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Ok, the national media coverage of this has been awful and grossly malinformative, so I want you guys to know that I don’t hold you accountable when I say that none of you have even the barest glimpse of the picture coming into focus here in Rhode Island. As such I’ll do my best to fill the gaps, and correct the inaccuracies for any of you who are interested in following this story.
I suppose the best way to start is to give you a bit of a back-story such that you can understand the make-up of the city of Central Falls, and will have an easier time digesting the problems facing the city, and likewise the school system.
From the time Central Falls became a city, it has always been a city of immigrants. It first grew its population density to city scape when the Irish were fleeing their island. In fact, my own first ancestors arriving in America lived in Central Falls. The Irish were replaced by the Portuguese, and then the Portuguese by Columbians and Dominicans. Central Falls has never been wealthy, perpetually being a city of first generation Americans, but until recently it had always been industrious. The immigrants coming here had always embraced the opportunities available to them, and near every street was lined with vibrant small businesses serving the unique needs of the brave men and women who had just arrived here. The businessmen hoping to earn enough that they might make a better life for their families, the ultimate goal being to buy property in the nearby small town suburbs of Cumberland, Lincoln or Smithfield and live the American Dream. The more recent immigrants provided with jobs by those same businessmen, learning trades and developing local reputations themselves in the process such that they might start out on their own some day as well. The residents of the city whose’ size makes up only one square mile had never been well-off but had always been able to support themselves, their schools, and their municipalities, but then something changed.
The neighboring capital city of Providence declared itself a “sanctuary city”, while at the same time our State Legislature continued it’s trend of creating more entitlements, and the floodgates were opened. Illegal immigrants poured into Rhode Island, and the overflow from Providence cascaded into Central Falls, in part because of it’s proximity, in part because the demographics were already largely Latin lending itself to comfort. The population of the city grew to the point of bursting, with 47.77% of the population identifying itself as Hispanic or Latino, and with almost 30% of the single family residences in the city housing two or more families according to census information. The businesses in the area were not sufficient to provide employment on the scale necessary to accommodate the new population, nor were their inventories enough to meet consumer needs. The influx happened so fast that markets couldn’t keep up, while at the same time those new immigrants lacked means of transportation to acquire jobs and goods elsewhere. As of the year 2000 the poverty rate rose to a staggering 29% of the city’s population. The poverty rate led to a massive influx of crime, and the rise of crime led to the fall of property value and the flight and closing of businesses. This required more tax dollars in order to police a city falling into the chaos of property crime and rampant gang activity, only with business having been chased out funding became slim.
What we are left with today is a city in which the median family income is a mere $26,000 annually, and the per-capita income is only slightly above $10,000, and almost 30% of all residences are filled by families led by single mothers. In addition the population is also largely transient, with new immigrants piling on top of each other in small single family dwellings, moving in with new relatives or new friends every few months in order to make due; or due to a lack of oceans to impede their travel, simply moving back and forth, to and from their native countries for months or even years at a time. Children in tow, moving from house to house, school to school, district to district, impossible to track even if one truly desired to.
The state of schools in the city is a direct reflection of the demographics of the city itself. The rates of English speaking and literacy are abominably low, a side effect of nearly half of the population being natives of third world Spanish speaking countries. Formal education in many of those areas of the world is nil, such that the rates of literacy among the parents is even worse than among their children. This leads to a culture where parental involvement in education is near non-existent, as parents are unable to read even their own native language in order to assist their “English as a second language” students at home. As if this were not problematic enough, not all of the non-English speaking immigrants come from Spanish speaking countries either. It is not unusual to see a classroom of 40 plus students speaking three or four different languages, none of which are English, and most of which the teachers can’t understand or speak. There is no money for books or supplies or to repair the dilapidated school buildings. There is no way to know if the students who attended class on Friday will be living in the country on Monday, or if they were fortunate enough to find a job washing dishes or swinging a hammer in order to help their family put food on the table. There is little help from concerned parents at home.
