“After facing enemies abroad, is an $8.81 an hour part-time job the best we can offer returning veterans?” asks Trumka.

He’s right. Veterans deserve more than $8.81 an hour. And I know a place where they can do much better, get amazing benefits and not have to work nearly as hard.

How about earning $29,000 as an intern?

$33,000 as a cafeteria clerk?

$39,000 as an “evening cleaner?”

$54,000 as a general office clerk?

$59,500 as an office machine operator?

$72,000 as a web assistant?

$73,000 as a security guard?

$77,000 as a driver/general assistant?

$90,000 as a cook?

$96,000 as a car wash manager?

And all that is before we even begin to talk about the professional positions. Veterans, don’t settle for Walmart. Head over to AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, DC and start living the good life.

That’s because Cosentino didn’t have access to her checkbook.

Members were informed this week that Widmer misappropriated at least $800,000 in union dues during the period 2006-2012. “It appears that money earmarked for the Association was instead used for meals, gasoline, trips, gambling, clothing, grocery shopping – and for cash advances,” wrote new ATA president Cheryl Miskell. ”Because some old financial records are unavailable, we may never know the full extent of the misappropriations.”

This prodigious feat of embezzlement was accomplished in a union of 390 members, whose share of dues income ranged from $89,000 to $132,000 per year. It is highly likely that Widmer stole money earmarked for transfer to the New York State United Teachers and the American Federation of Teachers (similar to a case in Maryland). NYSUT records indicate that ATA was consistently behind on its dues payments by approximately $55,000 each year.

NYSUT conducted a forensic audit late last year and the evidence was turned over to local police and district attorney yesterday. The union is covered by a fidelity bond that may restore some of these losses.

Widmer was a fixture in the community who also served as secretary of the area’s NAACP branch. The high school where she worked closed for the day in her honor when she passed away. A colleague told the Auburn Citizen at the time that “Widmer was generous, sometimes using her own money to help young teachers complete courses so they would have the proper qualifications for teaching.”

“She went out of her way to financially help people,” he said. “She was amazing.”

She certainly was.

1) Revenues collected by governments for public education in the United States totaled $593.7 billion. About $261.4 billion came from local sources, $258.2 billion from state sources, and $74 billion from federal sources.

2) That’s about $1,922 from each and every American.

3) Or $2,531 from each adult, 18 and older.

4) Or $4,567 from each non-farm American worker on a payroll.

5) That amounts to 11.4 percent of the average worker’s salary, or $2.20 per hour.

6) The average American employee thus works almost one hour every day to fund public schools.

7) It would take the entire salary of 14,842,500 employees to pay for U.S. public schools, equivalent to the entire retail trade workforce.

Public education advocates often speak of school spending as an investment. It’s clear that our portfolio is heavily weighted in the education sector. The shareholders are understandably upset by weak ROIs and incessant margin calls. No wonder they responded by downsizing.

Back then, an officer noticed a small microwave oven near the finish line of the marathon – a rather unusual find, you’ll admit. The contents looked suspicious through the microwave’s tiny window, so the area was cordoned off and a bomb disposal robot brought in.

The bomb squad blew up the microwave, only to discover it was filled with ravioli.

Marathon runners were diverted around the block and few of them had any inkling of the incident until contacted by the media afterward.

NEA and its state affiliates spent more than $310 million in direct contributions on political campaigns for candidates and issues in that 12-year period. That figure does not include independent expenditures or issue advertising. Almost $53.4 million came from NEA national headquarters, while another $257.1 million was spent by affiliates.

More than 47.3 percent of that total – almost $147 million – was spent in California or on behalf of California ballot measures and candidates.

The union spent more than $92.3 million on candidates and party committees. About 86.3% of those were Democrat-affiliated, and 11.5% were Republican-affiliated. The rest were nonpartisan or third-party candidates. About $60.9 million went to candidates alone, 66.3% of whom were incumbents and 14.2% challengers. The rest were open seats. Candidates backed financially by NEA and its affiliates won 73.2% of the time.

NIMSP data on ballot initiative spending only goes back as far as 2004, and while I have NEA national expenditures for the previous four years, I don’t have figures for every state affiliate.  Suffice to say additional millions were spent on ballot measures from 2000-04, but we can’t adequately account for it all.

NEA and its affiliates spent almost $218.1 million on ballot initiatives alone from 2004 to 2012. Of the ten measures that drew that most spending by the union, eight were in California. The other two were in Ohio in 2011 and Oregon in 2008.

The National Education Association and its state affiliates are a giant political machine in perpetual motion. That machine is fueled with the dues and PAC contributions of 3 million public school employees and retirees. It’s academic to debate the relative merits of various education reforms without accounting for the unions’ vast political power.

Denise Inez Owens was the treasurer of the Worcester County Teachers Association (WCTA) when she stole state and national dues money to feed her gambling addiction. MSEA discovered the embezzlement in March 2009, but failed to report it to authorities. Instead the union persuaded Owens to sign a confession and agree to a restitution plan. Owens then resigned her union position and returned to work as a middle school teacher without notifying the school district of her predicament.

MSEA ordered a forensic audit of the local union’s finances, then filed an insurance claim that stated the offense was “Not reported because of potential impact on membership and loss of members.”

The cover-up was not discovered until the Daily Times found evidence in WCTA’s IRS filings in February 2012. The union had failed to submit required paperwork because of the mess Owens had left behind. It asked the IRS for leniency because “a substantial amount of money was embezzled.” The newspaper turned over its findings to law enforcement authorities, who subsequently filed charges against Owens. She pleaded guilty to a single count of theft and was sentenced to two years in prison.

The story will probably end there, but authorities haven’t completely closed the case yet.

“We are certainly looking at anyone who had a role in the theft of the funds, or anyone involved in a cover-up,” said Worcester County State’s Attorney Beau Oglesby. “Their actions continue criminal behavior, and we are happy to charge and prosecute.”

Mirroring tactics used in Wisconsin just before Act 10 provisions were enacted, Cook advised local presidents to settle contracts before March 27, and to explore extending existing contracts, so that agency fee provisions would remain in effect for the duration of that contract.

What caught the eye of most observers was Cook’s vow to sue members who attempted to resign before August 2013. “We will use any legal means at our disposal to collect the dues owed under signed membership forms from any members who withhold dues prior to terminating their membership in August for the following fiscal year. Same goes for any current fee payers who choose not to pay their service fee,” Cook wrote.

In an interview with WILX-TV Cook said the union “will exercise our rights under the law to collect what the association dues are.”

Cook is perfectly entitled to stand upon his economic rights, just as Verizon would if you wanted out of your wireless contract, or Comcast would if you wanted to terminate your cable service, or your landlord would if you needed to break your lease. But Verizon, Comcast and your landlord don’t spend their days claiming their purpose is “the improvement of education, the advancement of the interests of education and of educators, and the promotion of the professional growth of its members.” They are businesses, and you are in a business relationship with them.

If MEA wants to identify itself that way, then it should not have monopoly privileges, the ability to extract fees from non-customers, or entitlement to payroll deduction services from a government agency. Michigan’s right-to-work law simply tears down the facade.

* The total number of union members in 2012 was 14,366,000, which is the lowest number since 1950 (14,267,000), when the U.S. workforce was less than half the size it is now.

* The private sector union membership numbers are particularly striking. Since the year 2000, the private sector has added almost 4.4 million jobs, while private sector unions have lost almost 2.2 million members.

* There are now almost 300,000 more union members who work for the government than there are in the private sector.

10) “The numbers of teachers are going up faster than are the numbers of students. That is a ticking time bomb. … With an economic downturn, the troubles with our economy, it’s hard to picture how school districts can sustain that increase and pay for it. I don’t see it as sustainable.”- Richard Ingersoll, a professor in the Graduate School of Education and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. (July 26 Detroit News)

9) “We bear a lot of responsibility for this. We were focused – as unions are – on fairness and not as much on quality.” – Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, commenting on the union’s traditional defense of seniority over performance. (August 18 New York Times)

8) “Trust me, if you can cut such deals with Randi Weingarten, who is president of the American Federation of Teachers, you can do them with Vladimir Putin and Bibi Netanyahu.” – Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times columnist, explaining why he supported U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan for Secretary of State. (November 27 New York Times)

7) “The office had a longstanding common practice of using profanity long before he got there.” – Josh Gruenberg, attorney for former San Diego Education Association executive director Craig Leedham, who was dismissed in part because of his style of dealing with employees. (May 21 Voice of San Diego)

6) “I find you and your organization wholly ineffectual and ineffective. Teachers cannot sit idly by facing financial ruin while you enjoy your wine and chocolates.” – Eric D. Przykuta, president of the Lancaster Central Teachers Association, in a February 17 letter to New York State United Teachers president Richard Iannuzzi. 

