Speaker 1: Local criticisms of Fresno Unified School District are not the
Speaker 1: preserve of crank conservatives, you know, like me. The criticisms
Speaker 1: that people have leveled against Presdey Unified are starting to
Speaker 1: be kind of universally shared and getting to the point
Speaker 1: where even the board of trustees is starting to recognize
Speaker 1: the need for massive change. And I want to recommend
Speaker 1: to you all. I retweeted it at my Twitter account
Speaker 1: Twitter dot com slash Fresno Johnny a piece. It's actually
Speaker 1: an editorial from gv wire, but it seems like the
Speaker 1: editorial board of gv wire just consists of Bill McEwan
Speaker 1: and that's it, which is not really This is not
Speaker 1: a criticism of the piece, because I think the piece
Speaker 1: is actually pretty darn good. McEwen is an interesting fella.
Speaker 1: Bill McEwen was a big time editor with the Fresno
Speaker 1: B for years and years and years. He ran their
Speaker 1: opinion page. He had been a columnist for them, and
Speaker 1: when Darius Assimi decided he was starting gv wire, it
Speaker 1: seems like he basically poached the best guy he could
Speaker 1: possibly get from the Fresno B to start his news
Speaker 1: operation and kind of was a big shake up in
Speaker 1: the local Fresno news scene. McEwen. I'm sure McEwan's more
Speaker 1: liberal than I am, and probably my criticisms of Fresney
Speaker 1: Unified would go a little deeper and more fundamental than McEwen.
Speaker 1: I have my reservations about, you know, the whole setup
Speaker 1: and structure of California public schools in general, and broader
Speaker 1: criticisms of the whole structure and even frankly just American
Speaker 1: public schools in general. But with all that said, McEwen
Speaker 1: has sort of been McEwen has been a long, long,
Speaker 1: long time critic of Fresnew Unified, and coming from someone
Speaker 1: who is at least politically neutral, if not politically just
Speaker 1: of the left, I think it kind of gives more
Speaker 1: weight to it that it's not just you know, conservatives
Speaker 1: yelling into the wind, it's everybody. I think everyone is
Speaker 1: seeing that this is a really badly run school district,
Speaker 1: no matter how you slice it, and that the way
Speaker 1: in which it's been run and how it's been operating
Speaker 1: has just not been acceptable. So I want to read
Speaker 1: some of his editorial, and I want to read some
Speaker 1: of his editorial, and again I recommend all of you
Speaker 1: to read it. He writes, we have a simple request
Speaker 1: of Fresne unifies trustees as they go about the all
Speaker 1: important work of selecting the district's next superintendent. Check your egos,
Speaker 1: alliances and prejudices at the door, put aside any political
Speaker 1: ambitions you may have, and focus on one thing, which
Speaker 1: candidate is best equipped to lead an academic revolution that
Speaker 1: results in tens of thousands more students meeting state standards
Speaker 1: for literacy and math and exiting the district prepared to
Speaker 1: succeed in the workplace or college. And he italicizes a
Speaker 1: revolution that results in tens of thousands more students meeting
Speaker 1: state standards because that's what it's going to take, actually
Speaker 1: to take, Like Fresno Unified, is such a tire iron
Speaker 1: at such a tire fire, grease fire, whatever kind of fire,
Speaker 1: dumpster fire that they are pushing through kids, Like tens
Speaker 1: of thousands more students need to achieves significantly better before
Speaker 1: this thing is even adequate. That's the level of the problem.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a really good way of phrasing
Speaker 1: it by McEwan. He goes on at every trustee board meeting,
Speaker 1: someone prefaces a vote or a policy decision by saying
Speaker 1: it's about the kids. Oh, actually, you know, let me
Speaker 1: go back to this, he noted earlier in the piece
Speaker 1: when he says, check your egos, alliances and prejudices at
Speaker 1: the door. Put aside any political ambitions you may have.
Speaker 1: There are definitely people on the president Unified Board of
Speaker 1: Trustees who have political ambitions, and there have been at
Speaker 1: least accusations made. I don't know how well some of them.
