FOOTBALL IS FINE, BUT WHAT ABOUT THE PUBLIC SCHOLS IN NEW ORLEANS?

As tens of thousands celebrated the reopening of the Superdome in New Orleans on Sept. 25, public school students in the parish’s Recovery School District still faced boarded-up schools, construction delays, teacher shortages and transportation problems, says United Teachers of New Orleans (UTNO) president Brenda Mitchell.

“The reopening of the thoroughly destroyed Superdome shows that if there’s a will, there’s a way to finish construction on time,” says Mitchell. “Shouldn’t the education of all of our students in renovated neighborhood schools have been at least as high a priority as getting the Saints back in their home stadium?”

Construction delays in the parish are forcing many students to attend schools elsewhere, requiring some to travel up to 12 miles away from their own neighborhoods, says UTNO. Many public school buildings remain boarded up. And, after firing more than 7,000 public school employees after Hurricane Katrina, the Recovery School District now finds itself with a teacher shortage, especially among math and science high school teachers, foreign language high school teachers and special education teachers for all grades.

While some of the 7,000 have applied for and received teaching jobs, others have hesitated to apply, says Mitchell, in part because of “instability, uncertainty and confusion” surrounding public education in New Orleans; chaotic hiring procedures; and the loss of collective bargaining. “There’s nothing wrong with the Saints marching back into the Superdome, but the city and state have fumbled the ball on rebuilding the public schools for all our children,” Mitchell says.

STATE EMPLOYEE PAY RAISES LAG BEHIND INFLATION RATE

Salaries for state-employed professionals registered a modest increase over the previous year but still lagged behind the inflation rate, according to the 2006 AFT Public Employees Compensation Survey, the only national survey that tracks such trends.

“If states are going to attract and retain top professionals for critical state government services, they must pay a competitive wage,” says AFT president Edward J. McElroy. “At a minimum, this means paying salaries that keep pace with inflation and trends in the private sector. Unfortunately, states appear to be falling short on both counts.”

The new report reveals that median salaries across the 45 occupations surveyed increased an average of 2.5 percent from 2005 to 2006, almost a full percentage point below the inflation rate of 3.4 percent for that period. This is the third straight year that the salary increases of state employees failed to keep pace with inflation, indicating a troubling decline in real wages (wages adjusted for inflation).

The average salary increase also was significantly below the increase in total state general fund spending, which was estimated at 7.6 percent in fiscal year 2006, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers.

One undisputed factor that helps alleviate the private-public sector salary gap is collective bargaining. In the states with collective bargaining rights for public employees, public sector salaries are generally closer to private sector salaries, the report finds for the seventh consecutive year.

The complete results of the 2006 salary survey can be found on the AFT Web site at www.aft.org/salary/2006/download/PECompSurvey06.pdf.

AFT NURSES REVIVE ACTIVIST AT ORGANIZING CONFERENCE

AFT Healthcare organizers were just getting down to business at a conference Sept. 19 when Hank Miller, retired president of the United Industry Workers in New York, slumped over and slid face-down under the table.

Kathy Geroux, a critical care nurse from Oregon, had been chatting with Miller minutes before in the Washington, D.C., hotel conference room. “He gave me his whole medical history,” said Geroux, president of the Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals. “That’s what you do when you talk to nurses.”

Good thing, too. When the nurses rolled him over, he had stopped breathing and had no pulse. “He was in full cardiac arrest,” said Leigh Powers, an emergency room nurse at the University of Kansas Medical Center.

Geroux, Powers and others started CPR, with Powers on compression; Kathi Fonti, an intensive care nurse with New Jersey’s Health Professionals and Allied Employees, on breathing and pulse assessment; and Julie Ginther, an RN and coordinator for the AFT Healthcare Midwest Organizing Project, on counting and help with breathing.

Meanwhile, Michael Spiller of AFT Maryland remembered the firehouse across the street and ran with two others to bring back paramedics with an automatic external defibrillator. By the time an ambulance arrived minutes later, the impromptu medical team had restored Miller’s heartbeat and breathing.

This is not the first time AFT nurses have saved the life of a colleague. In April 2003, nurses at another AFT meeting used a defibrillator to revive a retired teacher. The machine had been donated by an AFT member whose son died of a heart attack during a basketball game.