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| Since December 22, 2004 |
EAST SIDE INFORMATION MINISTER SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL
The Mercury News is on an anti-union slant lately, and their sights are determinedly fixed on the East Side Teacher’s Association. The day before the November election, the Merc published an editorial essentially blaming the union for an anonymous mailer that went out to a handful of voters (read our response to that editorial here: 
). On Wednesday, November 10, the Merc’s John Fensterwald, also known as the ESUHSD Information Minister, published another anti-union diatribe (titled “School Budget Disaster”) that has as many holes as the moon has craters. Fensterwald’s thesis? Money’s tight and the district is facing insolvency. What should be done? The Minister feels, “The school board and the district’s employees must work together to head it off — an effort that will require considerably more cooperation than the teacher’s union has shown until now.”
Oh those shameful teachers at it again.
Like an overplayed pop song, Fensterwald replays the same old attacks he’s been making all year: teachers aren’t willing to accept layoffs, teachers won’t stand for larger class sizes, teachers make too much money, teachers didn’t support Measure K. If he would only listen to other songs on the CD, he might discover there is a stronger, more plausible perspective to these complex issues.
Unfortunately, that would require a level of objectivity that’s counterintuitive to the function of an Information Ministry.
Measure K failed. So did Measure J two years ago, the parcel tax measure proposed by the union that the board showed little enthusiasm for. Had that measure passed, Fensterwald’s lead editorial would have nothing to do with East Side’s budget woes. He should know the measure—it too asked for 50 dollars a parcel, but included a senior exemption that Measure K lacked—an exemption that might have persuaded more voters to pass the measure. Let’s not forget some of the other possible reasons behind Measure K’s failure:
- A number of competing parcel tax measures from elementary districts within the East Side.
- A school board that has failed to inspire confidence from parents, students, and employees.
- A credit card scandal that left some voters weary of throwing money to people who feel buying PDA’s for personal use are appropriate district expenditures during a fiscal crisis.
- A new high school that went 13 million over budgeted construction costs that surely rang some alarm bells for those who feel a school board needs to balance its budget.
- An Information Minister who spent more time criticizing the union rather than convincing the public to support Measure K. For example, he could have pointed out to voters that all the construction taking place at East Side’s schools came from the Measure G bond, an unresolved question that left many voters wondering how serious the cash flow problem in the district actually was
Or perhaps it could simply be the 2/3 rule, a legality the SJ Mercury had no trouble criticizing as the primary cause for parcel tax failures in these recent editorials: and
Unfortunately, when it came to Measure K, the Mercury could only cast blame on the teachers union: “[Measure K’s] narrow loss underscores the failure of the East Side Teachers Association to take the district’s financial plight seriously.” Hmmm. Does that mean the little 2/3’s rule problem only applies to districts unaffiliated with ESTA?
It is also interesting to note that the Chairperson for the Measure K campaign was Chris Evans, the former librarian of James Lick and current librarian at Mt. Pleasant. Librarian? That would make him an ESTA member. Oh, and Mr. Information Minister, just in case you didn't do your checking, Mr. Evans used to be ESTA's vice-president. It's nice to know ESTA was so unsupportive of Measure K that one of their members volunteered to chair the measure's campaign.
It is very hard for Team Unruly to take any opinion Fensterwald raises on behalf of the Mercury News seriously. In the sidebar that accompanies the editorial, subtitled “East Side’s Improper Accounting and Spending,” Fensterwald shoots off the foot he uses to kick the teachers union and sticks it in his mouth. Each item he lists either leaves out critical information, demonstrates a lay understanding of complex issues, or flat out contradicts the argument he makes in the main article’s text.
Dig through your recycling and pull out the Valley section from Wednesday, November 10th so you can read along. Team Unruly has decided to address each item Fensterwald spins in his sidebar to give the East Side community a more accurate understanding of these issues in a little section we call:
EAST SIDE’S INFORMATION MINISTER’S IMPROPER ACCOUNTING OF EAST SIDE’S IMPROPER ACCOUNTING AND SPENDING
- 4 million in misappropriated developers fees, which even Zendejas thought was a legal practice. Who is in charge of spending developer’s fees? Is it the evil teachers union? Nope. Teachers don’t have the authority to approve district expenditures—they can't even buy pencils on the district's dime without administrative authorization. Zendejas claims she continued the practice Coto started. Are the former and current superintendents to blame? Sort of, at least in the sense that they can authorize budget transfers. But wait! They don’t have the final say over those budget transfers. The power to approve sizable budget transfers and expenditures lies with the people who have the power of the purse: the Board of Trustees.