Speaker 1: Stories that got published in GV Wire from anonymous sources,
Speaker 1: specifically about Elizabeth Jonathon Ross, who's a member of the
Speaker 1: Board of Trustees. Elizabeth Johnathon Ross is the wife of
Speaker 1: Luis Chavez, who used to be a city council member
Speaker 1: who is now a member of the President County Board
Speaker 1: of Supervisors. A story came out alleging that Chavez was
Speaker 1: trying to make a deal with the local Mong various
Speaker 1: local Mong nonprofits to have them back Elizabeth Johonnathon Ross
Speaker 1: in her special election race to succeed him, as Chavez
Speaker 1: was leaving the city council for the County Board of Supervisors,
Speaker 1: with the promise that Elizabeth Johnathon Ross would support Misty
Speaker 1: her who had been the deputy superintendent is now the
Speaker 1: interim superintendent support her as the full time superintendent, so
Speaker 1: that accusation was made. Whether it's true or not, I
Speaker 1: don't know, but it does seem as though the Fresident
Speaker 1: Unified Board of Trustees is becoming something of a stepping
Speaker 1: stone or is viewed as something of stepping stone for
Speaker 1: people who want to jump into local politics. And I
Speaker 1: will also note one of the things you do have
Speaker 1: to kind of consider with GV wire, I think it
Speaker 1: does shade things a little, is that Susan Wittrop, who's
Speaker 1: the board chair of the President Unified Board of Trustees,
Speaker 1: is in a relationship with Darius Assimi, who owns GV wire.
Speaker 1: So I sort of wonder about sort of the ways
Speaker 1: in which gv wire seems to support her. But you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to question me kewan though I think
Speaker 1: McEwan's a pretty a guy who kind of stands on
Speaker 1: his own two feet as far as what he thinks. So,
Speaker 1: you know, anyway, let's carry on. At every trustee board meeting,
Speaker 1: someone prefaces a v or a policy decision by saying
Speaker 1: it's about the kids. However, in the state's third largest
Speaker 1: school district, that's important to remember. President Unified is the
Speaker 1: third largest school district in the whole state. It's a big,
Speaker 1: big district. It's rarely, if ever, about the students. That's
Speaker 1: not hyperbole. It's a fact buttressed by many decades of
Speaker 1: academic decline and Fresney Unified status as one of the
Speaker 1: nation's worst performing districts. As evidence, we offer these dismal statistics.
Speaker 1: The district is forty nine point one points below the
Speaker 1: state standard in English testing and seventy eight point one
Speaker 1: points below the standard in math testing. Following small gains
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty four, the numbers for students of color
Speaker 1: are even worse. Truth be told, this betrayal of our
Speaker 1: community's children has never bothered many in the district's business
Speaker 1: as usual bureaucracy. Following Bob Nelson's retirement announcement, a majority
Speaker 1: of trustees wanted to keep the search for the next
Speaker 1: superintendent in house. The very definition of insanity, and that's true. Basically,
Speaker 1: it was president, so Bob Nelson had been the superintendent
Speaker 1: of President Unified. He was superintendent throughout all the COVID stuff.
Speaker 1: Nothing really improved as far as academic scores for kids.
Speaker 1: Bob Nelson goes on to a nice liness little sinecure
Speaker 1: gig at Fresne unified and lo and behold, we hear
Speaker 1: that Misty Hur, the deputy superintendent, is just going to
Speaker 1: be bumped up to be the superintendent. And when this happened,
Speaker 1: people sort of pump the brakes. We're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Speaker 1: We're just keeping the search in house. This is like
Speaker 1: the third largest school district in the country, in the state,
Speaker 1: and we can't, you know, maybe have a broader search here.
