But this time around there’s a third voice that wants input at the bargaining table.

A coalition of concerned citizens is hoping to pressure the school board and the teachers union into changing the way teachers are hired, fired, evaluated, and assigned to classrooms.

The coalition, known as Contract for Student Achievement, is comprised of parents, pastors, business leaders, elected officials and taxpayers who want MPS’ staffing decisions to reflect the best interests of students, instead of school employees.

They say past teachers contracts have created a system that ignores the academic needs of students, particularly minority children. They believe that has led to an unacceptable achievement gap that must be addressed in the new collective bargaining agreement.

In other words, the taxpayers are reasserting ownership of the under-performing Minneapolis school district, despite the objections of the self-serving teachers union and the reservations of the school board. It’s a story that could – and should – be playing out in school districts across the nation.

Minneapolis schools facing a ‘human crisis’

Contract for Student Achievement members correctly see contract negotiations as the ideal time to have their voices heard in how local schools are run.

A typical teachers union contract contains provisions that affect nearly every facet of a public school system, ranging from employee compensation and staff assignments to the amount of time teachers spend with students.

“There’s a ton of stuff in those contracts. I doubt anybody understands all of it,” said Seth Kirk, a parent who is involved with the citizens organization, which began forming in 2009.

In an open letter to union and school board officials, the group states, “Minneapolis has the largest achievement gap in Minnesota, with white students more than twice as likely to pass state tests than their black, Latino and American Indian peers and with less than 35 percent of our students of color graduating on time.”

This is a “human crisis” that threatens to undermine the future economic prospects “for individuals, families and our entire city.”

CSA concludes that this is a “mass academic failure to thrive” and calls “on the district and the MFT to negotiate a different kind of contract – one that recognizes the academic crisis in our schools and makes student achievement the top focus.”

The group has identified five ways this should happen: shift to performance-based staffing; allow every Minneapolis school to hire from the widest possible talent pool; end forced placements of teachers in schools that do not choose to hire them; extend learning time for those (students) who need it; remove poor performing teachers.

Effectiveness, not seniority

The common theme to the CSA’s recommendations is that hiring, staffing and evaluation decisions should be made by school administrators, not the teachers union.

“Make effectiveness, not seniority, the chief criteria for teachers’ hiring, placement and lay-off decisions,” the letter reads.

The group notes that, “Under the current contract, all tenured teachers are guaranteed a job if there are any openings that fit their licensure. … Even if site leadership teams do not believe these teachers are an appropriate fit for their school or students. This must stop.”

That means ending the “last in, first out” approach to determining teacher layoffs, and the shuffling of ineffective teachers from one school to another, a practice commonly referred to as “The Dance of the Lemons.”

That concern became very real for Kirk a few years ago when his kids attended one of MPS’ Montessori-based schools. Kirk said the school was growing and adding teachers, even ones who weren’t trained in the specialized, multi-sensory style of education.

“The way the contract was structured, things such as seniority and rules about how teachers could be moved around were considered, but Montessori experience was not,” Kirk said. “That led me to wonder about the structural problem that caused this in the first place.”

The CSA also wants to “simplify and shorten the process for discharging chronically ineffective teachers to under 12 months.”

Under MPS’ current contract, underperforming teachers are placed in the Peer Assessment Review process, which can last 18 to 24 months. This affects only one percent of MPS teachers.

“Out of this one percent, less than half are dismissed, resign, or retire,” the group’s letter reads. “That means … 99.5 percent of our tenured teachers are considered effective. This isn’t credible for any profession.”

The skunk at the garden party

As contract talks begin, the teachers union has made it clear it sees no role for the citizens group.

“The group is well-intentioned, but their strategies are misguided,” MFT President Lynn Nordgren told StarTribune.com. “The teachers are the experts. For some reason, everybody else thinks they are the experts now.”

A new analysis shows the “experts” haven’t done such a swell job of running Minneapolis’ schools. MPS students outperform only 30 percent of their peers statewide in reading and math, according to the Global Report Card published by the George W. Bush Institute.

