NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #20/NN_1992_20.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/6528

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Subject: NEWS:Detroit Teachers Strike/WW
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Via The NY Transfer News Service ~ All the News that Doesn't Fit

                    Detroit Teachers on Strike

                 By Detroit Workers World Bureau

Thousands of Detroit teachers demonstrated outside the school
board the day after Labor Day, showing their resolve to continue
their strike. Some 10,500 Detroit teachers went on strike Sept. 1
when no contract was reached.

Negotiations over the Labor Day weekend failed to make any
progress on the two central issues of wages and "empowerment."
As a result, a state mediator ordered the Detroit Board of
Education and Detroit Federation of Teachers to go into
fact-finding.

But DFT president John Elliot made clear that the strike would
not be called off. "We're very, very far apart on the issues,"
said Elliot. "Our members are in no mood to go back to work
under something that is not binding or if they don't have
something they can live with." The tremendous turnout at the
demonstration backed up Elliot's statement.

Unequal funding

The fundamental problems in the Detroit school system stem from
unequal funding for education throughout Michigan. School funds
come from a combination of state aid and local property tax
millage. This favors the richer communities over oppressed cities
like Detroit, Flint and Saginaw, which have been ravaged by plant
closings. Per-pupil funding for education ranges from as low as
$2,491 in the poorest area to $8,407 in the richest.

In Detroit, per-pupil spending on education runs around $4,000 to
$4,500. Yet students' needs are the greatest here. Some 47
percent of Detroit's children live in poverty. Detroit schools
have a 65 percent dropout rate.

Detroit teachers operate in dilapidated school buildings with up
to 35 students in a class. Their pay scale ranks about 70th in
Michigan. Their demand for an 8 percent pay hike would only begin
to catch up.

The Detroit school board's "empowerment" plan is a way to shift
the burden caused by inadequate funding for education onto the
teachers, workers, and parents. It favors special schools to
attract the middle class as against community schools in the
poorest neighborhoods.

The flaws of this "empowerment" plan are well exposed in a
booklet published by the coalition of Union of Detroit public
schools in conjunction with the Metro Detroit AFL-CIO.

Under the Detroit Board of Education's "empowerment" plan,
funding per school in Detroit would be on a per-pupil basis. The
allocation per student would be the same systemwide in spite of
the specific needs of specific schools.

This approach ignores cost disparities between schools, such as
the fact that some children have greater needs, older buildings
are more expensive to maintain, experienced personnel are more
costly, etc.

Union busting

The Detroit school board's "empowerment" plan would give
individual schools the power to outsource work in 17 fields
ranging from food services to substitute personnel--a form of
privatization and union busting.

The board's plan proposes waivers from collective bargaining
agreements. It would permit schools to design their own employee
evaluation systems in violation of the union contract that
standardizes them. It appears to weaken contract language on
non-discrimination and equal employment opportunity in hiring and
contracting services.

It would close schools that are not performing well, rather than
targeting these schools for positive intervention strategies. It
would mean speedup for teachers.

William Roundtree, Workers World Party candidate for Michigan
State Board of Education, says, "Rather than challenging the
state government's apartheid-like method of funding public
education in Michigan and demanding taxes on the corporations and
banks that are responsible for poverty in Detroit, the Detroit
Board of Education is acclimating to this system with further
attacks on the teachers, workers and the community.

"The core of the board's program is to move towards the
privatization of public education in Detroit, just as Bush is
calling for nationwide. The Detroit Federation of Teachers
deserves the full support of parents and the community. Their
strike is not just an economic contract fight, but raises the
political struggle over the future of public education in Detroit
and throughout the country."


(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted
if source is cited. For more info contact Workers World,46 W. 21
St., New York, NY 10010; "[e-mail]".)

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