Speaker 1: And it's we're taking someone from the current administration, an
Speaker 1: administration that's overseen this massive decline in achievement, and just
Speaker 1: promoting them. Why are we doing that? Fortunately, then board
Speaker 1: President Susan Wittrup publicly assailed that plan, insisted on a
Speaker 1: national search, and community members backed her. The school board
Speaker 1: then flipped the script trustees Claudia Kazarres Elizabeth Jonathon Ross,
Speaker 1: who that story had come out about in gb wire,
Speaker 1: alleging that Luis Chavez had tried to negotiate the deal
Speaker 1: with the Mongs so that Jonathan Ross would back Misty Her,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera. Again, anonymous sources story. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's true or not, it was reported though
Speaker 1: within GBWAR, trustees Claudia Kazaras, Elizabeth Jonathon Ross, Keisha Thomas,
Speaker 1: and Valerie Davis voted with Wittrop to pause the search
Speaker 1: and start over in hope of attracting highly qualified candidates
Speaker 1: from across the nation. Other small victories have ensued. Working
Speaker 1: closely with interim Superintendent Misty Her, the board adopted a
Speaker 1: learning plan with the ambitious fast Track goals for student learning.
Speaker 1: In addition, the board implemented a policy that states there
Speaker 1: will be no hiring, promoting, or lateral movement of staff
Speaker 1: whose performance quote does not meet standards. That was significant
Speaker 1: in a district where underperforming principles and other administration administrators
Speaker 1: often got promoted. The question is are all trustees fully
Speaker 1: committed to this plan as they're about to hire the
Speaker 1: next superintendent or is it window dressing to mask a
Speaker 1: return to the old ways resulting every year in thousands
Speaker 1: of students who can't read or do basic math. Every
Speaker 1: trustee has crafted questions for the superintendent finalists. Of course,
Speaker 1: here are our suggestions. One which candidate is best equipped
Speaker 1: to make the difficult decisions needed to help students who
Speaker 1: will infuse the district with new energy and leverage its
Speaker 1: men assive size to accelerate student achievement. Who has a
Speaker 1: history of sending more assets into classrooms while meeting the
Speaker 1: demands of a union workforce. And that's a big one.
Speaker 1: That's a big one, Like a lot of I think
Speaker 1: the union provides a lot of problems to academic achievement
Speaker 1: because of the ways in which the union can be
Speaker 1: protective of teachers who underperform. I you know, the whole notion.
Speaker 1: I mean, basically, anytime you try to push any idea
Speaker 1: that seems to tie academic achievement of students to compensation
Speaker 1: of teachers, that hey, teachers, who's you know, and with
Speaker 1: the full understanding that you can have the best teacher
Speaker 1: in the world if you have a kid who's coming
Speaker 1: from a totally chaotic home environment or a kid who's
Speaker 1: just not going to learn that you can have a
Speaker 1: really good teacher and not necessarily have all the kids
Speaker 1: achieving at a high level. But certainly there is something
Speaker 1: about teacher quality that impacts the outcome of students. If
Speaker 1: teacher quality has nothing to do with student outcome, then
Speaker 1: why the heck do we train teachers at all? But
Speaker 1: when you promote when you propose to the union any
Speaker 1: kind of ideas about well teacher performance being tied to
Speaker 1: student achievement or student test scores or something like that,
Speaker 1: the union has a conniption fit. So I think this
Speaker 1: is a good point to raise by McEwan, who has
Speaker 1: a history of sending more assets into classrooms while meeting
Speaker 1: the demands of a union workforce. The demands of a
Speaker 1: union workforce are often, I think, significant hindrances to student learning,
Speaker 1: which is why I kind of I don't know. Government
Speaker 1: employee unions as a concept, I think are highly suspect,
Speaker 1: and especially in the context of teachers unions, like people
Speaker 1: have this wrongheaded notion that, you know, the point of
Speaker 1: a teacher's union is not to teach. That's not the
Speaker 1: point of the union. The end goal of a teacher's union,
Speaker 1: like the goal of a knife is to cut. The
Speaker 1: end goal of a teacher's union is to get more money,
Speaker 1: more jobs for the teachers, better hours, more pay, better hours,
Speaker 1: better conditions, better benefits, et cetera. The point is money
Speaker 1: and jobs. That's the point of the union. That's why
Speaker 1: it exists. That's its end goal. If a student happens
Speaker 1: to learn something. Well, that's a happy accident along the way.
Speaker 1: But that's not the job of the union to teach people.