So it’s no small wonder why the Minneapolis teachers union doesn’t appreciate the community’s oversight.

What is perplexing is why school officials aren’t thrilled about the Contract for Student Achievement’s desire to be involved in negotiations. Kirk thinks school officials are wary of publicly embracing the group for legal reasons.

“If the board were to do something to whoop up public support for a certain position, they worry they could be charged with unfair labor practices,” Kirk told EAG. “I appreciate the general attitude of caution, but it does seem somewhat incongruent with their responsibility as elected officials.”

That’s one explanation for the reluctance of school officials. But a recent editorial by the Star Tribune offers another possibility.

According to the paper, “Four of the newest school board members signed a letter on MFT letterhead, admonishing the last board for its handling of contract negotiations.” Or put more honestly, they didn’t like the way the former board failed to give the union everything it wanted.

If school board members are sitting on the same side of the bargaining table as the teachers union, it’s obvious why they would not want taxpayers to know about it.

Whatever the reason, the Contract for Student Achievement coalition is about as welcome in the MPS negotiating process as a skunk at a garden party. The CSA is seeking to remind union leaders and school officials just who is paying for the garden party in the first place.

Wow, you can really feel the energy here in Minneapolis at Netroots Nation 2011 – the vibe is so much better than at Starbucks where that fascist Mr. Rodriguez keeps oppressing me by insisting that I get to work on time!  Because of the capitalist system under whose yoke we all groan, I had to get the money to come from my parents, which is only fair since they have money and because of George Bush I don’t.  I heard Dad joking about how he was “delighted to have that 30-year old bum out of my basement for a weekend.”  Mom gave me a ride to the airport in the Explorer and on the 747 I had time to write up a Daily Kos post about the need to ration carbon credits to control global warming – I mean “climate change.”

I went to check into my hotel room and the guy at the front desk complimented me on my clothes.  “Nice Che tee,” he said.  “Funny coincidence – my family is from Cuba.  So, will you be wearing your Mao t-shirt tomorrow?”  How did he know?  Anyway, I was a little unhappy with my room – it was on the top floor between the elevators and a guy who turned out to be the drummer for Anthrax.  He sure had a lot of loud parties.

Off to the convention center for to help build a socialist future – oh wait, I’m not supposed to say “socialist.”  Andrew Breitbert’s operatives are in the area and according to Markos, “We’re still keeping our real goal on the down low until after the reelection.”   Shhh – mum’s the word, fellow “progressives!”

By the way, I thought I saw Markos himself, but it turned out to be a guy dressed as an elf from the Dungeons & Dragons convention down the street.  My mistake!

Friday:

What a totally great day – it’s so nice to be able to eat, drink, party and speak about our political vision in this fascist country where hunger, thirst, oppression and political repression rule!

I got an important warning about how the Right Online convention is nearby.  My friend Tupac Pelosi-Mumia, who lives with his parents Marge and Fred Bosley in Beverly Hills (“I kills me that they forced me to drive a Mercedes bought with his money made oppressing the workers at his department stores, but I do it for the sake of the struggle”), told me about a terrifying encounter he had with a couple of rampaging conservatives.  All he did was throw a free range egg at them during a “No Free Speech for Fascists” demonstration there by Take Back the Mid-Day, his pro-civil liberties collective.

“They were going to give me a wedgie,” he reported, “But the surprise was on them — I don’t believe in wearing underwear!  It’s part of the patriarchal paradigm!”  The brutality of the wingnuts is truly terrifying.  “Those conservatives are tough and mean and they will kick your ass,” Tupac said.  “And that’s just the women.”

There were so many panels to choose from!  I couldn’t decide on whether to go to “Gender Justice and Making Men Pay” or “Azatlan Now: Getting the US Out of North America,” so I just wandered around to see what superstars I could run into.  It was awesome – I even got to shake Keith Olbermann’s hand, but he was kind of cold to me after I told him “I will totally watch your show as soon as I can find the Logo channel!”  It is the Logo network, right?  Or is it the Oprah one?

