March 10: 4th National Call-In Day for Single Payer Health Insurance

Progressive Democrats of America are organizing a call in day in support of HR 676, the single payer health care plan. Please, call your representative on March 10, 2009.

Zero Tolerance for Zero Tolerance

Today, Roberts Elementary art teacher Mindy Herrick returned to the classroom. This is a wonderful event for both the school and for Ms. Herrick. The students, staff, and parents have learned that people, when organized, can bring about positive change; and Ms. Herrick has been shown decisively that the events of the past few months have not damaged her reputation at all. With all the staff, teachers, and a large number of parents watching, Ms. Herrick came to the outdoor stage from inside the school while the speakers played the theme from "Rocky". People were feeling happy, relieved, and triumphant.

The next step is to change the policy of performing random drug searches in teacher parking lots. Of course, none of us want to have teachers or staff whose performance at work is impacted by drug use, and we don't want anyone on campus distributing drugs on campus to anyone else. But random searches in general, and demonstrably so at HISD, are not affecting either population. It seems that adding random searches is not an improvement over searches involving probable cause.

The concept of the probable cause requirement for a search/seizure is rooted in the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution. The amendment requires the Executive (the police) in most cases to have more than a reasonable suspicion they'll find something before they can search a private area. As the link to reasonable suspicion points out, there are cases (such as a search for firearms) which have a lower threshold, but a drug search isn't one of them.

I'm not a lawyer, so this is all untrained speculation. It seems the Supreme Court has recognized that certain employers can institute random tests in Skinner v. Railway Labor Assn., 489 U.S. 602 (1989). Since then, it seems the number and types of employers instituting random searches has grown; I think that "safety-sensitive" has been more and more loosely construed, and more and more people are being searched by their employers. Clearly, HISD has decided they are comfortable their employees fit the definition.

I'm not sure that's reasonable. Of course, we want our kids to be safe; it's just not clear that random drug searches are preventing HISD employees from bringing drugs to school. (It may help prevent students from doing that though - they may not be as rational, nor do they have jobs to lose). Instead, in addition to paying our teachers poorly, and putting pressure on them to "teach to a test", the district is accusing them of being guilty until proven innocent of having drugs. Should they always work under that suspicion?

I have no sympathy for HISD employees selling or sharing drugs on campus. If there's reason to suspect that's happening, please, call in the dogs, and submit the evidence to the District Attorney. On the other hand, if you suspect someone of taking drugs they don't have a prescription for, maybe the right reaction is to figure out how to help them overcome the problem. If there is a problem (and the discovery was not a false positive) and they're an exemplary or even just an effective employee, especially if they've a long history of dedication to their job, maybe the first thing to do is treat them as a valuable person, and see if you can preserve the good in them by helping them overcome a weakness. If as an employer HISD were to find evidence of such a problem, I suggest it should first offer counseling before turning the issue over to the police.

The district should also determine if the drug use constitutes a potential danger to the students; that's a harder call, and of course it's just so much easier to automatically suspend or reassign anyone in such a situation. "Zero Tolerance" is a policy that potentially protects the district from lawsuits in the situation something unfortunate happens - but it's also potentially devastating to the employee, and that public vote of "no confidence" by their employer can make it difficult for them to return to their job. A friend of mine said Zero Tolerance means zero thinking, which can be an appealing approach if you want to implement what looks like an even-handed policy. But does a policy ultimately even protect the students, at such a cost? And what about all the other dangers adults pose to children?

Ultimately, it's my opinion that random drug searches, coupled with a "zero tolerance" policy, do not protect our children any better than a policy of vigilance and understanding. Vigilance will protect our kids from more than just danger from drugs; and understanding will be consistent with the concepts of rehabilitation and forgiveness found in most moral systems and religions.

The Obama administration and secrecy

I read an entry on Glenn Greenwald's blog discussing a filing made by the Obama Department of Justice in the case of Al-Haramain v. Obama et al. Greenwald's analysis is that this is an unfortunate turn of events - an opportunity the Obama DOJ had to reverse Bush-era policy, which they let slip by. But after reading the filing, I'm not so sure.