Speaker 1: The job of the union is to represent the financial
Speaker 1: interests of adults. And I think too often President Unified
Speaker 1: has been so driven by the union debates with administration
Speaker 1: and the fight to get more money that people lose
Speaker 1: sight of the fact that, no, the school district is
Speaker 1: not a jobs program for you know, adults with you know,
Speaker 1: with a education degree or something. The point of a
Speaker 1: school district is to teach kids. Who has the savvy
Speaker 1: to forge partnerships with elected officials and community groups, who
Speaker 1: believe Fresno's business success hinges on an educated, skilled workforce,
Speaker 1: Who has the backbone to hold all accountable for their
Speaker 1: performance without favored special interests or allies. Who has the
Speaker 1: communication skills to sell more families on the importance of
Speaker 1: education and becoming involved in their child's learning. Who has
Speaker 1: the knowledge and experience to finally fix the special ed program.
Speaker 1: Who has sat in a superintendent's chair before and produced
Speaker 1: winning results. That's another good point, like why would we
Speaker 1: just promote up even with Misty Hurr, who everything I've
Speaker 1: read about Misty Herr has been pretty good. Actually, she
Speaker 1: actually seems like a decently impressive person to me, so
Speaker 1: it's really nothing against her. But you know, she's not
Speaker 1: been a superintendent. This is the third largest district in California.
Speaker 1: You mean to tell me we can't find someone who's
Speaker 1: already been a superintendent of a smaller district, who has
Speaker 1: had demonstrated results that we can't recruit to come here
Speaker 1: and work on this. This is Presde Unified's last chance
Speaker 1: to write the ship. If the next superintendent fails, the
Speaker 1: community will have no choice but to demand that FUSD
Speaker 1: be split into smaller districts more tuned to student needs. Now,
Speaker 1: that is a proposal I've never heard before, the idea
Speaker 1: of breaking up President Unified into smaller districts. When we return,
Speaker 1: we'll talk a little bit more about the union and
Speaker 1: other sort of obstacles and other really stupid things President
Speaker 1: Unified has done in the last couple of months. That
Speaker 1: is next on the John Girardi Show, going through a
Speaker 1: really great piece from GV Wire, written by Bill McEwen.
Speaker 1: It's a gv wire editorial, but I think it's just
Speaker 1: written by Bill McEwen, so I encourage you all to
Speaker 1: check it. Out. I retweeted it from my Twitter account
Speaker 1: Twitter dot com slash Fresno Johnny at Fresno Johnny. But now,
Speaker 1: one of the things I want to highlight from McEwan's
Speaker 1: piece is the difficulties that Fresno Unified is going to
Speaker 1: face from the union and from the union as well
Speaker 1: as dumb decisions they've sort of already tied themselves to.
Speaker 1: So let me first start with some of the dumb
Speaker 1: decisions they've tied themselves to. And one of the big
Speaker 1: ones was just this past November, they already passed this
Speaker 1: massive bond measure. For this massive bond measure, it was
Speaker 1: tied to a state bond measure. So basically, this is
Speaker 1: one of the things that's so frustrating about public school funding.
Speaker 1: All right, So bond measures tend to be one of
Speaker 1: the big ways in which school districts try to make
Speaker 1: a grab for money. And let's remember what a bond is.
Speaker 1: This is my soapbox. I do it every year when
Speaker 1: there's every like four year. Pretty much every four years
Speaker 1: now we're having bond measures, and I bet we're going
Speaker 1: to continue to see such bond measures as California continues
Speaker 1: to have a budgetary problems. So what is a bond.