Plenty of petitions to sign too – I love getting involved in hand-on activism that makes a difference!  I signed petitions about banning eating whales, tuna, beef, pigs, and chicken.  I kind of drew the line at the super-vegan guys – call me a “bean curd criminal,” but as far as I’m concerned, you’ll have to pry my tofu out of my mom’s fridge.

I also signed some green energy petitions but had to stop to answer a call from United telling me my upgrade came through for the flight home – bingo!  Finally, some guys dressed like pimps told me all about this deadly poison the capitalists are forcing on us called dihydrogen monoxide.  I never took a science course at Berkeley since I didn’t have time as a double major in Womyn’s Literature and Oppression Studies, but this sounded terrible.  They even filmed me talking a little about banning dihydrogen monoxide, a campaign that I think will become one of my personal issues.

Saturday:

First, I was riding on a unicorn.  Then the penguins came up and started trying to take all my money because they said they “needed it more.”  Then a shadow fell across everything and I was being chased by a monster – it was a 70’ tall Andrew Breitbart and he was screaming “You know I’m right, you know everything you believe is a freaking joke!”  Then there was some loud drumming and someone was shouting about throwing the keg out the window and I then woke up.

Oh, wait, I thought this was my dream journal, not my Netroots Nation 2011 journal.  Sorry!

I started the morning by not taking a shower again and made sure to roll up my sleeve high enough so everyone could see my tribal tattoo.  It’s important that everyone know I bear that mark of individuality so I can fit in with the other attendees.  Then I updated my Twitter feed with a couple of entries about how excited I was to occupy the urinal next to Al Franken – just being so near him gave me stage fright!  BTW, don’t forget to follow me on Twitter at @ItsAllStillBushsFault69!

Saturday is party day at Netroots Nation, but first some panels!  My favorite was the one chronicling our huge victories in Wisconsin.  Yes, victories!  After all, the people united can never be defeated.

See, even though technically, that Nazi genocidal homophobe governor and fellow running dog lackeys managed to totally cut the power of the public employee unions and to utterly defeat our candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, we came out ahead!  As the panel explained, now the whole world can see that DMV clerks, diversity officers, regulation writers, self-esteem counselors and other vital government workers represented by the AFSCME, the NEA and other unions are really the brutalized coal miners of today.  The level of oppression some of them are suffering is unbelievable – how can anyone be so inhuman as to demand they pay 4% of their own pension costs?  It’s pretty clear which side the American peple are going to come down on!

Then onto the fun!  I heard there was a pub trivia contest, and I was so there.  The questions were real brain teasers:

“Name one Marxist nation that has actually increased human freedom as opposed to crushed all basic human rights.”

“Fill in the blank:  The term ‘Nazi’ means ‘National what Party’?”

“Identify a McCarthy martyr who wasn’t a Stalin-loving communist traitor.”

“What member of the armed forces do we leftists consider a true hero who did not get that status by betraying the United States in some manner like Bradley Manning?”

“What political party recently made a Senate icon of a KKK kleagle?”

Talk about tough questions – no one had an answer for any of them!  But not everyone was having fun.  I think I saw Dave Weigel there muttering something about “Geez, these people are lame even for leftists.  I’m checking out Malkin’s Right Online hospitality suite.”

After the pub trivia petered out following an argument between one group that called the game “sexist” and another that called it “racist,” I found my pal Tupac and we headed to the Sexy Socialist Singles mixer.  I opened a tab on Tupac’s parents’ credit card and we started to see if there was anyone willing to look beyond mere physical appearance and really know and accept our inner beauty as opposed to react merely to superficialities.  But amazingly, every girl – I mean “womyn” – we talked to told us she was a lesbian.  I mean, that’s great, but what are the odds?

Finally, we did find a couple of attractive, in a sort of bourgeois way, womyn who seemed interested in us buying them drinks.  I really respected their intellect, empathy, and the way one asserted herself against male oppression by telling Tupac, “Hey trustafarian, my eyes are up here – can’t you see I need another Zima?”

