Irony is not dead!

Someone named Connie M. Meskimen wrote the following letter to the Arkansas Gazette:

Monday April 16, 2007

You may have noticed that March of this year was particularly hot. As a matter of fact, I understand that it was the hottest March since the beginning of the last century. All of the trees were fully leafed out and legions of bugs and snakes were crawling around during a time in Arkansas when, on a normal year, we might see a snowflake or two.

This should come as no surprise to any reasonable person. As you know, Daylight Saving Time started almost a month early this year. You would think that members of Congress would have considered the warming effect that an extra hour of daylight would have on our climate. Or did they?

Perhaps this is another plot by a liberal Congress to make us believe that global warming is a real threat. Perhaps next time there should be serious studies performed before Congress passes laws with such far-reaching effects.

Connie M. Meskimen
Hot Springs

Some people think Meskimen is a comic genius, others think Meskimen is a right-wing dullard.

When I looked closely at Meskimen's writing style, I decided that this writer was too good to have intended the letter to be taken seriously. The letter seems to me to be a very clever joke.

CTA loses a favorite son on the Mountain Empire School Board

It's a sad thing when teachers go to the polls and elect one of their own as a school board member, but the parents of the district just won't have it. The CTA local in Mountain Empire School District east of San Diego is mourning the loss of its favorite son, Fred Kamper. He has resigned from the school board because he didn't want to face parents angered by several incidents of inappropriate behavior by Kamper with female students.

CTA can't understand why these parents take things like this so seriously. Neither can Patrick Judd, the superintendent who authorized tax money to be paid to defend Fred Kamper in a lawsuit regarding child-abuse allegations. After all, what's a little child abuse in the grand scheme of school politics? When the accused is a popular teachers union president, you can't really expect the teachers union to turn against one of its own, can you? Let's try to focus on what's important in education.

Lawyer Daniel Shinoff, who represented Fred Kamper and Patrick Judd in the recent lawsuit, would be a lot poorer if he weren't paid public money to attack child abuse victims. Don't worry, Dan. Your client might not get to serve on the school board, but there will be plenty of abused children for you to demean in the future. What was that you said about the special education student who was sexually assaulted in Sweetwater School District? That she wanted it? Nice work, Mr. Shinoff. Thanks, Superintendent Randy Ward of San Diego County Office of Education JPA (SDCOE-JPA) for maintaining your secret "gentlemen's agreement" with Mr. Shinoff to represent local school districts in lawsuits.

Bruce Harter and Richard Werlin part ways

We are sad to report that Bruce Harter and Richard Werlin have parted. Richard Werlin was supposed to silence teachers, not get them national attention. When he had second-grade teacher Jenny Mo arrested, he brought unwanted attention to the very issue he was supposed to cover up: bullying by kids in WCCCUSD. He also brought attention to bullying by adults--himself in particular.

California Teachers Association is in mourning. Richard Werlin got along well with United Teachers of Richmond president Gail Mendes, just as he got along well with former CVE president Gina Boyd. (He was happy to abuse the teachers they wanted him to abuse.) We can't help noticing that Gail Mendes looks like she was separated at birth from Chula Vista Educators former president Gina Boyd. They could be twins. Perhaps Werlin has a thing for slim, short-haired blondes? More likely, he has a gift for cultivating union presidents.

Perhaps CTA could give Werlin a job, since he seems to be having employment problems.

Will Stealth Candidate Destroy California Teachers Association?

The duties of the top officers of California Teachers Association are basically ceremonial, like those of the Queen of England, except that CTA officers attend carefully-scripted educational meetings instead of carefully-scripted hospital openings. Until now, CTA presidents have been chosen for their ability to follow orders and stick to the script.

But that may change.

There is a new stealth candidate for CTA secretary-treasurer. If she wins this position, our candidate will, according to CTA custom, rise automatically to vice-president in four years, and then to president four years after that. (The thinking seems to be that eight years is needed to learn the script and prove loyalty to Carolyn Doggett and Beverly Tucker.)

I can't tell who the stealth candidate is, or her rise to power would be immediately ended by Caro and Bev. She is planning to follow the script until she becomes president, then strike out on her own. Will this be a good thing for education in California? Not immediately, because this woman's goal is to destroy CTA from within, like George W. Bush's appointees to heath and welfare commissions. There will be a period of disruption in which teachers may start to think for themselves, and break out of their current cliques in order to focus on students. But in the end, human nature will prevail, and teachers will settle back into a new power structure. The truth is, humans don't like too much freedom, because it gives them too much responsibility. They have no one to think for them, no one to hide their mistakes from the press and from law enforcement. It's a scary world when a teacher has no one but her students to focus on.