Speaker 1: A bond is a loan to a school district or
Speaker 1: to some other municipal entity that has to be paid
Speaker 1: back with interest. It is a loan to a municipal
Speaker 1: entity that must be paid back with interest. That is
Speaker 1: what a bond is. Basically, what seems to happen, Well,
Speaker 1: we had President Unified had Measure h Clovis Unified had
Speaker 1: Measure A this past November, and it was all tied
Speaker 1: to a state ballot initiative for like a state wide
Speaker 1: ten billion dollars bond. And then the way that these
Speaker 1: statewide bond measures get structured, basically it incentivizes local school
Speaker 1: districts to pass bond measures because basically, okay, here's this
Speaker 1: pot of state money, and if you raise local bond
Speaker 1: measure money, then the state money will match it. So,
Speaker 1: as a result, when there's a state bond measure on
Speaker 1: the ballot for everyone in California to vote for, every
Speaker 1: local school district all of a sudden has a bond
Speaker 1: measure and it doesn't seem like it's actually tied to
Speaker 1: existing emergent need. It's tied to the fact that there's
Speaker 1: state money on the table and the local school district
Speaker 1: wants to go grab it. And this is just a
Speaker 1: characteristic thing of local governments in state government, is that
Speaker 1: if there is money available from a higher level of government,
Speaker 1: they will bend over backwards and stab their own mother
Speaker 1: in order to get it. Okay, the state government will
Speaker 1: do that. If there is federal money on the table
Speaker 1: for them to get, they will do anything possible to
Speaker 1: comply with whatever federal strings are attached to get that money.
Speaker 1: And local governments will do that if there's a federal
Speaker 1: or state buck to be got. Why well, unlike the
Speaker 1: federal government, the state of California can't really spend into
Speaker 1: the red indefinitely. Local government can't spend in the red indefinitely.
Speaker 1: They just don't have that capacity. So if their state
Speaker 1: or federal money out there to be got, they will
Speaker 1: get it. So here you have every single school district
Speaker 1: in the valley with a big time bond measure and
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily and it's on the heels of we
Speaker 1: just they did this. They do this bond measure in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. They just had done a bond measure
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty like four years prior, and so here's
Speaker 1: Fresno Unified, still in the midst of their search for
Speaker 1: a new superintendent, with the board debating all these like
Speaker 1: big time, big picture strategic ideas and considerations about what
Speaker 1: direction they want the district to go in, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And here they are saying, well, we need to put
Speaker 1: Measure H on the and we need to have Measure
Speaker 1: H again to get this state money on the table.
Speaker 1: So they propose a five hundred million dollars bond measure
Speaker 1: for Fresne Unified. And let's remember again the nature of
Speaker 1: a bond. A bond is just a loan. It's a
Speaker 1: loan that has to be repaid, and it's usually repaid
Speaker 1: by the taxpayers in the form of property taxes. Well,
Speaker 1: I just rent. I'm not paying for it, Yeah, you are.
Speaker 1: Your rent is probably going to go up if your
Speaker 1: landlord's property taxes keep going up. Eventually that gets reflected
Speaker 1: in the price of rent. So it's paid by the taxpayers.
Speaker 1: It's paid by individual people who live within the school districts,
Speaker 1: within the school district's boundaries. Regardless of whether you send
Speaker 1: your kid to a presdent unified school or not, I
Speaker 1: live within the boundary lines of close Unified. My property
Speaker 1: taxes are paying for close unified school district in spite
Speaker 1: of the fact that my kids don't attend a close
Speaker 1: unified school district school. So here's President Unified like, yeah,
Speaker 1: gung ho, let's do a five hundred million dollar thing.
Speaker 1: It takes them. They didn't even have set yet before
Speaker 1: people started receiving their ballots in the mail. The people
Speaker 1: got their ballots in the mail, I think, you know,
Speaker 1: like a month and a half month before the election,
Speaker 1: President Unified's steph had not even board, had not set
Speaker 1: and agreed upon the list of things that the five
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars was gonna pay for. That that's how
Speaker 1: poorly run the whole thing was. And here they are
Speaker 1: in the middle of actually deciding on all these big
Speaker 1: strategic ideas. They don't have their full time superintendent, and
Speaker 1: yet they're gonna get five hundred million dollars for building projects.
