providing data."
Last month, after Kowba sent out a district-wide memo spelling out the district's latest budget woes, the union responded immediately. In a letter to members, Freeman lambasted the superintendent for putting out misleading, premature forecasts that painted a worst-case scenario.
Capitelli said he doesn't think that's an intelligent or productive way to do business. Nor does he believe it's the truth.
The district is fiscally incompetent, certainly, Capitelli said. But he believes at this point it has also cut out most, if not all, of the fat it may once have had and is now deadly serious about its deficits.
"I could no longer honestly say that the district was hiding money," Capitelli said. "At one point, we had to realize that what the state had done to education funding was real. There aren't just piles of money lying around."
This stance put Capitelli at odds with the union's leaders. The message at the union was clear and rigid, he said, but he wasn't willing to keep trumpeting it. So he had to leave.
Increasingly, the union has been less willing to negotiate or even discuss realities outside its dogma, Capitelli said. It has gradually closed itself off from dissent, he said.
This shift started gaining steam in the mid-2000s. Former SDEA Executive Director Robin Whitlow said she remembers a time when the district and teachers union worked together to solve San Diego Unified's budget problems.
Throughout her tenure, Whitlow and the sitting union president held monthly meetings with the superintendent and other district committees. Whitlow said she was in constant contact with district staff, negotiators and leaders. They spoke every few days by phone, she said.
Will Surbrook, the district's former chief negotiator, concurred.
"Even in the worst of times we would have those monthly meetings," Surbrook said. "A lot of things were accomplished in those meetings, they were very productive."
That era of cooperation was fading fast when she left the union in 2006, Whitlow said.
A new wave of hardliners led by former teacher Camille Zombro had come to dominate the SDEA board, Whitlow said. She increasingly felt there was no place for her style of bargaining.
So she quit.
"They would've fired me if I hadn't," she said.
Whitlow, who is now the chief negotiator at the Administrators Association of San Diego, the union that represents school administrators, said she's watched in dismay as the teachers union has become further entrenched in its attitude of non-negotiation.
An education union's job is to educate its members about the financial realities facing the school district, Whitlow said. That means being honest with the union's members about what they can do to work with the district to forge possible solutions.
The teachers union isn't doing that, she said. Instead, Whitlow said, by reiterating the argument that the budget situation is fine and the district is being dishonest, it's keeping its members "enslaved" to inaccurate information, cheapening the negotiating process.
The Scorned Teacher
Photo by Sam Hodgson
SDEA vice president Camille Zombro at a board meeting in January.
Ask former SDEA leaders, other union representatives and current district officials where this shift started and they all point to one person: Zombro.
Several people who have worked with Zombro said her distrust of the district started back in the early 2000s, when she was still working as a teacher at Baker Elementary School in Mountain View.
Elected as the school's site representative for the teachers union, Zombro aggressively pursued workers' rights, falling afoul of both the school's principal and district leadership.
In 2004, she and eight other district teachers were involuntarily transferred from their sites to new schools. The move, widely considered a punishment for her activism, angered Zombro and forged a suspicion of the district that has stuck with her, said Don Crawford, who worked at the SDEA for 11 years before retiring in 2008.
"She was mistreated and that made her angry," Crawford said.
From those early days, Zombro worked her way up the union ladder, eventually becoming SDEA president in 2006. Her style of leadership became clear during a 2008 dispute between the union and the district.
After the school board reneged on an agreement with the union, a furious Zombro responded by canceling all meetings between the district's human resources staff and her union team. A letter was drafted for employees to sign, stating they would no longer be attending these regular meetings.
Those meetings had previously served as a useful forum for union and district staff to settle disputes in an informal setting, Crawford said. He refused to sign, saying the move would be counterproductive.
"That's indicative of an approach that's more directly confrontational," Crawford said.
A few months later, Crawford retired.
Soon after that, Zombro gained a key ally in the form of the SDEA's divisive new executive director, Craig Leedham.
'You're Either With Him, or You're Against Him'
In more than a dozen interviews for this story, people who have worked or still work with Leedham described him as "nasty," "aggressive," "profane" and "paranoid."
Leedham was hired in 2009 after the SDEA went through two executive directors in quick succession. He fit perfectly because his hardline political philosophy aligned with Zombro's, said Capitelli, who helped hire him.
"He has his view of the world. For Craig, it's either black or white. You're either with him, or you're against him," Capitelli said. "I wouldn't put him as my friend — ever — but if I was in trouble I'd want to have him on my side. You want the nastiest lawyer around, but you don't want to eat dinner with him afterwards."