5) “We had a very aggressive savings plan.”- Lynne Webb, president of the United School Employees of Pasco, explaining to a judge how she and her husband, former Broward Teachers Union president Pat Santeramo, who was indicted for racketeering and money laundering, were able to put away more than half a million dollars in CDs while paying off a $574,000 vacation home in just three years. (July 13 Miami Herald)

4) “I think people need reassurance that their tax dollars aren’t getting wasted, that something good is happening [at school] that can be measured. I understand that ferocious need, coupled with falling test scores, with the difficulty in removing teachers who aren’t performing and the unions’ unwillingness for a long time to look at how to change things – all those things made us ripe for the picking. Or the kicking.” – Rebecca Mieliwocki, 2012 National Teacher of the Year. (May 16 Los Angeles Times)

3)  ”If I’m a parent in poverty I have no clue because I’m trying to struggle and live day to day. The idea of parents making decisions simply based on choice is the abandonment of public schools.” – Michael Walker Jones, executive director of the Louisiana Association of Educators, commenting on Gov. Bobby Jindal’s plan to expand school vouchers in the state. (January 23 New Orleans Times-Picayune) 

2) “We feel TFA is undermining our profession. We see TFA as a vehicle for union busting … the district is hiring uncertified teachers to reduce costs.” – Diane Brown, president of United Teachers of Richmond, speaking about Teach for America two weeks after her parent union, the National Education Association, provided her and other delegates with a report that concluded, “No evidence suggests that the TFA contracts are being used to reduce teacher costs, silence union voices, or as a vehicle to bust unions.” (July 18 San Jose Mercury News)

1)  ”Things will never go back to the way they were.” – from the introduction to the 2012-2014 National Education Association Strategic Plan and Budget.

Using its Hollywood connections, the California Federation of Teachers was able to persuade Ed Asner to narrate its video, “Tax the Rich: An Animated Fairy Tale.” The Chicago Teachers Union was unable to match that star power, but came to the conclusion that two bludgeons to the head were better than one. CTU commissioned its own animated video, titled “Stand Up to the Fat Cats” and it repeats the same themes as the CFT effort, sans urination.

Not only did the unions receive a volume discount on cartoon characters, but they also got a bonus gift of coloring book design.

C’mon, you guys! If you’re going to disseminate simple-minded propaganda depicting rich people as evil and united workers as heroes, don’t be half-assed about it. It’s only a small step from here to the pages of The Freedom Collective!

While three of the largest public employee unions in the nation are cooperating on external communications and operations, they are also crafting an internal agreement that would establish a détente over competition for members. A group of high-level NEA officials met with teams from SEIU and AFSCME last week to put together a deal that would establish jurisdictions for the individual unions, similar to the arrangement NEA made with AFT after the failed attempt at national merger in 1998.

The two national teachers’ unions and many of their state affiliates made “no raid” agreements – pledges not to try to recruit the other organization’s members. There have been hiccups along the way and a number of affiliates that refused to go along, but for the most part the cutthroat competition for members is a thing of the past.

SEIU and AFSCME don’t represent teachers, but they sometimes compete with the teachers’ unions for education support employees. Nevertheless, it shouldn’t be too much of a hardship for each side to agree to stay away from the other’s members. Once that’s in place, it will pave the way for all the public sector unions to cooperate more frequently and efficiently.

The days when NEA stood far apart from the broader labor movement are gone. The AFL-CIO was once shunned by NEA delegates, but now more than one-quarter of NEA members are affiliated with the labor federation. This helps NEA in projecting political power, but could hurt its “professional association” image and embroil it in issues far removed from education.

Today’s union movement is almost entirely a public sector union movement. It only stands to reason that the largest public sector union would take a larger part.

I’m afraid I can’t join the Chorus of the Outraged. The last foray into animation by a teachers’ union occurred in 2006, and back then I illustrated the dangers of getting too worked up by a cartoon that skewers your sacred cows.

The cartoon bills itself as a fairy tale. And fairy tales are stories we tell to children before they’re old enough to understand all the nuances of the world – like perhaps that not all of the rich are on Wall Street, but some of them actually live in big houses in Hollywood and benefit from corporate tax loopholes backed by labor unions.

So rather than scream and rage at CFT and its cartoon, let’s emulate Capt. Lloyd M. Bucher of the USS Pueblo. We paean CFT and its cartoon.

Texas had an 86% total graduation rate, and also ranked high among its peers in rates among African Americans, Hispanics, whites, children with disabilities and economically disadvantaged students. South Dakota had the best rates for children with disabilities, Limited English proficient (LEP) students and economically disadvantaged students. Tennessee had the best graduation rate for Native Americans, and also did well with African Americans and economically disadvantaged students.

At the other end of the scale, Nevada did badly with virtually all of its populations, ranking at or near the bottom with racial and ethnic minorities, special education and poor students.

While rankings didn’t change much when comparing sub-groups, the gaps in graduation rates between white students and minorities are large and stubborn across most states. Only Hawaii has graduation rates that are virtually the same for whites, African Americans, Asians and Hispanics. Gaps are small in Maine, Montana, South Carolina and West Virginia.

The largest gaps in graduation rates between whites and minorities took place in Minnesota, the District of Columbia, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.

As much as we all love empirical rankings, graduation rates are an imperfect measure of school quality. For one thing, a quick way to improve them is to lower graduation standards. Still, people of all ideological persuasions can agree that fewer dropouts are better than more dropouts. It helps that the Department of Education provided more precise data.

Two stories appeared this week that suggest the political landscape is shifting so that states are further from the mythical middle than ever. An Associated Press piece notes that half of state legislatures now have veto-proof majorities and only three – Iowa, Kentucky and New Hampshire – have split control of their two legislative houses between the two parties.

Couple this with a Smart Politics analysis showing the U.S. House Democratic Caucus will consist of almost 30 percent New Yorkers and Californians – up from 17.6 percent in 1990.

What this will mean for good governance is open for debate, but it will make for a fascinating civics experiment. What will happen as the dominant party in each of these states enacts its wish list? As the difference in policies becomes starker, how will population shifts be affected, and who will move where? Will all future Presidential elections become even more of just a battle for a handful of evenly split states?

Split government at the federal level will make it easier for each state government to go its own way, but how would one-party control of the federal government affect the opposing party’s agenda in states it controls?

Good and bad, we are going to see things in the political arena we haven’t seen in our lifetimes.

The unions did what they needed to do. They helped re-elect the President and they brought to a halt any momentum there may have been for more serious and wide-ranging threats to their power base. They defeated hostile ballot measures in California, Florida, Idaho, Michigan and South Dakota, and were even able to put a tax hike over the top in the Golden State. There will be no mass movement into voucher systems, merit pay, tenure reform and collective bargaining limits. Those are big wins.

From a practical standpoint, however, we have the same President, the same Secretary of Education, virtually the same Senate composition, virtually the same House composition, virtually the same split of governorships, and virtually the same split of state legislatures. And unlike 2008, there is no prospect of card check, stimulus packages and edujobs bills on the horizon.

Where NEA and AFT tried to gain ground, they experienced very tough sledding. They couldn’t get tax hikes for education passed in South Dakota or Arizona. They failed to enshrine collective bargaining in the Michigan constitution. Spread thin, they couldn’t stop charter initiatives in Georgia or Washington. It’s too soon to evaluate the effect of all the state legislative races, but nothing indicates an ideological shift toward renewed public sector hiring – the only thing that can replenish union membership.

In short, the unions drove the barbarians from the gates, but not across the border. NEA and AFT spent a lot of money to ensure another four years like the last four. Is that a good thing for them? We’ll see.

I have reported NEA membership numbers many times over the past 15 years, but this is the first time to my knowledge that the union has experienced losses in all categories: active professional, education support, higher education, students and retirees. Here’s a reminder of how NEA has fared during the Obama years:

2008-09 = 2,905,741 active members (3,234,639 total members)

2009-10 = 2,866,063 active (3,204,185 total)

2010-11 = 2,807,332 active (3,166,761 total)

2011-12 = 2,726,045 active (3,085,999 total)

The latest figures show active members (meaning members currently working in the public school system) at about 2,711,000. Total membership, which includes students and retirees, comes in at around 3,067,000. If current trends continue, NEA will fall below 3 million members in less than a year.

NEA has already budgeted for a loss of more than 140,000 members this year. Nevertheless, the union is warning its activists that additional cuts may become necessary.

The union is making plans to address its recruiting problems, but which ones will be implemented and how will depend a great deal on tomorrow’s election results. The big campaign issue in education isn’t Race to the Top or Common Core. Just as with the broader economy, it’s jobs. NEA needs those members back. It’s looking to raise revenues, and for politicians committed to using those revenues to hire education employees. All other issues are secondary.

Halloween is coming up, and many of us will be staying in to hand out candy to neighborhood kids. This is a great time to also share our campaign message with their parents. Use any of our resources in our campaign section to hand out.

The lion’s share of the union’s debt comes from employee pension and post-retirement health care liabilities. The costs of these benefits have troubled NEA affiliates for many years, causing budgets crises in places like Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Even staff at NEA headquarters made concessions to help ease the strain of post-retirement benefits on the national union’s budget. The latest data show that many affiliates continue to struggle despite receiving substantial relief in pension liabilities.

EIA has constructed a table that lists each of NEA’s state affiliates, its budget deficit or surplus for 2010-11 and its net assets, positive or negative, as of the end of the 2010-11 school year. For purposes of comparison, the table also lists the number of days each affiliate could operate solely on reserves based on its 2010-11 expenditures and net assets.

These latter numbers are important because while certain state affiliates may have run budget deficits in 2010-11, they may still have more than enough reserves to cover one or more years of shortfalls. Others, however, continue to add to their mounting debt and will require some outside force to balance the books.