Speaker 1: They don't even know exactly what they're gonna fund. Set on,
Speaker 1: we're gonna and then finally they set on, we're gonna
Speaker 1: have this this five hundred million, have it, build this, this, this, this,
Speaker 1: and this when so now you're going to saddle that
Speaker 1: strategic vision on whatever new superintendent you bring in. It's
Speaker 1: putting the cart before the horse. And again let's remember
Speaker 1: it's a five hundred million dollar loan. Five hundred million
Speaker 1: is just what the school district gets. The taxpayers have
Speaker 1: to pay five hundred million plus interest. So and the
Speaker 1: interest over the life of the loan, I think it
Speaker 1: was about thirty year loan. The interest amounts that the
Speaker 1: taxpayer is going to pay about a billion dollars for
Speaker 1: this five hundred million dollars worth of benefit that Fresne
Speaker 1: Unified is getting a little I think a little under
Speaker 1: a billion dollars. So this is the kind of venal
Speaker 1: money grabbing incompetence at fresnean Unified. All right, when we return,
Speaker 1: I want to talk a little bit about the union
Speaker 1: and challenges that the district faces with achievement from the union.
Speaker 1: That's next on the John's Roady Show. I want to
Speaker 1: talk more about Fresney Unified, sort of inspired by the
Speaker 1: really good editorial from GV Wire written by Bill McEwan
Speaker 1: about the challenges President Unified faces as they're trying to
Speaker 1: finally hire their full time superintendent. And I want to
Speaker 1: talk about the challenges Presney Unified, and we know the
Speaker 1: problems at Fresne Unified. They're you know, student academic achievement
Speaker 1: in English is like forty nine points below the state standards.
Speaker 1: Student academic achievement in math is like seventy eight points
Speaker 1: below the state standard, which is almost incredible and one
Speaker 1: of the big challenges they face. And I think any
Speaker 1: public school district that has a unionized workforce faces is
Speaker 1: from the union itself. So let me chalk just first
Speaker 1: about the whole concept of a union. Why I don't
Speaker 1: think it makes sense for within government unions, the unions
Speaker 1: of government workers. Let me put it that way. Labor
Speaker 1: unions as a concept developed in ways that I think
Speaker 1: are very reasonable, and I think is a good concept
Speaker 1: in and of itself. If you have a massive corporation
Speaker 1: with a massive workforce, and maybe the work is not
Speaker 1: super skilled labor or partially skilled, not quite skilled labor,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Like a good example is General Motors. All right,
Speaker 1: General Motors, there's a bunch of people who work the line.
Speaker 1: Any one individual person does not have great negotiating power
Speaker 1: against General Motors. That one person might more desperately need
Speaker 1: a job than General Motors needs that one person. That
Speaker 1: one person might be deemed by GM to be more
Speaker 1: or less repla, but the job that is offered to
Speaker 1: that one worker might not be as easily replaceable, and
Speaker 1: the risks of not having that job available are much
Speaker 1: bigger to that one individual person. So as a result,
Speaker 1: there's this real imbalance when it comes to negotiating a
Speaker 1: fair wage. A fair wage, fair and safe working conditions,
Speaker 1: fair and safe hours, et cetera. If all of the
Speaker 1: members of the workforce get together and pool their resources
Speaker 1: in representation, they can negotiate with the management at General
Speaker 1: Motors on a more even playing field. If all of
Speaker 1: the workforce is telling General Motors, listen, you need all
Speaker 1: of us here, and if we stop working, your whole
Speaker 1: operation falls apart and you suffer pretty badly. Your shareholders
Speaker 1: suffer pretty darn badly. And your job as management is
Speaker 1: to maximize value for your shareholders. All right, So let's
Speaker 1: come to the table and let's get a deal done
Speaker 1: that keeps things honest for the workers and allows you
Speaker 1: to still make a profit. That there's two sides whose
Speaker 1: interests compete. Whatever profits are made at General Motors. Management
Speaker 1: has an incentive to want to keep as much of
Speaker 1: the profit for itself and for its shareholders. Labor wants
Speaker 1: to keep as much of the profits as they can
Speaker 1: for paying them. You have two sides with different opposing incentives,
Speaker 1: and by unionizing the workforce, you give the workforce a
Speaker 1: greater ability to have an even playing field and representation.
Speaker 1: All right, that's how it works in private industries, in
Speaker 1: the private sector, and frankly, I'm supportive of the concept
Speaker 1: of labor unions within the private sector. Now, I don't
Speaker 1: think every union behaves well or fairly in every single
Speaker 1: respect all the time. I don't think every business behaves
Speaker 1: well or fairly in every single business and all the time.