Zombro stepped down as president of the SDEA in 2010 and now serves as the union's vice president. As executive director, however, Leedham has taken Zombro's fervor a step further, Capitelli and other former and current union officials said.
They said he has created an atmosphere of tension and even fear among union staff, who have been warned that they must represent the district's hardline philosophy.
That high-strung approach has at times spilled outside of the four walls of the teachers union.
At a union committee meeting in 2010, Leedham exploded with rage at a school district staffer who was whispering while he was making a presentation, three people present at the meeting said.
Leedham launched into a profanity-laden tirade at the staffer that shocked the union reps present in the room, the three sources said.
"I've been in this business for more than three decades, and I've never seen anything like it. It was totally unprofessional," said one of the sources, who did not want to be named because of their ongoing relationship with the teachers union.
Leedham and Zombro both declined to be interviewed for this story.
Fomenting Distrust
Photo by Sam Hodgson
San Diego Unified CFO Ron Little presents the district's budget to the school board in January.
If the SDEA's new direction has been driven by leaders like Zombro and Leedham, the wheels for that move have been greased by the district's own actions.
Through a combination of ineptitude, poor communication and a failure to properly explain its complex budget process, district leaders have given the SDEA fertile ground to attack their credibility.
School board trustee Richard Barrera remembers, for example, the budget negotiations of his first term in 2008.
"Literally, in one week, there was a revision of our numbers that made a $180 million problem turn into a $100 million problem almost overnight," Barrera said.
Revisions and recalculations like these cemented the view for the union's leaders that the district didn't have a good handle on its finances, Barrera said.
These budget faux pas were also being noticed by the union's members.
Deborah Hoeltgen, a current SDEA board member, said the notion that the union's leaders have pushed the union in a certain direction is false.
Hoeltgen said the power wielded by the union's executive director and president is overplayed. She said the organization is truly run by its members, who control the union's bargaining tactics. Those members have spent the last few years getting increasingly upset and frustrated with the district, Hoeltgen said.
Every year for the last few years, the district has issued hundreds of pink slips to teachers, only to then rescind the bulk of the layoff notices a few weeks later. That's grated on teachers, Hoeltgen said.
"They're pissed off," she said.
The rise of the union's new leaders also coincided with the ouster of controversial superintendent Alan Bersin, whose near-decade of reforms fueled dissent among teachers during the state's last financial crisis.
The "Bersin Era" as it is referred to in San Diego Unified circles, caused deep divisions between the district's leadership and its staff. Though many of the senior officials who served under him have now moved on, the wounds inflicted by Bersin's tenure are yet to fully heal.
More recently, California's complicated budget procedures have helped perpetuate the district's image among teachers as a bumbling, misinformed bureaucracy.
For each of the last four years, the district's initial budget forecasts have predicted doom, gloom and hundreds of teacher layoffs. Each year, thanks to a combination of risky budgeting by the district and financial shenanigans by the state, the eventual pain has been limited.
The union has responded by calling out the district's accountants as charlatans, arguing that the district has consistently lied about its budget in order to win public approval for layoffs.
That's resonated with teachers and parents alike, who often show up at school board meetings to boo and hiss as financial staffers make their presentations.
This atmosphere of distrust has reached fever pitch in recent weeks as the state has continued to cut into education funding and the school board has again produced a budget calling for more than 1,000 layoffs.
When Times Get Tough, Get Tougher
File Photo by Sam Hodgson
Current SDEA President Bill Freeman has issued strongly worded rebuttals to the district's latest budget projections.
Last October, as district officials started to raise the specter of insolvency, the union barely blinked. It's so far refused to come to the bargaining table and shows no signs of changing that stance.
Political consultant Larry Remer, who has worked extensively with the union, said its position has served it well. It's currently sitting on a contract that guarantees teachers raises as Gov. Jerry Brown threatens billions in education cuts.
And despite the district's threats, only a couple of hundred teachers have actually ended up losing their jobs, Remer said. Instead, the brunt of layoffs has been borne by classified employees like landscapers and custodians.
"The classified union has been a lot more reasonable and what good has it done them?" Remer said.
But as the teachers union remains silent, the chorus of voices speaking out against its dogmatic methodology, even within labor circles, has started to grow.
Jeannie Steeg, former executive director of the school administrators union, said the district's senior financial team isn't just frustrated, it's seriously worried about keeping the district afloat over the next couple of years.
"There's no hidden agenda," Steeg said. "The teachers union has to, at some point, realize that these numbers are real."
