Ok, here's something I never thought I would say: I think the pendulum of power might be swinging toward...Philadelphia teachers.
Yes, those same teachers who bravely go to work in schools where some students appear interested in beating them to a pulp. Those same teachers who, in many schools, are teaching with paltry supplies and old books. The ones who are dealing with high-stakes testing of students in a district so packed with impoverished kids that they just give everyone free lunch.
Actually, it was Elmer Smith who got me started on this crazy train of thought. He wrote about the power of the National Education Association, which is convening in town, and crooked its finger to summon Hillary Clinton and John Edwards to speak to it Monday. Barack Obama, Mike Huckabee and Joe Biden will follow Thursday. The NEA and the American Federation of Teachers (which includes the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers), he wrote, have 4.5 million members; the NEA, in particular, withstood a Republican effort to brand it a "terrorist" organization.
This got me thinking about the Philadelphia teachers' union, which sat out of the mayor's race, voting to not endorse any of the candidates. (Wise move, since the winner of the primary ranked fourth in the PFT's voting.) I think the PFT was just deeply conflicted, tied to several candidates and unwilling to make an enemy. Especially when larger battles lay just ahead...
And that's where they are now, and where, shockingly, public opinion is solidifying behind them. There's a battle beginning to brew over the state control of the school district. Particularly with the painful exit of Paul Vallas, among higher test scores but a huge deficit, factions in the city ranging from parents' groups to Mayor Street are exploring whether they can argue the schools back into city control. Michael Nutter, the Democratic candidate for mayor, is more explicit: He has said he wants city control of the school district.
And that's soooo interesting. Just a little more than five years after John Street allowed/was incapable of stopping a school district crisis that led to the takeover, there's a growing cry for city control. What a good time to be a big teachers' union, which can rally support both for Nutter and his cause of local control.
And now the PFT has a new, but battle-tested leader in Jerry Jordan, and a fight they believe in looming before them...