But while Tupac was off getting it, two guys in suits with Right Online badges came up.  “Hey ladies, when you get sick of Commie McNevershower here, you oughta come party with some real men.  But be warned – we like guns, capitalism and we lay pipe like Alaskan oilmen.  If you’re ready to step to the right, we’ll be firing up Macanudos on the patio.”  Then one handed me his empty Guinness bottle and they walked off.

The womyn were totally outraged.  “Can you believe that?” one said.  “So arrogant, so … powerful.  Let’s go give them a piece of our mind.”  The other nodded.  “Yes, a piece … of our minds.”  As they went off to confront those sexist jerks, I shouted, “You go girls!”

So, back in my hotel room, I couldn’t sleep because of the drumming so I got on the computer and checked out “HotProgressiveBabes.com.”  Well, there were at least two things wrong with that name and I’m not sure they were even progressive.  I next wrote a Daily Kos piece on the need for a government entitlement program to assist those who George Bush has prevented from meeting girls.  Then I tried to sleep – after all, there’s still one more exciting day of Netroots Nation to go!

Your home is supposed to be your castle. That is, until the government needs to buy it for a road project. So, what’s the fair price for your property when it comes to eminent domain? Maybe less than you think.

A cursory review by the Freedom Foundation of Minnesota of the projects under consideration, however, indicates there’s plenty of reasons to avoid public scrutiny.  

Leading the list of dubious projects is a $5.2 million proposal by the city of Minneapolis to provide laptops or iPod Touches to “underserved” residents, courtesy of taxpayers.  Of course, many taxpayers would no doubt appreciate receiving an iPod Touch themselves and there’s no indication of how handing out iPods and laptops would help create or save jobs, or spur economic recovery. 

It could be coming some day to a neighborhood near you. Proponents tout it as a model that can be replicated in any of the 3,200 public housing authorities across the U.S.  The supposedly innovative model program is designed to address the digital divide between public housing residents and the rest of the city.  The Minneapolis proposal targets nearly 5,000 households in public housing high rises that are apparently unable to receive the city’s own public WiFi service. Residents who “graduate” from the first level (reportedly seven hours) of the city’s so-called Broadband University (BBU) “will be eligible to receive their choice of wifi-enabled devices—laptops or handheld iPod Touches,” according to the proposal’s executive summary. The plan estimates the number of trainees at 6,300 in what could be called the BBU Class of 2010. 

Despite bureaucratic reluctance to provide access to the complete documents, most proposals’ executive summaries are on line at www.broadbandusa.gov, providing a revealing glimpse into one of the largest stimulus spending programs, purportedly aimed at expanding access to broadband services nationwide and creating jobs building Internet infrastructure. 

A review shows stimulus funding would be used to duplicate and compete with broadband services already available from private providers in some areas.  Taxpayers would pay several times the going commercial rate due to the remote locations.  And millions of tax dollars would be used to raise “broadband awareness” and encourage “sustainable broadband adoption” in urban and rural areas.

Other highlighted proposals include a $2.8 million University of Minnesota proposal that makes the bold claim that it will eliminate “the disparity in broadband awareness and use” and “close the Digital Divide” in four Twin Cities poverty zones.

One county’s website reveals how some local officials pick up where Washington leaves off in obscuring the true cost of stimulus spending to taxpayers.  Despite requesting $33 million in broadband stimulus funding, Lake County states “no taxpayer funds will be pledged to fund the network”.

Staff at the Minnesota Department of Commerce recently evaluated the proposals under their purview and submitted the state’s funding recommendations to the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to meet an October 14^th deadline. State officials declined our request to review the proposals and the state’s broadband stimulus funding recommendations, citing state law.

“This is a matter of transparency in government, plain and simple,” said Annette Meeks, CEO of the Freedom Foundation of Minnesota. “We were told that the record-setting stimulus spending would be accompanied by record-setting transparency.  Numerous other states have released their recommendations.  It’s not too late to do the right thing and open up the books in Minnesota.”