The New York State United Teachers ran a $29.9 million deficit in 2010-11, and is a total of $201.1 million short of assets to pay all liabilities. NYSUT is on the hook for $286 million in post-retirement benefits.

The California Teachers Association is much healthier, with a small $1.4 million surplus in 2010-11 and net assets of more than $115.6 million, good enough for 230 days of operation.

The New Jersey Education Association managed a $1 million surplus after gaining more than $29.3 million in pension relief. Still, NJEA has more than $38.7 million in red ink.

The Pennsylvania State Education Association greatly improved its budget picture, but has only $6 million in net assets, enough for only 37 days of operation.

The Florida Education Association is similarly situated, with a small surplus and only 53 days of operational reserves.

The Illinois Education Association is still climbing out of a deep hole, finally breaking into the black after $4.9 million in pension relief, but its net assets will allow for only two days of operation.

The Michigan Education Association is a financial basket case, carrying an $11 million deficit in 2010-11, and falling $113 million short in assets. Believe it or not, the picture could have been much worse, as MEA managed to generate $31.1 million in pension relief.

The Ohio Education Association is not much better off. Despite $27.4 million in decreased pension liabilities, OEA still had a $9.1 million deficit and is $14.4 million short in net assets.

The Massachusetts Teachers Association cut pension liabilities by $10.1 million, but is still $2.8 million short of its obligations.

The 2010-11 picture for the Wisconsin Education Association Council was still relatively good, despite a $2.6 million budget deficit. The union had 168 days of operational reserve. However, these figures were mostly compiled before the effects of Act 10 on WEAC’s existence. We can expect next year’s numbers to look very different.

I make note of the 11th largest affiliate simply because its internal money problems have very much occurred under the radar. The Washington Education Association was able to reduce its unfunded pension liabilities by $3.2 million and run a surplus, but it is still almost $18.6 million short of covering its liabilities.

At least six other NEA state affiliates were able to reduce their pension obligations. Some were able to rescue their bottom lines, others were not. You can see from the table that the efforts of Connecticut and Minnesota left them both with a very large surplus, but affiliates in Iowa, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia were only able to slightly lighten their red ink.

I need to add that the South Carolina Education Association has not filed, or has not yet had posted, its disclosure report for 2010-11. SCEA was placed under NEA trusteeship in April 2010 and its report would cover the first year of national oversight of its finances.

It is ironic that the internal situations of these affiliates are very much, in microcosm, like that faced by state governments. There are a number of ways out of the red ink: increased dues, increased membership, and better return on investments on the revenue side, and reduced staff, reduced benefits, and negotiated relief with employee unions on the expenditure side. And, like some state governments, unions could just ignore the problem and hope it goes away. Although NEA would rather we didn’t, we should pay close attention to the measures it uses to deal with its own runaway labor costs.

The union as a whole lost 2 percent of its active membership that year, but increases in dues rates were able to limit the revenue losses to 0.3 percent (about $3.7 million). It’s likely that the losses accelerated in 2011-12.

EIA created a table, now posted on its web site, that lists the financial figures for NEA and each of its 53 “state” affiliates (50 states plus the directly affiliated Federal Education Association, which represents NEA teachers overseas and on military bases, the University of Hawaii Professional Assembly, and the Utah School Employees Association). The numbers include each union’s dues revenues, revenues from sources other than members’ state dues (advertising income from union publications, grants from NEA, et al.), and the amount devoted to employee compensation. The statistics do not include the income of any of NEA’s 14,000 locals.

The numbers in the table include not only salaries and benefits for current teacher union staff, but set-asides for their pensions and post-retirement health care. Twenty affiliates were able to reduce spending on staff compensation, partially through a reduction of 111 people, but the overall total still increased 1.2 percent from 2009-10. Dues revenue collected by the Michigan Education Association and the Oklahoma Education Association was insufficient to cover the costs of their employees’ and retirees’ pay and benefits.

The 15 affiliates that spent more than they took in from all sources were Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, UHPA and USEA.

Despite these financial hardships, it is important to note that total dues income for NEA and its state affiliates still exceeded $1.4 billion for the year.

These figures provide a single-year snapshot of the union’s budgetary health, but next week EIA will also provide statistics and analysis of the long-term trends and outlook for the state affiliates. Which states will weather the storm and which are in serious financial straits? What’s the single largest threat to NEA’s bottom line? The answer might surprise you.

Two of the 11 measures are getting the most attention and, indeed, share many of the same donors. The folks who support Proposition 30, Gov. Jerry Brown’s tax hike initiative, are opposing Proposition 32, yet another initiative attempting to limit the political power of public employees unions in the state. In California, the “no” side has historically had the advantage and the trend seems to be holding. The “yes” sides of both initiatives are currently polling below 50 percent.

It’s clear that both sides of the Prop 32 campaign are going after the so-called “low information voter” or, as I like to call it, “the ignorant bloc.” You have to be only mildly informed to see the cynicism involved in two special interest groups deciding on “special interests” as their battleground issue.

Prop 32 supporters promise to end the reign of special interests in California by banning payroll deduction of political contributions by corporations and unions. Sounds great, except almost no corporation extracts political contributions from paychecks, and the U.S. Supreme Court has already spoken – in the negative – on limiting what individuals can spend, or what groups can spend independently. Prop 32 backers know they have created the broadest possible ban that hasn’t yet faced Constitutional scrutiny. That such a measure more greatly affects unions than corporations is a feature, not a bug.

On the flip side, it is quite astonishing that the unions opposing Prop 32 have chosen the power and influence of special interests as their theme as well. The unions are outspending their laundry list of corporate fat cats by a margin of five to one. The California Teachers Association by itself is outspending them by two to one.

There are nine active political action committees formed to oppose Prop 32. All but one is sponsored and funded by labor unions. The lone exception is the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, whose year-to-date contributions total $365.82.

When you dig through the 296 contributions to the No on 32 campaign, you are hard-pressed to find significant donations by any individual or group that is not a union. One ostensible exception is the $100,000 contributed by the John A. Perez Ballot Measure Committee – that is, unless you happen to know that John A. Perez is California’s Speaker of the Assembly and the former political director for the United Food and Commercial Workers union.

But there is a sizable $500,000 contribution to the No on 32 campaign from one Thomas F. Steyer. Who is Thomas F. Steyer? Believe it or not, he’s a billionaire hedge fund manager.

That’s right, the No on 32 campaign is running ads identifying “hedge fund managers” as those behind the Yes on 32 campaign, while paying for those ads with the substantial help of its own hedge fund manager.

At the rate we are going, California will soon consist solely of public employee unions, politicians, industries that service ballot initiative campaigns, and Disneyland. And Mickey Mouse has a second home in Florida.

Under the sub-head “The 300,000 teacher gap,” Shierholz writes:

In September, public-sector employment increased by 10,000. However, over the last four years, it has declined by 572,000. With kids heading back to the classroom this fall, it’s worth considering how much of that drop has hit public schools. Around 40 percent of the decline in public sector employment over the last four years was in local government education, which is largely jobs in public K-12 education (the majority of which are teachers, but also teacher aides, librarians, guidance counselors, administrators, support staff, etc.). Furthermore, public K-12 enrollment increased by 0.8 percent over this period (using the enrollment growth rates found in Table 1 here). Just to keep up with this growth in the student population, employment in local public education should have grown at roughly the same rate, which would have meant adding around 62,000 jobs. As the figure shows, adding what was lost to what should have been added to keep up with the expanding student population, the total jobs gap in local public education as a result of the Great Recession and its aftermath is over 300,000.

In an accompanying table, she takes 253,000 local government education jobs lost in the last four years, adds in 62,000 jobs that should have been created to coincide with a cumulative 0.8% enrollment increase over the same period, and comes up with a 315,000 jobs gap.

There are a few problems with this formulation. First, despite explaining the Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers include all local government education jobs, she still refers to a 300,000 “teacher” gap. You can call it a 300,000 local government school employee gap, or a 160,000 teacher gap, but you can’t choose one number from Column A and one job description from Column B.

Second, in an accompanying blog post that uses these figures to berate Mitt Romney and praise President Obama, Shierholz refers to only 228,000 lost jobs in the last four years, not 253,000.  ”Putting these numbers together,” she writes, “(i.e., what was lost plus what should have been added to keep up with the expanding student population,) the total jobs gap in local public education as a result of the Great Recession and its aftermath is more than 300,000.” Even without my calculator, I can add two numbers, and 290,000 is not more than 300,000.

Third, Shierholz apparently believes that 2008 had the optimal level of K-12 staffing and conveniently ignores previous years. She also makes the unfounded assumption that K-12 hiring is matched to student enrollment. Even a cursory look at the numbers should put that notion to rest.

Since Shierholz looked at the last four years, I’ll look at the previous four years, 2004-2008. During that period of time, BLS reported growth in the local government education workforce of 4.25%.  The number of classroom teachers grew 4.5% from 2004 to 2008, according to National Education Association figures. How much did student enrollment grow? Only 1.3 percent. That’s a pretty big “student gap” that didn’t prompt an Economic Policy Institute report.

So you can argue that we are 300,000 education employees short of 2008, or you can argue that even after the Great Recession we are still 100,000 education employees ahead of 2004, which if I remember correctly was not exactly considered the Dark Ages of school hiring.