Whitlow, Capitelli, members of the school board, senior district management and even officials at the administrators union couldn't agree more. They said the time has come for the SDEA to stop pretending and to start engaging in the realities of the district's crisis.
For their part, the teachers union could be thinking the same thing.
But they're not talking.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
A chance to listen to Catherine Lhamon, one of the attorneys who won case about massive teacher layoffs at low-income schools (also Camille Zombro)
I attended this event, but we didn't find out why SDEA has added a vice-president. (See comment below.)
Talking Teacher Layoffs
by Emily Alpert
Voice of San Diego
Aug 22, 2011
When teachers get laid off, disadvantaged schools often get hit hardest because they tend to have the newest teachers, and the newest teachers usually get laid off first.
Civil rights groups launched a suit to try to curb that phenomenon in Los Angeles, arguing that if teachers were laid off strictly by seniority, the neediest kids would lose the most.
Los Angeles worked out a controversial settlement that spared some schools from layoffs but worsened them elsewhere. But what will happen here? Though teacher layoffs have been lessened, hundreds of San Diego teachers are still getting the ax, resulting in big disruptions at schools.
Come listen to Camille Zombro, vice president of the local teachers union; Catherine Lhamon, one of the attorneys who lodged the Los Angeles case; and your humble education reporter (me) talk about teacher layoffs, their many impacts, and the debate over whether schools could find a better way at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law this Wednesday night.
There will be a reception from 5:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. and the panel will run from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. The event is sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego and Imperial Counties and the San Diego Lawyer chapter of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy...
COMMENT
Emily, maybe you can tell us readers about the position of Vice President at San Diego Education Association. Is this a new position paid for by union dues? Is it a full-time job? Is the person annually elected to the position as the President is? When was this position established?
I had always understood that after an SDEA President completes two terms in office, he or she returns the the rank-and-file and the classroom. But here is Camille Zombro, SDEA Vice President after already having been President for two years, filling in for SDEA President Bill Freeman at your roundtable. What's with that?
Talking Teacher Layoffs
by Emily Alpert
Voice of San Diego
Aug 22, 2011
When teachers get laid off, disadvantaged schools often get hit hardest because they tend to have the newest teachers, and the newest teachers usually get laid off first.
Civil rights groups launched a suit to try to curb that phenomenon in Los Angeles, arguing that if teachers were laid off strictly by seniority, the neediest kids would lose the most.
Los Angeles worked out a controversial settlement that spared some schools from layoffs but worsened them elsewhere. But what will happen here? Though teacher layoffs have been lessened, hundreds of San Diego teachers are still getting the ax, resulting in big disruptions at schools.
Come listen to Camille Zombro, vice president of the local teachers union; Catherine Lhamon, one of the attorneys who lodged the Los Angeles case; and your humble education reporter (me) talk about teacher layoffs, their many impacts, and the debate over whether schools could find a better way at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law this Wednesday night.
There will be a reception from 5:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. and the panel will run from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. The event is sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego and Imperial Counties and the San Diego Lawyer chapter of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy...
COMMENT
Emily, maybe you can tell us readers about the position of Vice President at San Diego Education Association. Is this a new position paid for by union dues? Is it a full-time job? Is the person annually elected to the position as the President is? When was this position established?
I had always understood that after an SDEA President completes two terms in office, he or she returns the the rank-and-file and the classroom. But here is Camille Zombro, SDEA Vice President after already having been President for two years, filling in for SDEA President Bill Freeman at your roundtable. What's with that?
Wednesday, June 02, 2010
Camille Zombro is wrong: schools need to do something about substandard teachers
It's not necessary to fire weak teachers; they can be useful, but they shouldn't have full charge of a classroom.
School Board Election Comes At Precarious Time For District
By Ana Tintocalis
June 2, 2010
...The powerful union has thrown its support behind Scott Barnett, a Republican who used to be the head of the San Diego County Taxpayers Association.
Zombro believes Barnett will reign in school spending so that it focuses on the basics and not on big reforms.
“(Quality education) is not a flashy program or a big consultant or a big splash. What it takes is a positive place for children to learn, for parents to interact with their schools, and for teachers to teach.”
Whatever the outcome, the board will have to manage the second largest school district in the state with a lot less money. It will also have to push for better academic results while dealing with a persistent achievement gap.
School Board Election Comes At Precarious Time For District
By Ana Tintocalis
June 2, 2010
...The powerful union has thrown its support behind Scott Barnett, a Republican who used to be the head of the San Diego County Taxpayers Association.