The federal government has received 2,200 applications for broadband stimulus funding nationwide totaling $28 billion.  Reviewers at the Commerce and Agriculture Departments are expected to announce the recipients on a rolling basis beginning on November 7^th through the end of December.

Please bear with me for a bit of history.  A.C., as he was more popularly known, was a member of the Socialist Party in North Dakota.  At the time, grain prices were manipulated, in his view, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  What put him over the edge was when he overextended himself in an attempt to reap a hefty profit on flax, only to have the price drop, along with a bad crop.  He lost a substantial amount of money.

As a socialist, he naturally blamed the out-of-state capitalists and sought to do something about it.  His solution: A state-controlled grain industry.  According to “Political Prairie Fire,” written by Robert L. Morlan in 1955, Townley had a multi-point list of demands, including “State ownership of terminal elevators, flour mills, packing houses, and cold-storage plants,” as well as “Rural credit banks operated at cost.”

When his Socialist Party wasn’t interested in his plan, Townley set out and created The Nonpartisan League in 1915, a mode for organizing farmers into a political constituency to be reckoned with.  See, Townley lacked one key ingredient: power.

His theory was that in order to enact his plan, he needed to create the sufficient pressure on elected officials in meet his demands or face the consequences.  His group also worked to elect candidates that agreed with its views.

Townley crisscrossed the state, signing farmers up as members of his organization.  He pled his case of greater effectiveness than the local Chambers of Commerce with success.  He soon put the dues dollars he raised towards purchasing more pick-up trucks and hiring more organizers to expand the group and thus its power.

What relevance does this have on what is happening today?  According to ACORN co-founder Gary Delgado, the kind-of Third Tenor to the (in)famous Wade Rathke, ACORN used Morlan’s book “as part of the organization’s training materials since 1971.”  Delgado said as much in his 1986 book, “Organizing the Movement: The Roots and Growth of ACORN.”

We’ve seen ACORN’s tactics play out in the Townley way for the last 39 years.  And we see them play out as such today.  Take my recent interview with Rathke as an example.  When I asked him what SEIU and ACORN were doing to get health care reform passed, he explained SEIU was/is active in about 15 states and in Louisiana, where we chatted, there “are about 14 people working around the state because Sen. [Mary] Landrieu’s vote is so critical as one of those sort-of mushy Democrats we have to have to make this pass.”

You can see that portion of my interview here.

ACORN adopted the Townley method of creating the power, by registering the voters to elect its candidates or growing the “community” group to act as a hammer against weak-kneed elected officials, just to name a few.

Saul Alinsky is commonly viewed as the father of community organization and with that I have no beef.  But I believe perhaps a more accurate patron of ACORN’s tactics would be A.C. Townley, the godfather of community organizing.

In the following weeks, I was made aware of the fact that ACORN had reopened its New Orleans office (several months after the storm). Various groups from around the city informed me that Acorn was upset with us because we were in “their” community and had not sought approval from ACORN to operate there. I was told that ACORN said that we were “privileged white people who had come to a Black community as saviors and we refused to work with local Black leadership.”

The more I pondered the matter, the more I realized what was happening. As usual in marginalized and impoverished communities, a small group of radical self-proclaimed leaders was insisting that all local aid and relief came through them—even if they were AWOL for several months. Though the majority of residents either hadn’t heard of ACORN or simply disagreed with their politics- ACORN insisted that they were THE Black leaders. This was upsetting to me. Sure, the local pastor we worked most closely with was Black; but that didn’t matter to ACORN. It was as if Pastor Johnson didn’t count because he didn’t evoke the name of Elijah Mohammed or Malcolm X. It was as if Pastor Johnson didn’t count because he didn’t submit to ACORN’s mandate that ACORN was the sole leadership of Black New Orleanians.