Had education staffing kept pace with enrollment, rather than greatly exceeding it, the current reductions in force would be greatly mitigated, perhaps even eliminated entirely. It was not some unforeseen cataclysm, but the inevitable result of policy choices we have made over the past decade.

Follow this link to view the 23-page summary of new contract language.

And the union provides this answer to a Frequently Asked Question:

Will we be paid this Friday?

You will be paid as usual this Friday. Your next check will be short for the days we have been out on strike.

Having been saddled with a law that required 75 percent rank-and-file approval to authorize a strike, CTU went out and got 90 percent. The mayor, though a prominent Democrat and ally of President Obama, was not a sympathetic figure, regardless of whether one viewed his proposals as fair or not. The CTU president had run on a platform of greater militancy against school reforms such as those championed by the mayor. And, most of all, CTU was ideally positioned to present itself as the successor to the Wisconsin protesters and Occupy demonstrators, holding the progressive line against corporate privatizers.

The strike began with overwhelming teacher and union support, and substantial public support – though the latter was somewhat overstated; a 47%-39% margin at the onset of a strike is not remarkable. Timing the strike just after payday gave CTU a two-week window to conclude its narrative and broker a deal.

Given the stakes, once begun the strike had to last at least until Friday. No major union wants to go through the time and expense of organizing picket lines and rallies, plus print signs and publications, only to toss them the next day. Apparently the district dropped its standardized test/teacher evaluation demands very late Tuesday night, which led to all the speculation that the strike would soon end. CTU president Karen Lewis said of the circumstance, “I’m smiling. I’m very happy.”

Of course there were details to be worked out, and a House of Delegates vote to be taken, but the delay just reinforced the notion that a) no one wanted to return to school on a Friday; and b) CTU could still hold the massive rally it had planned for Saturday.

So Sunday’s vote was meant to be a way to declare victory, and celebrate Lewis and her CORE slate as conquering heroes. Hence the shock of everyone involved when the delegates didn’t exactly stand up and cheer en masse.

I don’t have any independent accounts of what happened during the debate, but something definitely took the air out of Lewis and her officers. They went from “We believe this is a good contract” to “This is not a good deal by any stretch of the imagination” in a matter of a few hours. Especially curious was Lewis continually referring to the proposed agreement as “the deal that the board had” – as if no bargaining had taken place.

Ultimately, the delegates wouldn’t end the strike without all the details spelled out in writing, and then they wanted a chance to analyze them. Lewis emphasized that the delegates didn’t trust the district. Left unsaid was that they didn’t trust Lewis and her team to not get snookered by the district.

So what went wrong? How did this get all jammed up at the last minute? Three forces are in play:

1) We all forgot – including me – that Karen Lewis and her slate were elected in 2010 by less than 60 percent of CTU members in a run-off, after she managed to unify all the opposition against incumbent president Marilyn Stewart. By all accounts, the members and various union factions have all been united behind Lewis during the strike, but some fissures appeared over ending the strike. An NBC-TV affiliate reported some infighting, but even if the story is overblown, the House of Delegates did not meekly acquiesce to Lewis’ wishes, and that opposition had to be organized by someone.

2) Lewis said that the delegates felt “rushed” and that many of them were not familiar with the particulars of the agreement. That’s the result of the high amount of information control exercised by both the district and the union in contract negotiations. It’s not unreasonable for the CTU delegates to want time to examine the contract and make an informed decision. Why then doesn’t that right extend to the voters and people of Chicago? Instead the media and the rest of the city have to camp outside waiting for the white puff of smoke that signifies the anointing of a new collective bargaining agreement. Every member of CTU will get an opportunity to vote up or down on any tentative agreement. The voters of Chicago will not get that privilege, but they will still have to pay for it.

3) None of the above would have mattered if CTU had made it clear from the very beginning why it was going on strike. The union said money wasn’t the issue, and that appears to be the case. I haven’t heard anyone describe the district wage offer as inadequate and justification for a strike. It appeared to be the teacher evaluation system, but much of that was dictated by state law, and the district backed off its position mid-week. Without a definite way to measure victory, everyone involved filled in their own bubbles: Recall rights, class size, air conditioning and textbooks were all trotted out, and then yesterday Lewis said school closures “undergird” everything. When the proposal was placed before the delegates, they all wanted to be sure the issue they thought the strike was about was taken care of. All those who have been celebrating this walkout for the past week own some responsibility for raising expectations among the delegates and the rank-and-file over what could be gained. Now that they see the bottom line, many were bound to be disappointed.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel, not known for his easygoing nature, was upset that all the positive stuff he heard at the end of last week didn’t amount to anything and he lost his temper. Filing for a court order to put an end to the strike was a weak gesture at this stage of the game, and it may have been very counterproductive as it is bound to get the delegates up on their hind legs before the vote.

There is one final complication to consider – as if it weren’t complicated enough already. I remind you again that no one has yet missed a paycheck (Friday the 21st is payday). Traditionally at the end of a strike, language is worked out so that the missed school days are made up at the end of the year so no one loses any money – neither the district for having fewer instructional days than required by law, nor the teachers for missing days of work. All by itself this can become a bone of contention between the parties.

I honestly don’t think anyone “wins” this strike. Gains made by the “you can’t stomp on unions!” crowd are offset by gains made by the “you can’t negotiate with those unions!” crowd. This battle may be drawing to a close, but it looks like both sides will finish with more ammunition than they had at the start.

I am not best situated to opine on what exactly caused the strike, but it appears that those “in the know” have widely diverging accounts of what the sticking points actually are. Alexander Russo, who runs the Chicago-centric District 299 blog, suggests that maybe one side or the other, or both, wanted a strike for their own purposes.

That’s not to say this is all a stage play – just that some of this stuff only rose to the level of a “strike-able” issue because of the political climate and the personalities involved. As Arne Duncan will testify, negotiations between the Chicago Public Schools and the union have often been acrimonious, but they never quite reached the exploding point. Few remember now that CTU members authorized a strike in 2003, but a contract settlement was reached soon after.

What’s different now is that we live in a post-Occupy world where any occasion for the airing of grievances is the occasion for the airing of any grievance. Some CTU members are upset about pay. Some about class size. Some about standardized tests. Some about Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Some about Evil Corporate Puppetmasters. Since going out into the street and screaming is normally frowned upon, a strike is the perfect solution. Instead of going to work and subjecting yourself to the things that make you angry, you line up with your buddies and yell at the boss all day.

The stars aligned when CTU members elected Karen Lewis and her CORE slate to power. Lewis stood for genuine union militancy at a time when previous regimes were considered to be sellouts.

I wrote back then that “Lewis’s election may have large implications for the Chicago Public Schools. Her politics are significantly to the left of the machine Democrats who run the city and the school system. ‘What drives school reform is a single focus on profit. Profit. Not teaching, not learning, profit,’ she said in her post-election press conference.”

I believed that Lewis would join a long list of union outsiders who quickly became insiders. I was wrong about that. Oh, she almost did, but she learned that her muscular activism filled a niche left empty by Illinois and national teacher union leaders. She may be AFT’s most well-known local president.

In the short-term, strikes favor the union. Parents don’t have any pull with the union, so when they are inconvenienced they complain to the district and the city. The pressure on “management” to settle up is strong. But as the days extend into weeks, and the first paycheck is missed, teacher enthusiasm drops at the margins and the rank-and-file starts looking for an acceptable offer. Regardless of the outcome, both sides will declare victory – even if the strike ends up costing both sides money.

In 2001, the Hawaii State Teachers Association went on strike for three weeks and ultimately accepted an offer that netted teachers an additional $148 per year over the final offer before the strike. The California Teachers Association still remembers Wayne Johnson this way:

The watershed nine-day strike by United Teachers Los Angeles in May 1989 was “a breakthrough for the professionalization of teachers,” said UTLA’s then-president Wayne Johnson, who went on to become president of CTA. As CTA Action reported, UTLA members won “revolutionary reforms,” along with a 24 percent salary increase over three years.

What the union doesn’t remember is that the district’s final offer before the strike was for 21.5 percent over three years. When you subtract out the money lost by teachers during the strike, they barely broke even.

A settlement will be reached in Chicago when the financial costs of the strike exceed the psychic benefits. The last Chicago Public Schools pay day was Friday, September 7, which helps explain why CTU didn’t go out until today. The next pay day is September 21. If there were a betting pool on this, I’d put my money on a deal being reached next weekend.

So there’s a lot of union stuff going on. And while the formal convention events may be highly scripted, there are also some oddities surrounding the get-together.

* First there’s the belief that U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is running some rogue education reform clandestine operation without the knowledge of President Obama. Alyson Klein of Politics K-12 found a couple of union delegates who apparently think the President has nothing to do with his administration’s education policies.

* That’s odd enough, but then we have Michael Barone writing this about Ramona Oliver, NEA’s senior director of communications:

Oliver admits that the NEA has some differences with the Obama administration, but likes Education Secretary Arne Duncan and says he’s working toward the same goals, “which is the important thing.”

I’m 99.9% sure that Barone either misquoted or misunderstood Oliver, or that Oliver had been replaced by her counterpart in the Bizarro World.