Zombro believes Barnett will reign in school spending so that it focuses on the basics and not on big reforms.
“(Quality education) is not a flashy program or a big consultant or a big splash. What it takes is a positive place for children to learn, for parents to interact with their schools, and for teachers to teach.”
Whatever the outcome, the board will have to manage the second largest school district in the state with a lot less money. It will also have to push for better academic results while dealing with a persistent achievement gap.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Four SDUSD Democratic board members find the courage to stand up to the teachers union
John De Beck always had the courage to criticize the teachers union; citizens can rejoice now that Richard Barrera, John Lee Evans and Shelia Jackson have done the same.
Camille Zombro and Jim Groth of the San Diego Education Association (SDEA) might want to pull their heads out of the ground and realize that its time to acknowledge the real world: there's a limit to how long citizens will continue to bow to the arbitrary demands of CTA.
Pressing Labor for Cuts Triggers 'Surreal' Shakeup on School Board
Voice of San Diego
Feb 11, 2010
By EMILY ALPERT
After another plan failed to dig up enough savings, San Diego Unified is now under even more pressure to squeeze employees to balance its budget.
The prolonged budget crisis has put some board members at odds with the same unions that helped to elect them -- and jumbled the usual dynamics of the politicized board.
Longtime labor ally Richard Barrera is seeking deeper concessions from the teachers union, along with John Lee Evans, who was elected on a pledge to protect teachers. John de Beck and Shelia Jackson, who have often disagreed on labor issues in recent years, are both pushing the idea of progressive salary cuts that fall harder on employees who earn more...
Camille Zombro and Jim Groth of the San Diego Education Association (SDEA) might want to pull their heads out of the ground and realize that its time to acknowledge the real world: there's a limit to how long citizens will continue to bow to the arbitrary demands of CTA.
Pressing Labor for Cuts Triggers 'Surreal' Shakeup on School Board
Voice of San Diego
Feb 11, 2010
By EMILY ALPERT
After another plan failed to dig up enough savings, San Diego Unified is now under even more pressure to squeeze employees to balance its budget.
The prolonged budget crisis has put some board members at odds with the same unions that helped to elect them -- and jumbled the usual dynamics of the politicized board.
Longtime labor ally Richard Barrera is seeking deeper concessions from the teachers union, along with John Lee Evans, who was elected on a pledge to protect teachers. John de Beck and Shelia Jackson, who have often disagreed on labor issues in recent years, are both pushing the idea of progressive salary cuts that fall harder on employees who earn more...
Monday, October 12, 2009
John de Beck tells it like it is: SDUSD board screwed up by keeping surplus teachers and raising class size
The funding problem with schools
By John de Beck
SDNN
...Last year the board decided not to lay off teachers, and about 185 remained on the payroll, despite the fact they did not have teaching stations or children. (I will use the term, “surplus teachers” to identify these people.)
In addition the district used savings that increasing class size would provide (reducing the number of teachers needed), to balance our “tentative” 2009-10 budget.
So we had two conflicting problems and solutions. One was (to realize any savings) that any remaining surplus teachers would have to be placed in already budgeted positions (some of which were cut to save money this year) and the board decided to offer these teachers jobs and training in special education so they could fit into jobs that were budgeted, needed, and unfilled. Others were going to be used for substitutes, and other unfilled jobs that would come from special funded projects. The second was that we would have other unassigned teachers caused by the class size increase.
The board seemed to forget (or was not told) that the problem was that increasing class sizes would add to the need to find places for people and that the class size savings we used to balance our budget were on paper, and not real unless all surplus teachers got assignments that were already in the budget.
Principals were told to implement class size increases for this year and when enrollments showed a decline (or were flat) in September at Ocean Beach, Normal Heights and other schools, they just followed directions and reduced staff according to contract and district rules. The result was that they have had to let teachers go into the pool of surplus teachers (increasing the total) and had to use the remaining staff according to the staffing formulas they were given. They had no choice but to reorganize their schools and that caused them to use techniques like combination classes, to meet their official staffing ratios....
Maura Larkins comment:
It’s a wonder the great Terry Grier didn’t point this out to the board. Or maybe he did, but either way, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this plan wouldn’t work. The board calculated that it had to keep the surplus teachers to please the teachers union (Democrats), and to raise class size so it would appear that it was dealing with the budget crisis (Republicans). The board seems to care only about pleasing the politically powerful, and is so lacking in courage that it wouldn’t fess up about what it had done before school started, when the current debacle could easily have been prevented. Why can’t we elect board members with the courage to put kids first?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)