Speaker 1: But that's the concept makes sense. When you're talking about
Speaker 1: government workers, though, the concept ceases to make sense because
Speaker 1: it's not like you have to your First of all,
Speaker 1: this is not an enterprise. Usually when it comes to
Speaker 1: government work, the point of the enterprise is not to
Speaker 1: generate revenue. It's not to make money. It's taxpayer money
Speaker 1: that is being expended on some task. Let's focus on
Speaker 1: public schools. It's not like the enterprise of president unified
Speaker 1: school district is a profit making venture where management and
Speaker 1: labor are trying to both have an interest in getting
Speaker 1: as much of the profit as possible. No, it's just taxes.
Speaker 1: It's taxes. There's no shareholders who are trying to get
Speaker 1: the most value out of it that management is representing. No,
Speaker 1: in this case, it's the government negotiating with the employees
Speaker 1: whom the government hires. And very often so in a
Speaker 1: private sector union thing, it's two people on opposite sides
Speaker 1: of the table. When you're talking about a government union workforce,
Speaker 1: the government official who's on the one side of the
Speaker 1: table might have no real incentive to not give away
Speaker 1: the store of the taxpayer's money. It's not his money
Speaker 1: at the end of the day. And because government worker
Speaker 1: unions can give political contributions, can endorse or oppose candidates
Speaker 1: for office. In fact, the politician on the other side
Speaker 1: of the table from the labor union might be wanting
Speaker 1: to totally give away the store to the union. Heck,
Speaker 1: in certain cases, labor unions in California have just cut
Speaker 1: out the middleman. They've run former labor union officials to
Speaker 1: high government offices. They run labor union members to be
Speaker 1: candidates for school boards. That's why I always do this
Speaker 1: ran every single election cycle. If you see a billboard
Speaker 1: for a local school board board of trustee race and
Speaker 1: it says endorsed by presno teachers, people will think to themselves, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this person's running for the school board and they're endorsed
Speaker 1: by the teachers. That must mean well, the teachers must
Speaker 1: know what's good for schools, So I should vote for
Speaker 1: that person. No, if anything, it should make you instinctively
Speaker 1: not vote for that person, because at some point, supported
Speaker 1: by presno teachers means supported by the teachers' union. And
Speaker 1: so what that means is, at some point there's going
Speaker 1: to be a negotiation between the board of trustees of
Speaker 1: the school board, the board of trustees of the school district,
Speaker 1: and the teachers, and you basically want both sides of
Speaker 1: the negotiating table to be staffed by the same party.
Speaker 1: That's what you're voting for when you vote for a
Speaker 1: school board member who's trying to decide how much of
Speaker 1: your money to give away to the teachers. Okay, so
Speaker 1: the whole concept of a government worker union just kind
Speaker 1: of falls apart. There isn't a greedy capitalist manager trying
Speaker 1: to builk teachers out of money. If you know, the
Speaker 1: taxpayer doesn't want most taxpayers don't want teachers to be
Speaker 1: poorly paid. They want teachers to be paid decently. How
Speaker 1: many politicians have earned brownie points by saying, we want
Speaker 1: to do what we want to help support teachers, and
Speaker 1: we want to pay for teachers salaries and like like that.
Speaker 1: That's a very popular thing. Local spending on teachers, State
Speaker 1: spending on teachers salaries has always been a popular thing.
Speaker 1: The kinds of incentives that exist within a regular private
Speaker 1: sector management versus labor debate just don't exist now here.