- 4.3 million illegally used from land sales. Of course, this money could have been used legally, had the district filed the appropriate waiver. They didn’t. Damn that teachers union again for failing to remind district administrators and the board of trustees to do their job and file the appropriate waivers!
- The Info Minister cites 2 million to hire 25 new teachers, but again fails to really explain the class size issue. THE DISTRICT WANTED TO CHANGE THE STAFFING FORMULA FOR THE SECOND YEAR IN A ROW, NOT THE AVERAGE SIZE PER CLASS. It works like this: if the formula is 28, then a school with 2200 students is allocated about 78 full time teachers. At 30 students per class, that number of teachers can serve 11, 700 students given that each student has 6 classes. However, if each student has 6 classes with the 28 formula, the demand for service is 13, 200. The number balances out because some departments, like PE, have more than 30 students per class. 13, 200 is still > 11, 700. When Morgan Hart classes, Special Education and ELD courses are taken into consideration, all of which require lower class size ratios by law which is NOT considered prior to determining teacher allocation for each site, the number of necessary sections increases, while the number of teachers remains the same. Simple math, Info Minister. A school can only offer as many classes as they have teachers. If the law requires some classes to be smaller than 30, then those extra students will be distributed among the other sections. Team Unruly’s statistician says under the 30-1 formula proposed by the district, the average class size goes up to 37 students, 7 more than the Info Minister leads the public to believe.
The Info Minister also keeps forgetting to mention Coto changed the ratio from 26-1 to 28-1 prior to leaving the district. That means class sizes would have gone up by nearly 10 students in two years, over a 30% increase.
The union stepped in because the district raised the issue out of the blue at the end of the year. As we have already reported, one board member realized the inherent problems with changing the formula. The two board members up for reelection in 2004 decided to rescind the decision, not just because they realized the union would win the issue if it went to arbitration; they realized a parent will be none to happy to “vote incumbent” when they discover their child sits in a crowded math class with nearly 40 students.
Let’s also not forget the union won their grievance. What’s that mean in lay terms? The district pulled an illegal move and an outside arbitrator called them on it.
Then there’s the question of the 2 million figure the Merc’s fuzzy math department cites as the cost of hiring 25 new teachers. If all 25 are new to the profession (and believe us, when a school scrambles to hire teachers in September, they ain’t hiring career teaching veterans) they actually earn 50k for the year. According to our calculator, that would be 1.25 million—not 2 mil.
The district actually did hire some veterans to return to the classroom, but the word “hire” is used loosely here. The district sent all of its subject area coordinators back into the classroom part-time—AT NO ADDITIONAL COST TO THE DISTRICT! These people are in charge of the curriculum for a particular subject. Most of these people were housed full-time at the district office. Now they are part-time teachers at schools around the district. This matter of convenience worked out well for the district; rescinding the class size increase left a number of schools with extra sections in certain subject areas. Rather than make Overfelt scramble to find an Algebra teacher for only two periods, the SACs were sent in to cover those needs.
- $1.3 million in bills that came in after the close of the previous fiscal year? Did that nasty old teachers union hide the RPO’s from the district as some sort of “let’s go into receivership” ploy?
- $1.3 million COLA for teachers. Out of the 15 million deficit Fensterwald breaks down, this is the only point where teachers can impact the budget. If the district took back the COLA, they’d still be 13.7 million in the hole. But before anyone starts demonizing East Side’s teachers, let’s have an accurate look at the facts. Fensterwald claims the teachers received a “larger COLA over 2 years than the state awarded the district.” Not true. The state passed a negative COLA last year. Teachers did not receive a COLA last year. Fensterwald implies they did. The COLA teachers received is the first salary increase teachers have had in three years.
The district did receive less money last year, but the governor has promised to make sure schools get the funding due them according to prop 98 over the next couple of years. This year, school districts have received more money than previous years. The problem East Side’s district has is with COLA. Why did the teacher’s get a cost of living increase? It is in the “Collective Bargaining Agreement” between the teachers and the district. The district has a contractual obligation that they willingly entered into. But don’t let Fensterwald spin you into believing East Side teachers just got such a fat raise that there’s now a shortage of 2005 Lexus’ on the Capitol Auto Mall. Even with the COLA, East Side teachers, a group of dedicated individuals who work with some of the most challenging student populations in the entire county, make significantly less than their west side counterparts.