This is the situation the teachers of Central Falls face. To my mind, there is no possible way a uniform Federal or statewide standard of evaluation could possibly take into consideration the obstacles facing them, or accurately demonstrate the quality of their job performance. Furthermore, the Superintendent of Schools and the School Committee know this, but they also know something else:
In a state in which one out of every four employed adults receive their pay-check from the Federal, State or local municipal government, a state in which the State Finance Committee describes itself as “strongly pro-labor” and senatorial speeches of the floor of the State Building include language condemning the “over-fortunate landed bourgeois” with alarming frequency, a state in which 2009 legislation afforded unions the right to walk away from the table and reassume their old contracts in order to avoid bargaining with a weaker hand during economic down times, essentially creating a completely unaccountable fourth branch of government legally enabled to raise their own pay and thus emburden the tax payers of Rhode Island in perpetuity; there just aren’t that many politically prudent opportunities to take on Unions.
The teachers of Central Falls, in blind support of their union, created such an opportunity. In stark contrast to the residents of Central Falls meager earnings, the median teacher salary in the same city is almost $73,000 annually. Despite rising unemployment and poverty rates, and diminishing capital formation among the residents required to pay the teachers in a city broke beyond bankruptcy, the union sought to negotiate pay increases to the tune of $90 per half-hour for after school extra-help. The teachers toed the line. They gave interviews in which they professed to have the students’ best interests at heart, but when the union demands were brought up they almost uniformly skirted the issue, or insisted on the right to negotiate wages and labor. A right they had lobbied to have legislatively denied to the taxpayers who pay their salaries. The School Committee accurately informed the unions that the demands were unreasonable, and there wasn’t enough money in the budget to meet them. Not even close, in fact.
In a state who’s labor and entitlement driven $90 million dollar budget deficit in 2010 was patched with a combination federal stimulus dollars and by suspending state funds to cities and towns without suspending unfunded mandates, adding to the local burden which must now be met by further raising property taxes, rather than by addressing systemic problems; and from which businesses and wealth are now fleeing like the plague, there is no money to meet current demands. Much less next years budget, which is currently projected to run at a $450 million dollar deficit; or the 2012 budget projected to run at a staggering deficit of $1.2 billion. The union’s answer: “Raise taxes,” and the State Congress echoed the sentiment.
Rhode Island tax-payers and businesses, already stretched to the brink enduring the tenth highest state tax burden in the country, paired with the state government posting unemployment rates of almost 13% with actual rates estimated to be over 20%, have become furious. More than 50% of our state budget is spent on entitlements. The rest is spent on services and pensions, but our pension fund is almost bankrupt. The well has run dry. We can’t afford it any more.
I, for one, believe education, and good educators by proxy, are invaluable. Most everyone does. Though I do not believe, philosophically or economically, that our system of public education serves our best interests. Nor do most of our other local government services. Pragmatically, I can understand why people would desire things like rubbish removal, infrastructure maintenance, and education to be administered by the local government given what they have been taught, despite my own beliefs about their merits and efficiency. (The burden lies on me to convince others there is a better way, not on them to blindly accept my position contrary to everything they have been taught.) The problem arises only when those systems exist more to the detriment of those who pay for them rather than their benefit. When the basic sustaining bread is forcibly taken from one table to provide a lush life for others. This is where we stand in Rhode Island, an finally after long years of complacency and acceptance, Rhode Islanders are no longer satisfied with the status quo.
The problem is systemic, and in this state the unions dictate the systems. They have chosen to draw a line in the sand, and have discovered just how unpopular they are. They picked a fight without sizing up their opponent. Now it’s time to pay the piper. The unions pushed too far and too hard, and now the towns and taxpayers are poised to break them. And I, for one, can't say they don't deserve it.
_________________ Quote: 19 Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. 20 There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses. Ezekiel 23:19-20
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