It seems to me the brief is arguing that Classified information is determined by the Executive to be sensitive; only the Executive can determine who has access to it; and that there are case law and statutory precedents supporting their assertions. After reading the references, I don't actually see anything wrong with their reasoning. I think both Congress and the courts have concurred - let the experts (the Executive) be the final arbiters of whether disclosure of a document may be harmful to national security.

I believe what's happening here is that the plaintiffs have advanced the wrong arguments. Instead of asking the Court to compel the Executive to disclose the document, and instead of arguing that the Court could choose to disclose the document itself, they probably should be attacking the classification. There, I think, is the problem. The Executive clearly should be able to keep certain information secret - but there should be limits on what can be classified, and I don't think that argument has been advanced. Certainly it should not be possible for the Executive to classify documents to cover up wrongdoing - which in fact appears to be the tactic in use in this case.

However because the plaintiffs haven't (yet?) advanced that particular argument, the DOJ was not required to address it or advance it for them. Let's see if counsel for Al-Haramain addresses the propriety of the classification of these documents, and how the Obama DOJ responds to that. Until they do so, I think the DOJ is right to protect the concept of keeping classified information secret. That's too large a privilege to give up, especially if it can have serious consequences for national security.

Mindy Herrick Returns

Roberts Elementary School teacher Mindy Herrick will be returning to work Monday morning at 7:30am. The staff at Roberts plan to have a big welcome back party at 8am. If you can, be there!

I don't think HISD has yet said why she's being allowed back. The Roberts parents were in touch with both Dr. Saavedra's office and Dr. Adriana Tamez (Central Region Superintendent), and didn't seem to get a detailed answer from either. We'll have to monitor the news to see why she's returning, and perhaps the status of other teachers caught in this drug sweep policy.

About the best you can say about HISD's policy regarding teachers and drugs is that it's confusing.

Paying your superintendent

In an article by the Houston Chronicle's Ericka Mellon, the issue of compensation for the HISD superintendent was discussed. I collected another 10 seconds on my cumulative fifteen minutes of fame, and wanted to clarify a few points.

• First, I said I'd be willing to "spot him the driver" in our 7th largest school district. Yes, I pay taxes too. But I grew up in NJ, and spent four years going to high school in Manhattan, which was only possible because of mass transit. I spent the travel time doing homework, reading, goofing with friends, or just chilling out. Dr. Saavedra probably travels a lot of miles in our huge sprawling city; any time he can prep for a meeting, work on a proposal or policy, etc. is bonus time to us, I think. Honestly, we should make Metro pay for the driver; it's really a shame we don't have a decent mass transit system in the fourth largest US city. I guess we can thank Tom DeLay for that.
• One of my biggest concerns is that the compensation package is almost strictly accretive. The next candidate isn't going to come in and say "I'll take less than my predecessor"; the trend is to ask for all that, and more. I think the Board should spend a little time discussing the package up front, then look for supers who are willing to work within those boundaries. If we need to shave back compensation or perks, we should take advantage of this opportunity to do so.
• I also said the Board should consider putting a cap on the compensated vacation/personal days. That's pretty normal for us plebes, who at best can carry a single year's worth of days over to next year. As an employer, you don't want your employees working for two years then taking a long vacation in the middle of your project the next year (though of course that'd be so nice). You also don't want to get socked with a big payout at termination, which is what we're seeing now with Dr. Saavedra. A cap just makes sense; use it or lose it.
• The salary part of the compensation doesn't faze me much. It's a big job, and a big district. Can we get equally qualified personnel to run it for less? I don't know. The bonus, on the other hand, is obscene; an $80,000 bonus is two average teacher salaries (I think). Wouldn't we be better served having the extra teacher(s)? Since it's tied (in large part?) to the performance on standardized tests, it aligns his compensation with what I consider to be a flawed metric. It also is of probably dubious value; at the end of the day it's the teachers and principals who are making that happen, not him.

In the end, as a taxpayer, I'd like to see us pay the super less if we can. As a citizen and parent of HISD students, I want a person in the job who can make sure the system works for our children. It's the Board's job to try to make those both happen, and I wish them luck.