While legislation allowing for the operation of charter schools might sound like a good idea for a state in the perpetual grip of a public school funding crisis, the charter-school proposal in its current form has many entrusted with the care and advocacy of education policy and performance in Alabama up in arms.
HB 541, titled the Education Options Act of 2012, barreled its way through a House Ways and Means Education Committee hearing on April 5th, despite expressed concerns by committee members who had not had time to review provisions that had been added to the bill in the mere hours leading up to the hearing.
HB 541 now awaits approval by the state house.
Charter schools, while both privately and publicly funded, would not be subject to many of the rules and regulations that govern Alabama’s public school system, thereby allowing them to function autonomously in respect to employing alternative methods of raising the state’s standard of academic excellence. Generally, charter schools act as self-governing agencies in joint contract with local school boards, are performance-based, and must produce positive results in order to sustain their eligibility for public money.
Republicans in the Alabama Legislature had Richard Franklin, president of the American Federation of Teachers in Birmingham, Alabama, kicked out of a public hearing on a bill that would take public school tax money and give it to private corporations to set up charter schools. Their reason? He was “smiling.”
He said he also thinks it was because he is black, and with a union that opposes charter school legislation. Watch this video to see our exclusive interview with Franklin.
Other union officials say they don’t think the Republicans have the votes to pass the legislation.
For more information, read our earlier story about the issue below.
Bren Riley, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer, at a press conference in Montgomery
by Glynn Wilson
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — The Alabama AFL-CIO, like many unions across the country, is in the midst of a rebranding.
Unions have been in decline in the U.S. for many years. But due to the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens Unites v. the Federal Election Commission, which freed corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts on political campaigns, and due to the labor uprising last year in Wisconsin, unions are rethinking their strategies and trying to grow stronger to take on the growing corporate power and resulting income inequality throughout the country.
Bren Riley, the new Secretary-Treasurer of the group, held a sparsely attended press conference at the group’s Road Kill Barbecue on Tuesday and said the state’s umbrella union will be highlighting income “inequality” in the coming months.
“We are on a mission to keep the 1% from expanding because the 1%, as we all know, is against everything we are as the 99%,” he said.
While millions of Americans among the 99% continue to be unemployed or underemployed and the nation’s unemployment rate hovers around 8.3 percent, chief executive officers of the nation’s largest corporations received a 2 percent pay raise last year.
While that may not seem like much of an increase, it came on top of a 27 percent hike in 2010, according to a report in USA Today.
The median, or mid-point, pay of top executives was $9.6 million in 2011, USA Today reported, based on 138 companies in the Standard & Poor’s index of 500 largest companies whose pay data has been disclosed.
While CEO pay rose, USA Today noted, average weekly earnings of workers, adjusted for inflation, fell 1.2 percent from the October 2010 peak through February 2012, the latest data available. The article was based on data from GMI Ratings of companies that had the same CEO in 2010 and 2011.
The Top Issues Include Unemployment Compensation, Wage Floors and Charter Schools
The Alabama AFL-CIO announced its agenda for the second half of the legislative session today in a press release, challenging Republicans on bills related to Unemployment Compensation, Worker’s Compensation and Charter Schools.
“SB 300 and HB 285 will make Alabama’s Unemployment Insurance, ranked 49th out of 50, the worst in the nation,” said Al Henley, President of Alabama AFL-CIO.
Alabama Workers are entitled to Unemployment Insurance when lose their job through no fault of their own. Maximum benefits are $265/week.
A delegation representing civil rights and labor leaders will be in Berlin, Germany, on Wednesday April 4 to urge Daimler AG and its shareholders to seek repeal of Alabama’s racial profiling law, H.B. 56, according to a press release sent out in an e-mail blast by the Service Employees International Union.
The law denies fundamental civil rights to immigrants and minorities and impacts trade union activities between and among union members, inhibiting freedom of association, according to a complaint being filed today with the International Labor Organization of the United Nations by the SEIU and its affiliate, the Southern Regional Joint Board of Workers United.
Daimler, which produces Mercedes-Benz vehicles in Alabama, is a founding signatory of the United Nations Global Compact, which calls on businesses to “make sure they are not complicit in human rights abuses.”
Until now, Daimler and Mercedes-Benz have been silent on this law which violates human rights, even though one of its German executives was arrested under the Alabama law.
MARGARETVILLE, Ala. — It is a lovely Sunday morning and amazingly quiet in the suburbs on this April Fool’s Day. The Carolina Wren’s are feeding new young in the hand-crafted birdhouse attached to the screened-in porch. They stop only occasionally between feedings to sing, and they sound about as happy as I feel with my new dog and best friend Jefferson laying at my feet.
If I didn’t know better, I would finish by saying “all’s right with the world.”
But you and I both know better.
As I peruse the headlines from my hand-made html news page, which may go the way of the Dodo bird soon and be replaced by a Word Press front page, and as I look through the Google alerts and other e-mails, I run across an interesting column from Phil Rockstroh, who calls himself a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City but who is from the South. He laments the fact that his white male Southern buddies cling to the Republican fantasy of “free-market capitalism,” while their jobs disappear and their lives diminish into a political bitterness they cannot seem to escape.
Task Force Says Bad Schools Hurt National Security
by Glynn Wilson
Republicans in the Alabama Legislature are pushing a bill to take some funding away from already cash-strapped public schools in the attempt to privatize public schools, a move that most experts say will just make public education in the U.S. worse.
A report just out from a task force led by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Joel Klein, the former chancellor of New York City’s school system, says the nation’s security and economic prosperity are at risk if America’s schools don’t improve.
“The dominant power of the 21st century will depend on human capital,” the report warned. “The failure to produce that capital will undermine American security.”
The task force says the State Department and U.S. intelligence agencies face critical shortfalls in the number of foreign language speakers, and that fields such as science, defense and aerospace are at particular risk because a shortage of skilled workers is expected to worsen as baby boomers retire.
The AFL-CIO and other labor unions joined the Selma-to-Montgomery Civil Rights March this year on the 47 anniversary of Bloody Sunday. Alabama AFL-CIO Al Henley addressed a night rally in White Hall on Wednesday night. Watch the video to see what he had to say. To see our full coverage of the events, check out this story and links.
During the Bush years, we specialized in covering the politicization of the U.S. justice system as much as any news organization. Our archives are about the most comprehensive for anyone researching the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, and the original case against Richard Scrushy, which Glynn Wilson covered for The New York Times.