Fensterwald also paints his “boss” as taking the high moral road in regards to this issue: “Superintendent Zendejas says she asked the union to delay taking the COLA but backed off after sensing it was a futile effort.” In his mind, SUPER Zendejas tried to fight that nasty group of villains, the evil empire that is ESTA, but alas, to no avail—those stubborn teachers would not budge, no matter what she did.
The real story? The Info Minister does concede that “in the past, there was cause for cynicism. When teachers wanted more money or programs were about to be cut, superintendents somehow pulled cash out of a hat.” Of course, Fensterwald implies that teachers should not be cynical now, even though you can read about all the causes for cynicism on this site: credit card scandals, firing then not firing librarians, pocket vetoing Filipino teacher work visas. Here’s what Zendejas really did. The union got word from the state that the district would receive a 4.15 COLA. Zendejas approached the union and asked them to take 2% now, and the additional 2.15% in November after the election, which would be paid retroactively. In her unorthodox meeting with ESTA’s exec board, she cited her reason for this COLA deferment: she felt voters would not pass Measure K if they heard teachers were getting a raise. She wanted to flim flam the public in order to pass a parcel tax measure. The union’s only mistake was not publicly exposing this blatant attempt to dupe voters. In the post discussion, the gathered crowd generally agreed that tricking voters into passing a parcel tax was unethical. Since ESTA’s collective bargaining agreement contained COLA language, they decided they didn’t have to do anything.
Since then the district’s financial picture looks a little bleaker, but perhaps not as bleak as they make it out to be. Why shouldn’t the union be a little cynical when the Superintendent tries to persuade teachers to dupe voters? If bleaker financial times are on the horizon, teachers will most likely return some of the COLA, but it is still an issue that demands bargaining. Team Unruly has to defer to the words of Dr. Zendejas, who in a recent meeting admitted that the COLA is a very small part of the district’s deficit and wouldn’t have that much of an impact.
- $1.1 million in books and supplies that Fensterwald deems “an accounting mistake.” It's interesting to note that teachers are "failures" in the eyes of the Mercury for not throwing more money in the pot to pass a parcel tax, and they are implied to be greedy when it comes to accepting a contractually guaranteed COLA. When the district overlooks paying bills that are almost as much as the COLA, well, the Mercury calls that a "mistake." Here's the Merc's mistake: quit blaming the union when district officials can't do their job. Remember, Fensterwald, the union is comprised of teachers, not accountants. That would be the ESAA—the East Side Accountants Association.
- $400k in transportation overruns, primarily for special education students. Last year Zendejas proposed the district stop outsourcing severely disabled and emotionally disturbed students to county schools and bring them back into the district. She then cut in half the support staff needed to adequately deal with those students. Even when Coto was in charge, the district was out of compliance with special education laws. Now the district has more special education students, and it is further out of compliance than ever before. As a result, there has been an increase in special education lawsuits, which will wind up costing the district much more than $400k.
And speaking of $400k, is there another costly improper accounting practice that cost the district, say, $400k? 1.3 million in COLA spread across the 1200 plus teachers who work in the ESUHSD equals about $1085 dollars per teacher, which will go to pay for higher gas prices and mortgages whose interest rates hover around 6% annually for those teachers lucky enough to afford their own home. Can anyone think of someone in the district who received a $400k home loan at 2% interest? Put your hands down, all you teachers at Independence. We think everyone who reads this site knows the answer to that question.
Why does the Mercury News blatantly obfuscate these issues? Why is the Mercury so biased against the East Side Teachers Association? Lots of juicy stories to mine, we suppose. That’s one reason why Fensterwald is running these stories under the umbrella headline “East Side Union: Transforming a School District—an occassional series”. Team Unruly also knows that the Mercury is openly getting information about the Terry Gregory scandal from East Side Board of Trustee member Craig Mann. The bottom line is Fensterwald doesn’t need to like ESTA, but he does have the professional responsibility to inform the public accurately. He doesn’t; that’s why unrulyrus.com exists.
If you would like to voice your concerns to Mr. Fensterwald about his questionable reporting, you can do so through e-mail: jfensterwald@mercurynews.com, or by contacting the Mercury News opinion desk. Most likely your complaints will fall on deaf ears. You’ll be dismissed as either a union radical or a community member duped by a union radical. But you can send us a copy of your e-mail to Fensterwald and we’ll post it (anonymously unless otherwise requested). Maybe if enough of you get unruly, Fensterwald will realize his ESUHSD infotainment spinning is damaging his journalistic crediblity.