Charter School Board Conundrum
A conundrum that charter schools face when recruiting prestigious one percenty-types (celebrities, politicians, stockbrokers and lawyers) to serve on their governing boards is that, yes, this may open the school up to more charitable giving. But, people with outrageous fortunes sometimes came to them through outrageous means. When a school board member is hoisted on his own petard, to what extent should that reflect on the school? Old-fashioned school district school boards – however incompetent, corrupt or amateurish – have the benefit of being democratically elected by the people, and therefore, NOT OUR SCHOOL’S FAULT when they go to jail for their own idiocy.
In the era of charter schools, where governing boards are corporations appointed through insular networks of money and influence, things get tricker. Take the scary situation of Bronx Charter School for the Arts, an otherwise lovely and totally rare arts-centric (in this day of standardized math and English testing!) charter school, which had the relatively good fortune of securing “record producer, DJ, rapper and painter”, as well as Alicia Keys’ husband, Swizz Beatz, as a member of its school board.
Today, Swizz Beatz is facing federal scrutiny for his role as CEO of MegaUpload, the sacrificial lamb of Hollywood’s failed attempt to upend anti-piracy law through the “SOPA” and “Protect IP” bills that were so overwhelmingly rejected by popular opinion earlier this week. While this may be welcome news to Bob Dylan, at Bronx Arts where board-member Swizz Beatz accepted the CEO position at that now-controversial company as quickly as he accepted a seat on their governing board, everyone involved in the operation must be worried about guilt by association.
I don’t mean to damn MegaUpload. It seems like a fairly innocent pawn in the war between Hollywood and moviegoers who are tired of paying more for less. I don’t mean to damn Swizz Beatz, who seems like a relatively decent guy who was only supporting a decent charter school that tries to keep the arts front and center while most laws and funding streams emphasize student test results in math and English. I’m just saying that when you treat each individual charter school as a district unto itself, you’re going to embroil otherwise-decent schools into controversies in which they play no role. Take this fact, as a parting shot: in New Jersey, where 187 school board members have failed to complete criminal background checks, that statistic equates to only .2% of public school district members failing to live up their their obligations under the law. Charter schools? Nearly one in six charter school corporate school board members failed to follow the law. Quite the conundrum for anyone trying to support otherwise decent charter schools as they attempt to carry out their missions.
Good Write-Up in the Nerd Press
I rarely write directly about work on this blarg, but some of this year’s big adventures got a nice write-up from Beryl Benderly at Science Magazine. Relevant excerpts follows:
On 20 July, the postdocs at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, received official recognition for their new union. It’s the nation’s third postdoc union, but the first to be part of the same union as their lab chiefs.
After a swift and successful signature-collecting campaign, the 350 postdocs on the university’s three campuses became a bargaining unit of the Rutgers Council of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP)-American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Chapters. Affiliated with both AAUP, the professional society for college and university teachers, and AFT, a national labor union within AFL/CIO, this hybrid group represents all of Rutgers’s faculty members, research associates, and graduate student employees. A sister union under the all-university AFT umbrella represents the administrative staff.
[snip]
It was, in fact, a drive several years ago to solidify the position of campus administrators by bringing them into the union that first sparked interest in organizing the postdocs. As organizers spoke with “administrators, some of whom were in the laboratories, we would encounter postdocs very frequently,” recalls Shaun Richman, an AFT national representative. “We had all these anecdotes of postdocs sort of sauntering up to us and saying, ‘Hey, can we get into this whole union thing?’ “
Then, “earlier this year, Rutgers AFT representatives [began] asking around to postdocs about their particular conditions and their interest in unionizing,” says postdoc Alan Wan, who was “heavily involved” in the drive. “Obviously, since the faculty and the graduate students–the members of the community that we interact with on a daily basis–are in the union,” many postdocs also became interested, he continues.
