Thanks to Gay for speaking truth to power!

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Is Race to Top’s real goal union busting?

Don’t expect Gay Parker, president of the Seminole Education Association, to sign off on a bid by Seminole County schools to seek federal school improvement funds in the Race to the Top grant program.

Parker says the grant program is being rushed through with too many unknowns and may simply be a subterfuge to bust the teacher unions.

Seminole Superintendent Bill Vogel says that on Tuesday he will ask the School Board to reconsider last month’s decision not to go after the federal grant. The state has given districts until midnight Tuesday to say if they are on board, and Seminole is one of only four in Florida that are not.

The district has been asked to sign a “memorandum of understanding” saying it intends to take part in the grant program. The state then would include that and similar memos from other districts as proof of interest in the grant when it sends the state application to the feds later this month.

The memo is supposed to be signed by the superintendent, school board chairman and teacher union head of each school district.

But no dice on Parker’s signature, she says.

“I am not signing it. There is no benefit to teachers or the school district,” Parker told me.

In fact, she said, the intent of the program, at least in Florida, seems to be union busting.

The teacher unions statewide have come out against participating in the federal grant. That’s because a stipulation in accepting it would seem to do away with the current system of paying teachers based on years of experience and degrees earned. That would be replaced by a merit system of some sort. (Merit pay has been talked about for decades in Florida, with various plans implemented – all unsuccessfully.)

The unions have been criticized as impeding the quest for the federal money, which seems just there for the taking. But Parker points out that in Florida the unions are ignored anyway when push comes to shove in education decisions.

That’s because while Florida law requires school boards to negotiate with teacher unions, school boards have the final say on teacher pay, working conditions and other issues. In the oddly crafted law, school boards get to “impose” a decision, after sitting as what are declared impartial panels to decide whether to accept a union position or the position of the school board.

State Education Commissioner Eric Smith points this out to superintendents of schools in a memo that went out late last month. If the unions don’t go along, school boards can impose a decision about merit pay, he says, without a lot of reading between the lines.

“In order to participate (in the grant), any impediments to implementation must be removed,” the memo from Smith says. ”Ideally, this should be done for the term of the grant through negotiation. Where this is not possible and impasse is reached, a decision through that process can still allow participation.”