As then director of Common Ground Relief’s 9th Ward project, I was warned by many that ACORN would ruin me politically if I didn’t submit to their leadership. I believed in what I was doing and how I was doing it. I refused to submit. The political fallout was almost unbearable. I just kept my eyes on meeting the needs of the community. When confronted by adherents to ACORN’s brand of race analysis, I pointed out that ACORN was not there immediately after the storm, so I could not have sought their leadership even if I had wanted to.

Over the following years, that particular style of political attack was prominent in New Orleans. Anytime that ACORN was displeased, the other party was deemed a racist. If the other party disagreed with the label or with ACORN’s agenda- they were met with “of course you feel that way. You are a racist.” Though it is clearly woefully inaccurate and unethical to use such an accusation as a political attack and as a means of shutting down philosophical debate and discourse, some at ACORN didn’t let that stop them. I refused to submit to it. I believed in listening to the majority of the community, who were desperate for our help, and not only to the self-proclaimed leaders. I paid a dear price for it.

I returned to Texas after a couple of years adminst the political quagmire of post-Katrina New Orleans. My experience there with various groups was educational and life-changing, though some of these groups concerned me. Eventually I began to see some of them as dangerous and deceitful about their missions. This, along with a growing appreciation of my country helped lead me to work with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force.

I was as proud of this new era in my life as I was of my time in New Orleans. I had the privilege of participating in efforts where lives were saved; both in the United States and in Israel. While working undercover with the FBI at the Republican National Convention in Minnesota, I helped to uncover a bomb plot. Two men had made firebombs with a homemade napalm mixture of gasoline and oil. Their initial targets were Republican delegates. These bomb-makers (domestic terrorists) later decided to attack a staging area for the Secret Service and other law-enforcement agencies. Fortunately, they were stopped and arrested.

I was asked, and agreed, to testify against them. As was expected, the more radical elements of the media began to attack both me as an individual and the FBI as a whole. One of the men accused plead guilty; the other hired an expensive defense attorney and concocted a story about the FBI building these bombs to “set up left-wing activists” and stop dissent. But once the facts became clear, the defense changed their story and instead tried to blame the FBI for ”influencing” the terrorists. Thankfully, after one hung jury and many months of intense media attacks against me, the other bomb-maker (domestic terrorist) decided to come clean and admitted to the judge that he had invented the whole story.

What does any of this have to do with ACORN? I wondered the same thing on January 31^st of 2009 when I was reading an ACORN blog that is run by Wade Rathke (the man who claims credit for founding ACORN). He devoted an entire page to my work with the FBI. How did he describe the FBI’s effort and success in preventing innocent Americans, local police and federal agents from being burned, maimed and/or possibly killed by firebombs? He wrote that it’s “one thing to disagree, but it’s a whole different thing to rat on folks.”  That is what ACORN’s founder had to say about my role in stopping a bomb plot.

I was even more shocked as I continued reading the article. ACORN’s “founder” went on to mention that another self-proclaimed “radical” activist who had worked closely with him was also involved in my story. Her name is Lisa Fithian. I first encountered Ms. Fithian in New Orleans. She came to town after Common Ground Relief had started operations. She assumed a position of prominence and continuously challenged my work and leadership. During the RNC bombing trial, she cooperated with the defense of the bomb plotters and led media attacks on me and the FBI.

Ms. Fithian has been quoted in various mainstream news articles as saying, “Nonviolence is a strategy. Civil disobedience is a tactic,” and “Direct action is a strategy. Throwing rocks is a tactic.” She is also quoted as stating that “When people ask me, ‘What do you do?’ I say, ‘I create crisis’, because crisis is that edge where change is possible.”

ACORN receives tens of millions of dollars from taxpayers to promote their agenda. Free speech is sacred, of course. However, it is clear that ACORN has made a practice of blurring the lines between free speech and tax-payer-funded activism. Fortunately, our federal government is adept at investigating and identifying the misuse of federal funds. It will be interesting in the near future to see how Mr. Rathke and his ACORN associates stand up to the same scrutiny they have focused on our military, the FBI and other governmental groups and agencies.