* There was a panel organized by the Democrats for Education Reform that included both the NEA and AFT presidents, which was generally met with positive reviews. Moderator Jonathan Schorr described it as “marked more by agreement than debate.” Afterwards, though, both reformers and unions were claiming victory. Whitney Tilson wrote, “Ya know, the way they (the union presidents) were talking, you might actually think they were reformers…” The NEA side claimed Dennis Van Roekel “completely shifted the conversation our way, effectively stealing the show!”

* Van Roekel told the Washington Times that he learned from Wisconsin “I don’t think recalls are the way to go.” That’s an expensive lesson, but we might question if he really learned it. He also said voters backed Gov. Walker because “they frowned on the general idea of recalling an official they’d elected just 18 months earlier.” Just a reminder: California Gov. Gray Davis was recalled 11 months after being re-elected by a five-point margin.

* NEA vice president Lily Eskelsen made headlines of her own when, during a breakfast event for Utah delegates, she referred to the GOP nominee for Utah’s 4th Congressional District seat, Mia Love, as “a crazy person.” That might be par for the course these days, but it’s weird in that the pro-Democratic House Majority PAC is running an online ad against Love attacking her for raising taxes and spending too much. Take a look:

* Joy Resmovits at the Huffington Post notes that while NEA doesn’t donate much money to Republicans, the ones who have received it hold less-than-progressive views on some of the union’s core issues. You’ll be especially tickled by the Alabama Education Association’s support of Randy Brinson, chairman of the Christian Coalition of Alabama.

But don’t place too much stock in this. Some NEA affiliates make calculated decisions based on political realities in their state, whether the race is competitive, and, most important, incumbency. Let me restate the obvious: The reason NEA endorses so many Democrats is because the people who sit on the union PAC councils and run state affiliates are almost entirely Democrats. It’s really that simple.

Last year, as Gov. Jerry Brown hammered out final details of the state budget, he huddled around a conference table with three of the most powerful people in state government: the Assembly speaker, the Senate leader – and Joe Nuñez, chief lobbyist for the California Teachers Assn.

California was on the edge of fiscal crisis. Negotiations had come down to one sticking point: Brown and the legislators would balance the books by assuming that billions of dollars in extra revenue would materialize, then cut deeply from schools if it didn’t.

Nuñez said no.

Opposition from the powerful union, which had just staged a week of public protests against budget cuts, could mean a costly legal challenge. So the group took a break, and the officials retired to another room to hash out something acceptable to CTA while Nuñez awaited their return.

Californians who read the article will receive an illuminating lesson on how the state political apparatus really operates. Mishak’s story is particularly depressing for me, as the state of affairs he describes is what prompted me to start writing about teachers’ unions in the first place.

I dug through an old file box and found a lengthy report I wrote for the Claremont Institute back in October 1994 – long before I created the Education Intelligence Agency. It was part of a series the organization had commissioned called “The California Teachers Association: Power Politics vs. Education Reform.” My contribution was a 25-page briefing titled “The Shadow Legislature.”

The briefing described in gory detail the unique role CTA played in running the state government, but I won’t rehash all that. It will be sufficient to cite this paragraph, from a Los Angeles Times story of June 24, 1991:

As the Legislature wrestled with the state’s $14.3 billion budget deficit through a sweltering weekend earlier this month, some of the key moves were not made by legislators but by officials of the 200,000 member California Teachers Association. CTA lobbyists, carrying proposals and counter-proposals, scurried between the Assembly and Senate chambers and union headquarters, in a former Mexican restaurant two blocks away. They met with individual legislators, groups of lawmakers and representatives of other education groups to discuss nuances of the complex budget negotiations. In the end they won at least a partial victory when Gov. Pete Wilson dropped his high-profile campaign to suspend Proposition 98, the 1988 voter-approved initiative that guarantees funding for public schools and community colleges. Instead of cutting schools by $2.1 billion as he proposed in his budget, Wilson ended up increasing school spending by $822 million.

A lot of things have changed in California in the 21 years since that paragraph was written. As Mishak describes, a lot of the pushback against CTA now comes from Democrats. The state now has more than 1,000 charter schools with more than 410,000 students. Back then, it had none. Former CTA President Del Weber said of charters in March 1993: “About the only thing we’re sure of is that charter schools can employ non-certificated teachers, ignore state mandates for health and safety education, abrogate academic freedom, hire or fire teachers for ideological reasons, and escape all accountability to the taxpayers at large while operating on the taxpayers’ money.” These days, CTA claims it is “not opposed to charter schools.”

But some things never change. The state has run budget deficits under Republicans and Democrats, under large one-party majorities and divided government, under professional politicians and Hollywood actors. The one common factor is the presence in the room of CTA’s top lobbyist. Capitol Weekly named Joe Nuñez the second most powerful political player in the state – behind only someone who sleeps with the governor. Time for CTA to stand outside the locked door with the rest of us.

But NEA isn’t content with the members feeling the same way. They should feel exactly the same way. It isn’t enough for the national union’s communications department to disseminate its talking points through its various outlets; it wants all of its state affiliates to disseminate the same talking points. This leads to some unintentional insight into how NEA messaging works.

Here is a weekend tweet from NEA Public Relations that it suggested to its state affiliates to use as a sample:

By choosing @reppaulryan as #VPpick, @mittromney double downs on view that ed, opportunity belongs to only those who can afford it

— NEA Public Relations (@NEAMedia) August 11, 2012

Note the minor grammatical error – “double downs” instead of “doubles down.”

Now see what followed. Tha faithful didn’t retweet the NEA tweet, but offered it up as their own. First the Nebraska State Education Association:

By choosing @reppaulryan as #VPpick, @mittromney double downs on view that ed, opportunity belongs to only those who can afford it

— NSEAOnline (@NSEAOnline) August 11, 2012

Then Bill Guy, a California Teachers Association communications consultant:

By choosing @reppaulryan as #VPpick, @mittromney double downs on view that ed, opportunity belongs to only those who can afford it

— Bill Guy (@billgcta) August 12, 2012

Then the Wisconsin Education Association Council:

By choosing @reppaulryan as #VPpick, @mittromney double downs on view that ed, opportunity belongs to only those who can afford it #WEAC

— WEAC (@WEAC) August 13, 2012

Followed by the Fairfax Education Association in Virginia:

By choosing @reppaulryan as #VPpick, @mittromney double downs on view that ed, opportunity belongs to only those who can afford it.

— Fairfax EA (@FairfaxEA) August 13, 2012

Each of them “double downs,” suggesting they didn’t spend much time reading it before tweeting it. True believers won’t care where the talking points come from, but this kind of lock-step messaging might cost some votes in [Nearby City].

The National Education Association has long had a financial relationship with Bank of America. Hundreds of thousands of NEA members hold B of A credit cards, many of them through NEA’s Member Benefits program. Some members have criticized on a political basis the union’s partnership with the bank, but NEA officers publicly defended it, and the union has taken some liberal heat for siding with big banks in the past.

But NEA is floating with the tide now. Sources within the union tell EIA that NEA is in negotiations with B of A to transfer its credit card customers to a different provider.

The loss of the NEA credit card will affect B of A’s bottom line, but it may also affect NEA’s bottom line. Banks pay for the privilege of access to union members and to have the union’s endorsement.

At the end of each calendar year, NEA surveys its members and its activists, asking a variety of questions to get their pulse on the upcoming year in politics. The union holds the results of these surveys very close to the vest, but when you can get hold of one, it is always informative. At the end of 2011, NEA commissioned GBA Strategies, a DC-based communications and opinion research firm, to conduct a survey of 750 rank-and-file members and an additional 750 activists, the latter defined as elected union reps, PAC contributors, and other members who have been involved in organized union political activities.

The numbers reinforce what past surveys demonstrated. NEA and its activists are not at odds with the leanings and desires of the rank-and-file, but their opinions are much more zealous and less nuanced than those of the average member.

Sixty percent of the rank-and-file surveyed gave Obama a favorable rating, while 26 percent gave him an unfavorable rating. For presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, the numbers were 26 percent favorable and 41 percent unfavorable.

Among NEA activists each of those leanings intensified significantly. Seventy-three percent rated Obama favorably, while only 17 percent rated him unfavorably. Romney’s ratings among activists were 18 percent favorable and 57 percent unfavorable.

Obama’s job performance stats showed a similar gap overall, but neither group was overjoyed. Only 19 percent of the rank-and-file strongly approved of how the President was doing his job while 20 percent strongly disapproved. The activists were somewhat kinder. Thirty percent of them strongly approved while only 12 percent strongly disapproved.

Asked to choose between Obama and Romney, it was no contest. The rank-and-file selected the President 56% (36% “strong”) to 26% for Romney, with the rest undecided. The activists went for Obama 70% (49% “strong”) to 16% for Romney, with the rest undecided.

The layman might find these numbers encouraging for NEA, but the union is worried that even its activists aren’t planning on being very active. Only 10 percent of the rank-and-file and 13 percent of the activists were “very likely” to join Educators for Obama, the NEA PAC volunteer group. Twenty-four percent in each group were “not likely at all” to do so. And even among those likely to join, large percentages wouldn’t talk to the media, recruit others, or volunteer for two hours a month.

GBA Strategies came to the simple conclusion that while a significant majority of NEA members supported the re-election of the President, “they are not energized for the election.” The firm recommended more work be done to mobilize the union membership “even if it means concentrating on educating them about how bad the alternative is.”