A major part of the union’s organizing strategy was having a group of postdocs committed to the cause talk to other postdocs “to hear their stories [and] make the case,” Wan says. “If we had a conversation with someone and they were really positive, we tried to get them involved,” Richman adds. A second strategic step was talking with PIs, because “the postdocs are essentially the employees of the faculty, who are our union members,” Richman continues. “We knew we had to have conversations with some leaders of that community. … There [were] fears. For a principal investigator, I think the gut reaction is … ‘This is going to break the grant. We can’t afford it. We’re not going to get renewed.’ “
But [AAUP-AFT past President Lisa] Klein, who discussed the union with fellow PIs, reports encountering no serious opposition. “Some jokingly said, ‘So I can’t abuse them anymore?’ ” she recalls. “There was no reluctance on the part of these PIs. They did want to see that the postdocs were treated as member of the community.”
The talking campaign was done quietly, “one-on-one, usually colleague-to-colleague,” Richman says. “There was no Web site, … no leaflets.” Once the organizers “knew we were in a position that we could get a majority of the postdocs to agree,” Wan continues, “we officially started the card campaign” right after Memorial Day. The talking took several months, but the official campaign to collect signatures took under 2 weeks. State law makes unionization automatic if more than half of a work group give their signed consent, just as in California. “Two-thirds of all the postdocs signed,” Wan says.
Christ May Be King, But At Least He Spares Us Monarchistic Thinking
Teachers at ten New York City schools went on strike Friday over the high cost of health care, but their union was not sued, their president not imprisoned and their members not fined two days of pay for every day out on the picket line. What gives?
The teachers in question work at Catholic schools in the archdiocese of New York so their union is not subject to the same draconian law that would apply to the city’s public school teachers. Is their strike not a “disruption” in the lives of the parents who enroll their children there? Do Catholic school-kids not rely on the structure and safety of the classroom as much as public school kids? Of course not. The simple truth is that while Catholic school teachers might arguably have to answer to a higher law, only public school teachers have to report to a Boss that makes the law and has the power of the state to enforce it. Hell hath no fury like Mayor Bloomberg and the Taylor law. It’s one more strike against monarchistic thinking.
Pride of the Nappy-Headed Hoes
There was an enormous protest today on the traditional women’s college campus of Rutgers University over Don Imus. Imus, of course, disparaged the University’s second place NCAA women’s basketball team in crudely racist and demeaning terms about two weeks ago. The controversy, which has raged across the country and which threatens Imus’ career, started out with very little notice here: a “dart” to Imus in the Daily Targum newspaper’s traditional “Darts and Laurels” Friday editorial. Today’s rally, however, seemed to attract the majority of the student body of Cook and Douglas Colleges, and cleared out the staff from most of the offices.
The women’s basketball team’s success in the Final Four tournament united the women and the bleeding hearts of Rutgers University in a way that the comparable success of the school’s football team – which came at the expense of budget cuts to academic programs and less popular sports – never could. Such feminist support was underscored by the signs that protesters carried, which read “Rutgers Women R Strong Women” (Imus described the team as “rough-looking” tattooed women and “nappy-headed hoes” and expressed a preference for the “cute” Lady Volunteers of Tennessee). But Imus’ racism – no matter how much he insists he is a “good person” – is clear and unmistakable. Kinky hair and eurocentric standards of beauty are enormously sensitive topics and the rooting for “white” over “black” is the very definition of racism. And yet, this racism bubbled up and spilled forth so effortlessly, coming from the same dark pit (more like a shallow ditch) as Michael “Kramer” Richards’ “joke” about lynching niggers who dare to talk through his set, or as your crazy uncle’s “jokes” about black moms and velcro.
I’m inclined to agree with the protesters (most famously Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson) who complain that Imus’ apology rings hollow, and call for his termination. Our media and politics have coarsened to such a point that a great number of shock jocks and pundits profit by saying outrageously insulting and offensive things, and if any of them result in a controversy that proves dangerous to their careers, they quickly apologize and claim it was a joke. But what was the joke here? That Don Imus doesn’t really think the Lady Volunteers were cute? That the Rutgers Scarlet Knights are actually blonde, light-skinned and unmarked by tattoos?
There was no joke. Just mean-spirited taunting, the kind that is casually tossed around in talk media. Examples should be made. Don Imus made the poor choice to elect himself to serve as that example.