Local Presidents Launch a New Era
About 500 local association leaders from throughout the state started
"a new era" Saturday (February 7, 2004) as they gathered in
Wisconsin Dells to develop a plan to repeal the Qualified Economic Offer
and revenue control laws.
"We will no longer be the captive and oppressed people we've been
the last 11 years," WEAC President Stan Johnson said in opening
the unusual meeting. The meeting was the result of a New Business Item
passed at the 2003 WEAC Representative Assembly. That item called for
development of a strategy to win repeal of the QEO and revenue controls
if they were not repealed in the 2003-05 state budget.
Leaders discussed three levels of activities for their members. At
the end of the meeting, they agreed to ask their colleagues back home
to commit to activities designed to pressure the Legislature to end
the onerous laws that have undermined teacher pay and created financial
havoc for local school districts.
The preliminary plan goes to the Representative Assembly this spring
for final approval. The plan would go into effect next fall.
"We have tried many times in the last 11 years to find a strategy
to repeal the QEO and revenue controls, and most efforts have taken
the form of one-size-fits-all," Johnson said. "This is not
one-size-fits-all."
He called on all members to "act as one and support each other."
Johnson noted the laws affect all WEAC members, not just K-12 teachers.
Bills introduced in the Legislature would expand the QEO to Wisconsin
Technical College System employees and other public employees.
| In explaining the need for this meeting, WEAC President Stan
Johnson quoted Frederick Douglass, one of the foremost leaders
of the fight to abolish slavery in the mid-1800s: "If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who
profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men
who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without
thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar
of its many waters. ... "Power concedes nothing without a demand. ... Find out just
what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out
the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed
upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with
either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are
prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
|
At the meeting, leaders heard from WEAC General Counsel Bruce Meredith,
a member of the Governor's Task Force on Educational Excellence. He
said the current system of school funding - which includes the QEO and
revenue controls - is leading some school districts into “a death
spiral.” These districts, he said, are forced to cut programs,
which leads to poorer education and lower enrollment, which leads to
further cuts.
The rise of virtual schools means “schools are stealing from each
other and in the end everyone has less money” because part of it
goes to private entrepreneurs, he said.
Our school finance system has become extremely “convoluted,”
making it difficult for people to understand how it works and why it
doesn’t work. “It is incredibly hard to explain why it is
not working," Meredith said.
On the governor’s school finance committee, “there is unqualified
support” for repealing the QEO. But the panel believes any finance
solution must address health care issues and student achievement. There
is no support for merit pay among committee members, Meredith said.
The committee recognizes that teachers understand best how to address
student achievement and that it involves an open and fair collective
bargaining process.
Meredith said some Republican legislators are beginning to recognize
that “their party leadership is destroying their school districts.”
WEAC Legislative Coordinator Bob Burke noted that Republican Garey
Bies of Sister Bay has become the first Republican in the 11-year history
of the QEO to sponsor legislation to repeal it. But the bill faces enormous
obstacles in the Republican-controlled Legislature.
WEAC Collective Bargaining Director Mike McNett reviewed the status
of collective bargaining in Wisconsin and stressed the need to pressure
legislators into changing the law.
“We have to create change by being agents of change,” he
said.
For more information about the meeting, members are encouraged to contact
their local association presidents.
Resource page on the QEO law
Resource page on school funding
Posted February 10, 2004