NEA obviously has taken that recommendation to heart in 2012. But a “Vote for Obama So Things Don’t Get Worse” message isn’t a formula for success with education voters (or with those who vote on the economy, for that matter). NEA won’t be able to energize Obama voters. Only Obama can. He hasn’t shown any signs of reversing course in education policy or personnel, so NEA is playing the only cards it holds.

The Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) examined NEA’s income tax returns for the years 2000 through 2010 and proposed adjustments for those years. NEA appealed the proposed adjustments and while it believes the related tax returns are in accordance with prevailing tax rulings it has established a provision of $4,000,000 to cover any obligations that might arise from the unresolved issues.

At a time when middle class Americans and small businesses are suffering, large, multi-national corporations are earning record profits and paying little to no money in taxes that are intended to support the communities where they do business. Or so I hear.

The union staff pension fund covers virtually every permanent employee who works at NEA headquarters in Washington, DC, as well as participating workers in state and local affiliates. The current number of participants in the plan is unknown to outsiders, but the benefits are generous. NEA employees contributed nothing to their defined benefit plan, and were able to enjoy the best of both worlds, as NEA offered matching contributions to a voluntary 401(k) defined contribution plan as well.

Tough times led the national union to require employees hired on or after June 9, 2009 to contribute 3.5% of the pension amount, and the 401(k) plan was suspended in the latest budget.

The pension numbers are staggering, considering the number of employees/retirees involved must only amount to some several thousand. As of January 1, 2011, NEA had accumulated $644.7 million in pension liabilities, for which it had $556.3 million available. For that fiscal year, the union contributed $25.2 million to the staff retirement plan.

But those figures are a snapshot, and don’t account for some important facts. Staff salaries rise over time, and with them the amount of pension contributions and liabilities. NEA estimates that with projected staff salary increases, its pension payout obligations are almost $700 million.

State governments have learned that these liabilities go from a problem to a catastrophe when the number of contributors to the plan decreases while the number of beneficiaries increase. The parallel issue at NEA is the loss of members, leaving the union with less dues revenue to fund rising staff pension liabilities.

Pension reform in politically difficult in every state, but is even more problematic internally for unions, since they are ideologically wedded to the defined benefit approach. The question for both states and unions is how happily younger employees will tolerate lesser benefits for themselves to fund better benefits for their elders.

Using U.S. Department of Education data, Rich writes, “Enrollment in nearly half of the nation’s largest school districts has dropped steadily over the last five years…. While the losses have been especially steep in long-battered cities like Cleveland and Detroit, enrollment has also fallen significantly in places suffering through the recent economic downturn, like Broward County, Fla., San Bernardino, Calif., and Tucson, according to the latest available data from the Department of Education, analyzed for The New York Times.”

She adds, “The economy and home foreclosure crisis drove some families from one school system into another. Hundreds of children from immigrant families have left districts in Arizona and California as their parents have lost jobs. Legal crackdowns have also prompted many families to return to their home countries.”

This is all sound reasoning as long as you cherry pick the declining districts and ignore the growing districts. I think we can safely include Las Vegas in “places suffering through the recent economic downturn,” but its enrollment increased 8.4% during the same period Rich examined. If immigrant families losing their jobs and “legal crackdowns” account for the losses in Arizona and California, how then do we explain the double-digit growth in enrollment in nine separate large school districts in Texas? San Bernardino’s enrollment is down 8.9%, but nearby Corona Norco’s is up 14.3%. Did the immigrants flee 26 miles down the road?

Out of the 100 largest school districts, the top 10 growers consist of four from Texas, two from Utah, and one each from Colorado, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia. You can write an entirely different article with very different conclusions using just those districts, but it would be equally slanted.

The fact is: Total enrollment in all U.S. schools grew by 0.3 percent between 2005 and 2010, while enrollment in the 100 largest school districts declined 0.4 percent. That doesn’t look like a very significant gap to me. There has been a gradual move of the populace from the Northeast and Midwest to the South and Mountain states. That’s about the only trend I can discern from the enrollment data.

The union created the fund in 2000, and is required to annually report its status to NEA convention delegates. In the good old days, that meant not only reporting the fund balance, but the amount and destination of each grant to a state affiliate. At some point in 2009, the powers-that-be at NEA came to the conclusion that this was more information than they wanted to be known, so they reduced the report to the total amount disbursed and the total number of affiliates to receive the cash, without identifying them.

This year the union was even cagier than usual. The fund report was dated May 24, and listed the fund balance at $19,504,926. What the delegates probably didn’t know – and the members they represent certainly don’t know – is that the night before the convention opened the NEA board of directors met and voted to allocate $13 million of that balance, and another $4 million from the 2012-13 money, to a handful of state affiliate campaigns. The union expects to have spent $25 million out of an available $29 million by this time next year.

A total of $9 million went to five state affiliates – California Teachers Association, Florida Education Association, Idaho Education Association, Michigan Education Association and Ohio Education Association. I don’t have the individual breakdowns, except that CTA received $5 million. CTA deposited that money, and an additional $7.5 million from its own ballot initiative fund, into its issues PAC. We can expect the vast bulk of this money to be spent on supporting Proposition 30 – the governor’s tax increase – and defeating Proposition 32, which would prohibit the use of payroll-deducted funds for political purposes.

A total of $8 million was allocated to “behind the wall” campaigns in the states. Internal NEA documents describe them this way:

The Independent Campaigns Unit consults with state affiliates on setting up “behind-the-wall” programs involving communication to the public around candidates or issues and connecting to other organizations and individuals to help proactively position affiliates as part of a state’s progressive infrastructure to elect pro-public education candidates and pass pro-public education/pro-labor policies.

If NEA’s projected membership losses for 2012-13 come to pass, the union will have about $1.5 million less in the BMLC fund than it would otherwise. But the sums of money involved are so enormous it’s hard to imagine the loss will have a decisive detrimental effect in any campaign.

Last month the U.S. Census Bureau released its annual report on public school revenues and expenditures. It covered the 2009-10 school year. Read in concert with data from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics Common Core of Data, we can examine how funding and staffing were impacted by tightened state budgets.

Looking at the nation as a whole, it appears the years of substantial growth in spending and hiring came to a grinding halt. The number of full-time equivalent K-12 teachers actually fell by about 38,000 – something that hasn’t happened in recent memory. Per-pupil spending grew by 1.1 percent – short of the inflation rate for 2010. Enrollment was essentially flat, growing by only 3,800 students nationwide.

Fourteen states experienced an actual cut in per-pupil spending in 2009-10 (Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Kansas, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Utah, Virginia and Washington) spanning the geographic and political spectrum.

Though it is clear that the lean years were underway, not every state suffered. Twenty-three states had a larger teacher workforce in 2010 than in 2009. And of those, eight were simultaneously experiencing a drop in K-12 enrollment (Idaho, Illinois, Missouri, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota and West Virginia).

Annual figures can spike in either direction, so I have constructed a table of the 50 states that examines enrollment, hiring and labor costs over a five-year period (I will eventually update figures for each of America’s more than 13,000 school districts).

From 2005 to 2010, student enrollment increased a cumulative 0.3 percent, while the K-12 teacher workforce increased 3.8 percent. Per-pupil spending increased 22 percent (about 9.3% after correcting for inflation). Spending on education employee salaries and benefits increased 22.3 percent.

It seems safe to assume that just as the cuts to education lagged behind the fall in the economy, so too will resumed growth in education budgets lag behind an economic recovery. These numbers are likely to get much worse before they get better.

Esposito would invoice BTU for work done at the union’s headquarters building, then add a few thousand more to be kicked back, in cash, to Santeramo. But that’s not all. Even without the kickbacks, the amount of money billed for the amount of work done seems wildly out of proportion. The arrest warrant lists the date each invoice was filed, and a description of the work. Here it is, in total:

March 11, 2006 – “parking lot repairs, stripping and installing parking lot signs.” Invoice for $38,520, $10,000 of which was kicked back to Santeramo.

October 16, 2006 – “replacing light bulbs, painting, flag replacement and straighten sign post.” $13,775 – $5k to Santeramo.

December 18, 2006 – “install a tree, clean dumpster, replace flags and light bulbs.” $14,803.42 – $5k to Santeramo.

January 10, 2007 – “sound installation, ceiling tiles, A/C duct work and electrical work.” $88,350 – $10k to Santeramo.

January 22, 2007 – “replaced ballasts, spread ant killer, sprayed for weeds and shampoo carpet.” $14,095 – $5k to Santeramo.

September 4, 2007 – “install flags on patio flag pole, checked A/C drain line, ant killer, vegetation kill and cleaned downstairs carpets.” $16,612.57 – $5k to Santeramo.

October 5, 2007 – “wall repairs, shampoo carpets, replace light bulbs and installed vertical blinds.” $22,249,42 – $5k to Santeramo.

November 5, 2007 – “repaired fence, installed peg boards, removed projection screen, grind stump and drywall repair.” $14,277.52 – $5k to Santeramo.

December 3, 2007 – “tree removal and permit.” $10,800 – $2.5K to Santeramo.

December 3, 2007 – “replace light bulbs, install new door, painting and install carpet.” $13,638.89 – $2.5k to Santeramo.

