Showing posts with label strange but true. Show all posts
Showing posts with label strange but true. Show all posts

May 3, 2007

Did you know that there are unions of public school principals?

Teachers unions are highly controversial and always in the news, yet you almost never hear about the existence in many districts of of unions for principals and downtown administrators. A lazy teacher is a lot smaller of a problem than a lazy principal, yet you never hear about how principals unions protect bad principals. I guess not many people can believe there are such things as principals and administrators unions.

For example, I finally found out tonight the name of the principals union in Los Angeles: The Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, which defines itself like this:


The Associated Administrators of Los Angeles (AALA) represents the Middle Managers in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

AALA is organized into four departments: Adult School Administrators, Elementary School Administrators, Secondary School Administrators and Supervisory Administrators...

AALA’s primary role is to ensure that members have the protection of Due Process, as contained in the collective bargaining agreement between AALA and the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). AALA provides its members with representation in resolving grievances, counseling in the area of salaries, health benefits, retirement and professional concerns.


If you are the principle of, say, Garfield High School in East LA (where celebrated math teacher Jaime Escalante of the "Stand and Deliver" fame creamed the top few percent off the 4,372 students), you have over 230 teachers working for you, plus some large number of non-teaching staffers. That's being Management with a capital M. And, yet, these principals have their own union to keep them from being held accountable.



What's next? A union for Trident nuclear submarine captains? "Sure, Commander Frobisher may have wiped out Edmonton with an unauthorized ICBM salvo, but he has 24 years seniority, so this union is not going to let him get fired over one little screw-up!"


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer