Unionized Rhode Island Teachers Refuse To Work 25 Minutes More Per Day, So Town Fires All Of Them

If you read the article with the schools stats it's incredible they still had a job anyway. I guess they really thought this wouldn't happen, but, I'm glad to see them removed.







www.businessinsider.com...:u p:

Great news! Glad to see some start standing up to the Unions!

Reminds me of Ronald Reagan firing the air traffic controllers.

Hope it sticks. (And I have teachers in the family)

Yeah!

Screw the unions!

Them kids don't need no teachers anyhow, they can learn all they need to know from the bible and Fox News!


Seriously, what a dumb move. There aren't enough good teachers as it is, and now the school is going to have to completely re-fill its entire staff, probably with people who aren't even qualified for the positions.

We can play politics all day long, but it's the kids who really lose in this instance.

reply to post by adifferentbreed

Her plan calls for teachers at a local high school to work 25 minutes longer per day, each lunch with students once in a while, and help with tutoring. The teachers' union has refused to accept these apparently onerous demands.

The teachers at the high school make $70,000-$78,000, as compared to a median income in the town of $22,000. This exemplifies a nationwide trend in which public sector workers make far more than their private-sector counterparts (with better benefits).

Gallo blamed the union’s “callous disregard” for the situation, saying union leaders “knew full well what would happen” if they rejected the six conditions Gallo said were crucial to improving the school. The conditions are adding 25 minutes to the school day, providing tutoring on a rotating schedule before and after school, eating lunch with students once a week, submitting to more rigorous evaluations, attending weekly after-school planning sessions with other teachers and participating in two weeks of training in the summer.

Read More: Source

How can teachers making a measily 70 grand a year possibly be expected to accept such horrible terms?

I'm sure at that rate, they won't have any problems replacing the whole staff. Did anyone tell the teachers the economy is in the tank?

Goodbye and good riddance!

[edit on 16-2-2010 by FortAnthem]

In other articles the union is saying that Gallo doesn't have the power to fire them. The union says Gallo has to negotiate with them before he can do anything.

Looks like this might drag out for a while. Honestly though, they are making $300+ a day. If they can't do any better than a 50% graduation rate they need to be fired.

This isn't uncommon though. Teacher's unions regularly fight any attempt to improve schools. In high school I briefly attended a charter school. The local school system's administrators planted stories in the papers trying to discredit the charter school's staff and administrator. They intentionally told "trouble kids" that they had to sign up for the charter school. It was a fiasco that eventually sunk the school and caused nearly 200 students to repeat a year.





[edit on 16-2-2010 by MikeNice81]

In most school districts, a teacher making $70k+/year is usually highly educated, board certified, and/or has been teaching for 25+ years. The sad thing is that a lot of good teachers were probably fired.

This is most likely nothing more than a way to fix their budget, by firing a bunch of high paid teachers in exchange for hiring a bunch of first year teachers at the bottom of the barrel ($25-$30k/yr).

I personally agree with the Union in this situation, as the request violated their agreed upon terms. Basic contract law. I wonder how many people would feel if their boss told them they had to work an extra 25 minutes per day without any additional pay or benefits.

As for the poor school performance, that definitely needs to be researched. The school could be a low performing school in a poor neighborhood.

Overall, this will be interesting, considering 100+ people were fired from a school without any formal reason other than union bargaining and them exercising their right to strike. Good teachers, with perfect records and no reprimands being fired for no real reason? very interesting to say the least.

Originally posted by drwizardphd
Seriously, what a dumb move. There aren't enough good teachers as it is, and now the school is going to have to completely re-fill its entire staff, probably with people who aren't even qualified for the positions.

I'm not so sure that the kids are really losing in this situation, and it shouldn't be hard to replace these greedy individuals. If I had kids, I wouldn't want their education entrusted to people that are unwilling to dedicate 25 more minutes, eat the occasional lunch, and tutor them. Isn't that what we should expect from our teachers?

I say good riddance to them. Our educational system is lagging enough as it is, and when people try and make it better, the good ole union is going to stomp their feet and have a hissy-fit.

[edit on 16-2-2010 by killuminati2012]

reply to post by adifferentbreed


Good. Unions are destroying this country. Unions are controlled by Leftists pushing their International Socialism program. Unions are for dumb people who get suckered into joining.

I have no opinion either way on this issue except to say this.


You people who have been trained to put down unions every chance you get, are no better than unions that abuse their privileges, if not worse.


Do you know why unions exist in the first place? Because there are a lot of big companies that don't give a DAMN about their employees and treat them like garbage, and have for centuries.

We are talking conditions so bad, you have no idea how some companies have treated their employees historically. For example the Coal Miner's War in 1921, when thousands of coal miners marched on West Virginia. The coal mining company they were rebelling against not only treated them worse than mud, they also owned all the local housing, hospitals, stores, etc., and if you spoke up against the inhumane treatment on the job you'd also have your entire family kicked out of your house, children, pregnant wife and all, and denied medical treatment as you had to seek shelter elsewhere, or often just camp outside. Being immediately fired was a given. And these good ol' boys were only complaining in the first place because they were being forced to work in extremely dangerous conditions and many were dying from cave-ins simply because their supervisors refused to take the time to go through all the proper safety precautions.


Consider that the only reason people are polarized to hate all unions is simply because big business controls MSM, and big businesses are the ones who don't give a damn about their employees in the first place. So they train you lackeys not to give a damn about yourselves either. If you think subtle manipulation isn't there in the media, straight from the corporate owners themselves, then they're already one-up on you. They pick the stories to report, they choose how to report them, how the news is worded, and they choose the people who report them to you.

Have unions taken advantage of their privileges before? Yeah. And who hasn't? It doesn't make a damned bit of sense to be so polarized as to automatically trash-talk and spew hatred towards the very existence of unions. You are doing nothing but salivating at the hand of your corporate masters, because they damn right don't like unions either, and you know it. And if you don't think corporate greed and corporate abuses of power aren't rampant in this country then I don't think I could even measure how far your head must be buried in the sand.

[edit on 16-2-2010 by bsbray11]

I agree with the Superintendent of the school district.

They have a 50% failure rate.

50% graduation rate.

Only 7% of the 11th grade class was proficient in mathematics.

Teachers are making $72,000 - $78,000 a year plus benefits.

Median income for the town is $22K.

The school district asked the teachers to do something that ALL teachers should be doing anyway. There was nothing unreasonable about what was being asked of them.

The teachers and the union knew what would happen if they said no. I think it would be a very fair statement to say that the teachers and the union both assumed that nothing would be done to them, "It's not like they can fire all of us!"

What I would like to know is how many of the teachers wanted to put in the extra time and how many teachers flat out refused. They all got fired, but I'm sure there were some that didn't mind the extra work, but had to stand with their fellow teachers and the union anyway.

If any of those teachers are smart and and really enjoy teaching, they will ditch the union and re-apply to get their old jobs back.
If they don't then it would be fair to assume they were merely teaching for the money.

Big difference between Public Sector Unions and Private Sector Unions. The most important in my mind is that the Public Sector (schools, DMV) are paid with tax money. MY TAX MONEY, YOUR TAX MONEY! Unions give us access to a middle class, EXCELLENT. But union mandated rules, co-opted into law by public officals who often are Union members themselves, BOGUS.

Originally posted by drwizardphd
Yeah!

Screw the unions!

Them kids don't need no teachers anyhow, they can learn all they need to know from the bible and Fox News!


Seriously, what a dumb move. There aren't enough good teachers as it is, and now the school is going to have to completely re-fill its entire staff, probably with people who aren't even qualified for the positions.

We can play politics all day long, but it's the kids who really lose in this instance.

Based on the statistics, it looks like the kids were already losing. Those teachers should be embarrassed about those stats. Granted, you can take a horse to water and you can't make him drink. But that's abysmal. In this case the Bible and Fox Snooze would probably be an improvement.