January 22, 2008 – “weed killer, ant-killer, touch up paint, adjust sprinkler heads and clean dumpster.” $11,162.93 – $2.5k to Santeramo.

March 11, 2008 to February 26, 2009 – repairs to BTU two-story elevator. $89,295.88 – $20k to Santeramo

March 18, 2008 – “replace light fixtures in parking lot, changed light bulbs and reset timers.” $6,155,60 – $2k to Santeramo.

June 26, 2008 – “change light bulbs, repair A/C leak, replace drywall, replace sprinkler heads and repair three-way switch.” $18,258.73 – $5k to Santeramo.

July 23, 2008 – “replace light bulbs, weed killer, cleaned drain holes in patio, painted roof deck, and mulch in flower beds.” $22,128.15 – $5k to Santeramo.

December 9, 2008 – “roof maintenance, pressure clean sidewalk, weeded, spread ant kill and changed light bulbs.” $18,115.91 – $5k to Santeramo.

January 4, 2009 – “replace parking lot lights, pressure clean patio, clean patio drains, spread weed killer and replace light bulbs.” $16,384.76 – $5k to Santeramo.

January 5, 2009 – “sealed windows, pressure wash patio, painted deck, cleaned parking lot and dumpster area.” $16,348.78 – $5k to Santeramo.

February 26, 2009 – “replace light bulbs, replace ballasts, weed and ant killer, repair sprinkler line, repair door hinge, and buy paint to match interior walls.” $18,132.24 – $5k to Santeramo.

April 30, 2009 – “weed and ant killer, replace ballasts, replace light bulbs, replace flags, replaced sprinklers and cleaned parking lot.” $13,653.26 – $5k to Santeramo.

July 6, 2009 – “repaired toilets, installed filters in drinking fountain, cleaned dumpster area, dyed carpet in Pat’s office, and weed and ant killer.” $11,987.32 – $3k to Santeramo.

November 2, 2009 – “replaced flags, installed kick plates, replaced light bulbs and repaired door handle.” $20,980 – $5k to Santeramo.

January 25, 2010 – “roof maintenance, pressure clean sidewalk, weeded, spread ant kill, and changed light bulbs.” $6,423.92 – $2k to Santeramo.

March 9, 2010 – “roof maintenance, clean patio drain, spread ant kill, put down weed killer, and changed light bulbs.” $14,842.62 – $5k to Santeramo.

May 18, 2010 – “roof maintenance, replace ballasts, weeded, cleaned patio drain, relocated door name signs, spread ant kill and changed light bulbs.” $17,950 – $5k to Santeramo.

June 22, 2010 – “cleaned roof deck, moved furniture, cleaned parking lot, cut trees and changed light bulbs.” $18,290.66 – $5k to Santeramo.

August 17, 2010 – “roof maintenance, repaired flag pole cord, and re-hung BTU flag, spread weed killer, spread ant kill and changed light bulbs.” $13,708.64 – $5k to Santeramo.

August 26, 2010 – “repair plumbing leak, dry and clean carpet, replaced ceiling tiles and replaced ballast.” $4,385 – $1k to Santeramo.

September 21, 2010 – “installed locks on doors, general landscaping, repaired damaged curb in parking lot, touch-up painting and replaced light ballast.” $16,237.79 – $5k to Santeramo.

December 8, 2010 – “fertilized, repaired sprinklers, removed dead plants, weed killer, spread ant killer and changed light bulbs.” $17,194.90 – $5k to Santeramo.

January 12, 2011 – “spread ant killer, pressure clean sidewalk and patio, fertilized, replaced light bulbs and installed two flags.” $17,374.12 – $5k to Santeramo.

April 4, 2011 – “weed and ant killer, replaced bulbs, clean A/C drain, adjust sprinkler heads, clean dumpster area, and repair toilet.” $13,737.34 – $5k to Santeramo.

A number of these expenses catch the eye. “I didn’t think anybody could be infected with that many ants,” said Broward Sheriff Al Lamberti. And certainly there was an awful lot of work with flags, flag poles and flag cord. But it seems the entire BTU staff spent a significant part of every day in the dark, considering the number of light bulbs and ballasts that had to be replaced. The amount of cash being disbursed from union funds for such mundane tasks never lit a light bulb over anyone’s head.

As egregious as this list is, Esposito told police that the kickbacks to Santeramo began with the renovation of the BTU building in early 2000. There’s no telling how much union cash Santeramo collected, but he bought a $574,000 vacation home in November 2007, putting $274,000 down, and paid off the mortgage in three years.

Esposito also testified that repair work he performed at the homes of Santeramo’s two adult children were paid for with BTU dues money.

We also learned that police interviewed former BTU president Tony Gentile to learn if he had actually initialed the March 8, 2000 memo Santeramo produced as evidence of his entitlement to unused sick leave and vacation time. Gentile provided a sworn statement that he had never seen the memo, which in any case did not contain his initials, since he always used AJG and not the TG listed on it. Members of the BTU executive board denied any knowledge of the memo, and said they never would have authorized the settlement AFT administrator John Tarka reached with Santeramo had they known it was based on the memo.

Finally, the arrest warrant reveals that aside from the five union officials already charged with political campaign violations, Santeramo reimbursed himself from dues money for campaign contributions he and his wife made. Esposito was also reimbursed for a $500 contribution, as was BTU communications director John Ristow, who “acknowledged that everyone was aware that they would be reimbursed; otherwise, no one would have contributed.” Neither Esposito nor Ristow has been charged with any crime. There is still the question of the 44 BTU delegates to the Florida Education Association convention, all of whom were allegedly reimbursed out of dues money for $50 contributions made to the AFT’s political action committee.

The handful of 2012 RA delegates who bothered to look over the table were probably confused, as Oklahoma was missing, and Ohio’s numbers were inflated by an amount that approximates the size of the Oklahoma affiliate. I’m going to assume that an honest mistake was made. I could make an educated guess as to how to separate them, but I’ll just report them here as a combined Ohio/Oklahoma figure.

NEA had a total of 3,166,761 members of all types, of whom 2,807,332 were active and employed in the public school system. Be aware that these are individual souls, not full-time equivalents. Forty-four state affiliates lost active members in 2010-11.

Here is the breakdown of each state’s active members, along with the percentage change from 2009-10.

ALABAMA – 73,864 (down 2.3%)

ALASKA – 11,541 (down 0.2%)

ARIZONA – 26,607 (down 10.2%)

ARKANSAS – 12,198 (down 5.1%)

CALIFORNIA – 299,151 (down 3.4%)

COLORADO – 35,479 (down 4.1%)

CONNECTICUT – 37,353 (down 1.3%)

DELAWARE – 11,233 (up 1.8%)

FLORIDA – 136,656 (up 5.9%)

GEORGIA – 30,836 (down 6.9%)

HAWAII – 12,444 (up 0.0%)

IDAHO – 11,177 (down 3.7%)

ILLINOIS – 127,995 (down 2.2%)

INDIANA – 43,963 (down 5.0%)

IOWA – 35,069 (down 2.8%)

KANSAS – 24,455 (down 4.0%)

KENTUCKY – 31,512 (down 0.5%)

LOUISIANA – 14,042 (down 6.4%)

MAINE – 20,118 (down 2.4%)

MARYLAND – 66,433 (down 0.5%)

MASSACHUSETTS – 98,449 (down 0.7%)

MICHIGAN – 117,122 (down 5.6%)

MINNESOTA – 73,983 (down 0.4%)

MISSISSIPPI – 5,108 (down 2.6%)

MISSOURI – 28,813 (down 3.2%)

MONTANA – 16,575 (up 17.0%)

NEBRASKA – 21,803 (down 1.0%)

NEVADA – 24,848 (down 4.3%)

NEW HAMPSHIRE – 15,860 (down 0.2%)

NEW JERSEY – 169,292 (down 5.3%)

NEW MEXICO – 7,996 (down 3.2%)

NEW YORK – 389,707 (down 1.1%)

NORTH CAROLINA – 41,544 (down 7.6%)

NORTH DAKOTA – 7,376 (up 1.5%)

*OHIO/OKLAHOMA – 138,814 (down 2.6%)

OREGON – 40,853 (down 1.3%)

PENNSYLVANIA – 157,768 (down 0.8%)

RHODE ISLAND – 8,945 (down 1.0%)

SOUTH CAROLINA – 7,111 (down 1.0%)

SOUTH DAKOTA – 5,679 (down 2.3%)

TENNESSEE – 45,938 (down 1.6%)

TEXAS – 46,666 (up 0.2%)

UTAH – 17,388 (down 1.7%)

VERMONT – 10,649 (down 2.1%)

VIRGINIA – 51,390 (down 4.7%)

WASHINGTON – 79,302 (up 0.2%)

WEST VIRGINIA – 10,538 (down 4.6%)

WISCONSIN – 85,437 (down 1.2%)

WYOMING – 5,543 (down 3.7%)

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA – 337 (up 4.3%)

FEDERAL – 5,963 (up 1.7%)

HAWAII-UHPA – 3,024 (down 3.4%)

UTAH-USEA – 5,264 (down 8.0%)

DIRECT – 121 (down 9.0%)

NATIONAL TOTAL – 2,807,332 (down 2.0%)

Someone will ask, so note that these numbers are from before Act 10 was effective in Wisconsin. And since we have the national numbers for the end of the 2011-12 school year, we can provide a quick breakdown of how things have gone since NEA hit its high-water mark in 2008-09.