Bruce Harter and Richard Werlin find a happy home

After traveling back and forth across the country, from Florida to Texas and back to Florida again, from southern California to Seattle, Richard Werlin survived lawsuits, employment interviews, and rejections, to finally discover a resting place. His journey was harsh, because nobody seemed to like him, no matter how many wonderful things he wrote on his resume.

But Werlin's journey had at last come to an end, it seemed. The good people of Richmond, California took him into their hearts, and put him in charge of West Contra Costa County School District's human resources department.

Werlin has found people he can work with in the police department of his new home. Our schools are safe again for people who want to get rid of their fellow employees. But Werlin is not getting the public recognition he deserves.

After struggling for so long with the Downer 10, teachers at Downer school who wrote a letter demanding professionalism, WCCCUSD has finally found a teacher it can handle. She is 57-year-old teacher Jennie Mo, who was taken into custody at her elementary school when police stormed the school during library time. She was handcuffed in front of her second-graders and jailed on 18 felony counts of holding second-graders hostage. It seems that at 10:00 a.m., the police would arrest any student who skipped Ms. Mo's class, but at 11:00 a.m., the situation turned around completely, when Mo was placed on administrative leave for demanding that something be done about school bullies. She was told to go home, and she didn't.

The school claims that there is no problem with bullies. Parents think otherwise. And parents now think that not only children, but at least one teacher is being bullied.

How much is the bail for a woman who never hurt anybody, or wanted to? $900,000!

Way to go, Harter! The ACLU thought they weren't going to get to see you anymore, but this just might bring about a happy reunion. When do bible classes start in Richmond?

Nice work, Werlin. The folks in Chula Vista Elementary School District (San Diego County) knew you could do it.

By the way, Rick, don't let people like Gayle McLaughlin bother you and Mark Miller. What do they know? Always talking about transparency, honesty, legality. Secrecy has always been your strong suit, hasn't it? The no-paper-trail, intimidate-and-deceive policy has worked well in the past, and earned you the loyal support of California Teacher Association's Pixie Hayward-Schnickele and Barbara Kerr. When you've got these players on your side, why worry about students and parents?

Our dear Pixie behaves reprehensibly, but we still love her

I can't argue with Susan Ohanian regarding Richmond Schools: "Of course the behavior of the school personnel is reprehensible.

"But the union's refusal to respond to the attack on teacher professionalism is also reprehensible.

"When teachers are punished for standing up for pedagogy, their punishment should not be treated as a technicality. Teachers who remain silent in the face of pedagogical assault lose their professionalism."

But that doesn't mean I'll betray my old friend, Pixie Hayward-Schnickele. All I've got to say, Pixie, is that you may be reprehensible and unprofessional, but what do they expect you to do? Turn against your old friend Richard Werlin, the new Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources? Perish the thought. You two go way back. You authorized payment of CTA teacher dues to CTA lawyers to help Werlin get away with crimes against teachers, and and obstruction of justice!

And don't worry. I'll bet your hanging your fellow teachers out to dry at West Contra Costa County School District won't keep you from rising in CTA! I agree with California Teachers Association--I can't stand those loudmouth teachers who try to change things. The status quo in education is good enough for Pixie, so it's good enough for me. What's wrong with being a coward and a kiss-up? Don't rock the boat. Go, Pixie! No, that doesn't make sense. Stay behind, Pixie! No, that doesn't sound good, either. Oh, you know what I mean. Hooray, status quo!

Pixie v. Arnold

CTA Director Pixie Hayward-Schickele once said, "When I became a teacher, I didn't realize I would have a big target on me, but that's how I feel now with this governor..." *

For some years now, we have noticed that bull's eyes have been turning up of the backs of teachers across the country. It turns out that the practice began long before Arnold began attacking teacher unions.

In fact, after interviewing some teachers with the bull's eyes pinned to their backs, we discovered that Pixie herself had attached several of the distinctive yellow targets to several teachers.

"That was different," Pixie explains. "Those were teachers who had gone off-message. Sometimes good teachers get in the way of CTA, and we must protect the group. The many are more important than the few. If you don't believe me, just ask Beverly Tucker and Carolyn Doggett."

This is the Pixie we love. Don't ever talk like a victim again, Pixie! Arnold is a fly-by-night politicitian. Ignore him. CTA kicks butt all over California. CTA rules! Own it!

* Reported by the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, by Lindsey Gill, November 3, 2005