Speaker 1: We have a teachers union going up against management, management
Speaker 1: that might not be super incentivized to builk the to
Speaker 1: you know, really tightly safeguard the taxpayer's money, and the
Speaker 1: teachers union winds up. What winds up happening is that
Speaker 1: the negotiations between the union and management wind up dominating policy. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's hard to have rigorous achievement, it's hard to have
Speaker 1: a policy of demanding better student performance by demanding better
Speaker 1: teacher accountability if you've already negotiated collectively with the union
Speaker 1: that people are only going to get fired after this
Speaker 1: this this, this, this, this, this, this process that makes
Speaker 1: it very hard to fire anybody. You're it winds up
Speaker 1: that these labor negotiations about how adults are going to
Speaker 1: get paid money wind up dominating what's the whole enterprise
Speaker 1: of this thing. The whole point of this enterprise is
Speaker 1: to teach kids. It's a public good enterprise. It's not
Speaker 1: supposed to just be a jobs program for adults. It's
Speaker 1: supposed to be a public good enterprise of educating the
Speaker 1: next generation of citizens. And the discussion and so much
Speaker 1: of the policy is dominated by whatever, by the collectively
Speaker 1: bargained agreement, and sometimes the teachers so little care about
Speaker 1: the educational outcomes. I remember there was a story about
Speaker 1: teachers were all complaining. It was like a story in
Speaker 1: the Bee about the lack of enforcement of any cell
Speaker 1: phone policy. President Unified has a cell phone policy. It
Speaker 1: was written in two thousand and four, so it's a
Speaker 1: little antiquated, you know, hasn't caught up to the reality
Speaker 1: of smartphones. But the policy is very simple. Electronic devices
Speaker 1: in the classroom, no personal electronic devices in the classroom.
Speaker 1: That's all it is. And teachers feel like, well, the
Speaker 1: district's not backing us when we try to enforce it.
Speaker 1: And it's that article came out and those criticisms came
Speaker 1: in like two months after the big collectively bargained agreement
Speaker 1: was signed between the teachers and a fresident unified administration
Speaker 1: back in like November of twenty twenty three. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: if the teachers Union was so upset about their inability,
Speaker 1: if teachers were so upset about their inability to enforce
Speaker 1: the cell phone room in classrooms, why not make that
Speaker 1: part of the CBA. You can put whatever you want
Speaker 1: in the CBA. It's something that has to do with
Speaker 1: workplace conditions. Hey, we demand a greater we demand a
Speaker 1: new policy with clear enforcement mechanisms and commitment to enforcement
Speaker 1: on the part of the district for the cell phone policy.
Speaker 1: Bah blah, blah blah. But you could put that in
Speaker 1: the CBA. They didn't. Why because I don't think the
Speaker 1: Teachers Union really fundamentally cares about the teaching side of it.
Speaker 1: What they care about is money, and so I mean,
Speaker 1: I just think it's a really tall order. I think
Speaker 1: the existence of the union and the fact of how
Speaker 1: committed it is to adults jobs rather than the actual
Speaker 1: enterprise of this taxpayer fund adventure, which is educating kids.
Speaker 1: I don't know how successful any new superintendent is going
Speaker 1: to be in turning the Titanic around here when we return,
Speaker 1: Might there be a Democrat Donald Trump on the horizon?
Speaker 1: Stephen A. Smith. That's next on the John Girardi Show. Well,
Speaker 1: I am a little starting to be a little afraid
Speaker 1: of the twenty twenty eight presidential elections, and specifically of
Speaker 1: one person. No it's not AOC. No, it's not Kamala Harris.
Speaker 1: Dear God, of course know the person I'm afraid of
Speaker 1: a little bit, just a little bit, kind of the
Speaker 1: way that maybe a Democrat would have been a little
Speaker 1: afraid of Donald Trump around twenty fourteen or twenty fifteen
Speaker 1: is Stephen A. Smith. Some of you maybe know who
Speaker 1: Stephen A. Smith is. Stephen A. Smith is the wildly
Speaker 1: popular sports commentator talking head from ESPN. He's a big
Speaker 1: loud mouth and he talks like this. He's very opinionated.
Speaker 1: And before you say that's ridiculous, someone who's never been
Speaker 1: in politics before, a big loudmouth from New York, who's
Speaker 1: never been in politics before, who has a really brash,
Speaker 1: abrasive personality, Who would ever vote for someone like that
Speaker 1: for president? Someone with an enormous ego, who doesn't care
Speaker 1: what anyone thinks and is willing to Just does any
Speaker 1: of that sound familiar, don't think it's crazy. Donald Trump
Speaker 1: has demonstrated the pool of who we think can win
Speaker 1: a presidential election is bigger than we think that'll do it.
Speaker 1: John Girardi Show, See you next time on Power Talk