2008-09 = 2,905,741 active members (3,234,639 total members)

2009-10 = 2,866,063 active (3,204,185 total)

2010-11 = 2,807,332 active (3,166,761 total)

2011-12 = 2,726,045 active (3,085,999 total)

So in the last three years, NEA has lost 179,696 active members (down 6.2%), and the union is projecting that the worst is yet to come.

*  NEA Convention 2012: “We Have to Change.” Seventy staffers cut and down $65 million, the delegates seem most worried about a virtual meeting for the resolutions committee.

*  NEA: “No Evidence” Teach for America Busts Unions. Judging by reader response, this was my biggest scoop of the week.

*  NEA Convention 2012: The Missing. Worst snub of the convention wasn’t by President Obama.

*  NEA Convention 2012: Outside the Lines. Where once again I shirk my journalistic responsibility.

*  Biden: Romney Bad, Teachers Good. What else is there to say?

*  NEA Convention 2012: America’s Greatest Education Governor Not So Great at Math. Minnesota governor’s “real” numbers are imaginary.

*  Obama to Phone It In on Thursday. You know, they did have an Obama impersonator on hand. Hmmm…

*  More on Gov. Dayton’s Math. Check your numbers… at the door.

*  NEA Convention 2012: Delegates to Take Up the Hot Issue of Hotel Cable Channel Selection, At least until peer pressure led to its withdrawal.

*  NEA Convention 2012: Social Justice Patriots. Demagoguing the 4th from the Left is no better than doing it from the Right.

*  NEA Convention 2012: NBI Smackdown. Delegates learn what life is like for California taxpayers.

*  NEA Convention 2012: Obama Coming In Garbled. Thank God for closed captioning.

*  A Financial Note for RA Delegates. Where those spending estimates come from.

When the call finally came in, two things immediately came to mind:

1) Oh my God! Someone drove the President’s bus into the Cuyahoga River!

2) I hope the phone connection is better if he suddenly needs to call in a nuclear strike.

It turned out OK because NEA hired some awesome closed-captioning people to type up the President’s remarks in real time, and he didn’t say anything unusual. I do think, however, the President gave a hint as to how he will handle education issues in the campaign and deal with lingering dissatisfaction from a significant portion of the union.

The President emphasized the funding for teachers’ jobs in the stimulus bill, and the additional funding in the follow-on “edujobs” bill. He didn’t mention Race to the Top, Arne Duncan, charter schools, performance pay, or really any policy issue. And he took a swipe at Mitt Romney, saying, “My opponent mocks the idea that we need more teachers.”

As NEA campaigns for Obama, it will stick to the same emphasis: funding and the vulnerabilities of Romney. Addressing the other issues will wait until after the election… probably to no effect, but what else can NEA do?

The President signed off with “I’m looking forward to seeing you guys on the campaign trail.” To which NEA president Dennis Van Roekel responded, “We’re behind you all the way.” I think part of the frustration is that the union has been behind him, instead of in front of his face.

The delegates also mopped up the rest of their new business items, voting down many due to budget concerns. Here are just a few they handled today:

NBI 62, which was to create a charter school organizing program, was modified to “encourage” affiliates to organize charter school teachers. This essentially means it will amount to nothing. The California delegate who introduced the motion said, “Organizing charter schools is an investment in the survival of our organization.”

NBI 64, the “Friends of Public Education Card” I made fun of the other day, was referred to committee because “it’s already in the works.” I might buy one just so I can have my picture taken with it and post it at the top of my blog.

NBI 71 was approved. It will try to mimic the efforts of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) from the opposite side, compiling draft bills to be used in state legislatures across the country. I nearly wet myself when the Arkansas delegate who introduced the measure informed us, “Our state affiliates have identified enemies of public education – both overt and covert.” I’ll let you figure out whether it was from fear or laughter. If they print up an “Enemies of Public Education Card,” I’ll buy one of those as well.

NBI 83, the measure to have hotels run “Game of Thrones” on TV on a continual loop, or something like that, was withdrawn by its creator, as was NBI 87, which was to send a letter of disappointment to the President for fleeing Washington. Just as well. I’m sure the President would have simply replied he was being Madisonesque.

The final action item was to vote on the union’s budget. In the 15 years I have been covering the convention, this was the first time NEA had to make cuts. So it wasn’t a surprise that it was also the first year the budget elicited a boatload of questions and complaints from delegates.

Specific questions about the staff reductions were turned away by Van Roekel as being under the purview of executive director John Stocks. He did say Stocks was directing a “consolidation of several departments and streamlining of operations,” which sounded pretty corporate for a social justice patriot.

Van Roekel revealed that the early retirement of 56 staffers had netted $7.1 million in savings for the union. That’s about $127,000 per retirement, if you’re scoring at home.

After an unprecedented 17 questions on the budget – some of them hostile – Van Roekel asked the delegates if they wanted to close debate. Since they were about 13 hours into their day, they did.

Just before the mad dash for the exits, we learned the NEA political action committee had raised $3.8 million so far this year – more than a third of that in the last four days. The delegates contributed an average of $182 each to the national PAC.

NBI 62: Calls on NEA in conjunction with its affiliates to establish a charter school organizing program. Before everyone starts running to the parapets, union staff placed a price tag of more than $3.6 million on the measure. It won’t pass without severe modification.

NBI 64: “The NEA will review the possibility of offering a ‘Friends of Public Education Card’ to the public for a fee. This card will permit the carrier to purchase items from the professional library at a discount and access online educational resources.” An even better idea would be to force them to have a card and take the fee out their paycheck, unless they opt out between July 1 and July 15.

NBI 83: Submitted by a Massachusetts delegate and signed by 50 of his peers…

NEA shall attempt not to do business in hotels where the selected TV channels in the guest rooms are evidently to express only one political viewpoint. We are all aware that Fox channels are there to advance the conservative viewpoint while MSNBC is a channel to espouse the liberal viewpoint of the political debate. Therefore, NEA (both at the National and State levels) shall attempt to conduct business only at hotels that do not patently disseminate one viewpoint while suppressing the other (opposing) political viewpoint with their choice of channel line-ups.

Rationale/Background

Current efforts by millionaires and billionaires to control political messages in the traditional airwaves also extend to include the hotels we rent. In effect, it is a tacit endorsement by NEA of the one-sided messages from these hotels. While hotels have a right to select the types of channels they want for their guest rooms, NEA equally has a right and an obligation to send a message to these hotels about the imperative of disseminating both sides of the political messages.

I have nothing to add.

NBI 87 directs the NEA president to write a letter to President Obama expressing disappointment that he got on a bus out of town as soon as they arrived and didn’t visit the convention in person.

NBI 10 revealed that 10 NEA managers had been notified by telephone that their positions were being eliminated, but the effort to address it was ruled out of order. NEA president Van Roekel cited the by-law that gives the union’s executive director exclusive responsibility over staff matters.

Delegates voted not to consider NBI 14, which called on NEA to “publicly oppose any policy of U.S. military action against Iran.”

They approved NBI 22, which directs the union to develop a strategy to reverse the Citizens United decision through an amendment to the Constitution – even though NEA general counsel Alice O’Brien informed the delegates that such an amendment could adversely affect NEA’s own political action.

NEA also bestowed its “America’s Greatest Education Governor” award on Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton. This is not as great an honor as it might first appear, as only 20 people are realistically eligible, and two of them have already received the award.

Gov. Dayton was gracious enough to actually show up for his award, and gave a short speech in which he cited a few education statistics.

One of these stopped me in my tracks. Gov. Dayton claimed that between 2000 and 2010, some measure of education spending or revenue in Minnesota had been cut by 14 percent – in real dollars, he emphasized.

By contrast, he noted, his administration was going to raise per-pupil spending $50 next year, and $50 the year after that. (Applause all around.)

Now Minnesota has seen significant declines in enrollment over the past few years, so I wondered if it were really possible that the governor was correct. So I went to the Minnesota Department of Education web site to see what I could see.

The agency helpfully provides Excel tables on state education revenues going back to 1996, and even more helpfully adjusts those numbers for inflation. Based on constant 1996 dollars, spending per pupil in 2000 was $5,241 and in 2010 was $5,848. That’s an increase of 11.6 percent in real dollars. I can’t even find a sub-category of spending or revenue anywhere close to a 14 percent cut.

It appears Gov. Dayton has made a similar claim before. In April 2010, he said, “During the Pawlenty years, state education aid has been cut by an average over $1,400 per student in kindergarten through 12th grade.”

Corrected by a reporter, Dayton compounded his claim, stating, “Well, it’s not been increased relative to inflation. Then it’s effectively a cut. This is $1,400 in real (dollars) after inflation, to make it clear.”

Whether he means 14 percent or $1,400 doesn’t matter. Minnesota didn’t cut education spending between 2000 and 2010.

Just to add the cherry on top, Gov. Dayton’s $50 per-pupil increase amounts to 0.4 percent, and another 0.4 percent the following year. The Congressional Budget Office estimates inflation for the next two years to be 1.2 percent and 1.3 percent.