George Liebmann
Liebmann & Shively, P.A.
Established in 1980
Eight West Hamilton Street
Baltimore, MD 21201
Ph: 410-752-5887 Fax: 410-539-3973

Remarks
EPI News Conference, National Press Club, May 6, 1999

How to Change The System (an outline)

There are many good teachers in the public schools -- How can they escape from a system nobody wants? It is not easy. Unions are enthusiastic about the right to organize until they are certified. Therefore, they oppose all changes in the status quo through several means:

• Agency shop provisions, requiring teachers who wish to support another union to pay two sets of union dues
• Onerous requirements for recertification elections, requiring large petitions and elections only at long intervals
• Prohibitions against recognition of more than one union in a district, thus precluding unions of high school teachers, science teachers, or special education teachers
• Restrictions on use of the employee communication system by competing unions
• Automatic checkoffs of union dues and PAC contributions, a privilege not granted to competing unions
• Released time for union officers, a privilege not granted to competing unions
• Consolidation of school districts and resistance to any sub-district or building-level employee organization, rendering any effort to change the status quo difficult and expensive
• Certification requirements heavily stressing education courses, thus limiting the electorate to persons indoctrinated in union ideology
• Dues checkoffs for state and national union organizations, which are highly critical of deviant local organizations

Reform from within the workforce is thus impossible, except in small school districts and counties. Reform must come about in other ways:

• Greater management sophistication, equipping school districts with model contracts which:
  
  • streamline discipline and removal
  • provide for merit pay
  • eliminate requirements of graduate education courses for administrators
  • provide for competency examinations for teachers
  • allow boards for individual schools
  • empower principals to hire and fire
  • limit leave provisions
  • provide for a normal work day
  • avoid limitations on teachers' participation in cafeteria, hallway, library and office duty
  • provide adequate rewards for young teachers with 5-10 years of experience and eliminate longevity increases beyond the tenth year
  • allow community and volunteer participation in extracurricular activities and teaching
  • provide for probation periods of adequate length
  • require teacher participation in parent conferences
    
• Legislation providing for charter schools, with union certification at the school rather than system level.
• Vouchers for students to attend alternative schools.
• Alternative certification of teachers and principals, thus opening up the school system to persons not indoctrinated in its ways; reduction of education course requirements.
• Boards for each school, with elected parent and teacher members, appointed members with expertise in higher education, construction, and accounting, and co-opted members.
• New types of schools outside the regular system: science academies, boarding schools for students lacking parental support, sixth form academies for students beyond the compulsory attendance age, laboratory schools run by the teaching programs of colleges and universities, special schools for disruptive students.