The impulsive decision of an Indianapolis public schools spokeswoman to eject two filmmakers from a public school budget meeting last week, and an Indianapolis Star reporter’s role in this potentially illegal act, must be investigated.            

     Education Action Group Foundation Vice President Kyle Olson and a cameraman were forced to leave George Washington High School March 24 during a “public meeting” on the district’s budget problems.

     Olson and cameraman Don VanderKooi attended to film a segment for an upcoming EAGF documentary on public education in the Midwest. The men signed in, set up their camera equipment and quietly recorded for roughly 40 minutes when something funny happened.

     Indianapolis Star education reporter Andy Gammill briefly chatted with Olson before heading across the room to whisper into the ear of Mary Louise Bewley, the district’s school/ community relations director.

     We aren’t sure exactly what Gammill said, but judging by Bewley’s facial expressions on the video footage, it wasn’t good.  Within 30 seconds of Gammill’s whisperings, Bewley called our crew to the hallway and forced them to leave by police escort because she believed the video recording was for “disingenuous purposes.”

     EAGF has since filed a formal complaint with the Indiana Public Access Counselor for possible violations of the Indiana Open Door Law.

     Bewley’s questionable behavior should concern any citizen that values transparency in government. When a school official picks and chooses who can attend public meetings, the public’s right to know begins to circle the drain.

     Some have already started to argue about how the technical aspects of the state’s Open Door Law apply to this situation. They wonder if enough school board members were in attendance to define the meeting as officially “public.”

     But we believe that a focus on these trivial details only distracts from the bigger, more important question. IPS called a “public meeting” to discuss school finances, and invited the public to attend. Even IPS Assistant Superintendent Dr. Willie Giles told EAGF the meeting was open, with no special requirements to attend.

     Perhaps just as troubling as the public access issue is Gammill’s self-appointed role as meeting monitor.

     It seems quite clear that Gammill had a hand in nudging Bewley along, or even persuading her to take action against an organization that has been critical of the state’s teachers unions. We hope that the Indianapolis Star’s readers take his future reports with a grain of salt. We certainly will.

     It would reason that a truly unbiased news reporter could see the importance of having different viewpoints at a public discussion, and would focus more on covering the discussion than pointing fingers at those he might personally disagree with.

     We believe this incident should be fully investigated by the proper authorities, and however the state rules on our case, there’s an important lesson to be learned.

     Unlimited access to meetings of public entities is essential to a democratic society, and nobody, including Bewley or Gammill, should have the right to turn away anyone who wishes to attend. When public officials chip away at that freedom, either blatantly or through technical aspects of the law, taxpayers are the ones left in the dark.

     Video of the potientally illegal act is available on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e6I8l6XUh4.

     Roughly 60 teachers at Chicago’s ASPIRA charter schools recently turned in union cards in a move one teacher described as an effort to boost transparency about school operations.

     Nicholas Aquino, history teacher at ASPIRA Early College High School said the movement to unionize ASPIRA’s four Chicago charter schools “is about decision-making and the quality of our teaching, having the time to analyze data and collaborate with other teachers to improve our teaching,” according to Catalyst Chicago.

     About two-thirds of the city’s 100 ASPIRA teachers reportedly signed on to join the Chicago Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff union. That organization is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, and helped to organize three Chicago International Charter Schools after a lengthy court battle last year.

     The Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board now has 90 days to certify whether or not a majority of ASPIRA teachers support unionization, Catalyst reports.

     From our experience, injecting union bureaucracy and outdated tenure contract rules would hinder efforts to improve teacher and student performance. Collaborative efforts between teachers and administrators would also suffer. It’s common knowledge that the AFT often generates animosity between teachers, administrators and the school board, especially during contract discussions.

     We also believe that it’s the autonomous nature of charter schools that make them an appealing alternative to the city’s crumbling public education system. It’s a charter school’s ability to implement needed changes to class assignment, curriculum, teacher status, or policy without regard to union objections that has driven charter school success with student achievement.

     Apparently, ASPIRA teachers are more interested in what’s in it for them. We suspect AFT leaders have been whispering the sweet nothings of solidarity in the teachers’ ears since the school launched in 2007.

     We soon will find out how well it worked for the union, and how badly it could turn out for parents and students.

     A Central Falls, RI teacher “thought it was more of a joke than anything else” when he hung a President Obama doll in effigy after being pinked slipped last month along with the rest of the high school staff.

     It appears he’s the only one laughing.

     Superintendent Frances Gallo inserted a written reprimand to the teacher’s permanent file, but allowed the him to serve out the remainder of the school year. The teacher, who wasn’t publicly identified, was among 73 others at the high school fired last month when the local teachers union refused to sign on to reforms needed to turn the failing school around.

     “He was extraordinarily remorseful, saying over and over again this was not intended as a threat or even a sign of disrespect to the president,” Gallo told the Providence Journal.

     Gallo was “deeply saddened and, actually quite horrified at the sight” of the 12-inch doll, which wore a sign that read “Fire CF teachers,” the Journal reports.

     We can only imagine what his students took away from it.

     Remorseful or not, whatever his intentions, the incident is the perfect example of the poor decision-making that has contributed to the school’s dismal graduation rate and shockingly low test scores in math and reading. It also illustrates that Supt. Gallo made the correct decision to fire the school’s teachers and start from scratch.

     Gallo called Rhode Island state police to the school when she discovered the doll hanging upside down by its foot, and officers determined the act didn’t constitute a hate crime and no charges were filed against the absent-minded teacher.

     But even common sense suggests that anyone, especially a school teacher, should know better than to hang a black man in effigy, especially considering our country’s sick history of lynch mobs carrying out the real act.

     Luckily, the president of the Central Falls Teachers’ Union understands the gravity of the situation.

     “Simply put, the teacher’s action were wrong and cannot be condoned under any circumstances,” president Jane Sessums told the Journal. “There is no excuse for what he did.”

     If Gallo hadn’t already fired the school’s teachers, we’d bet our Obama bobble heads that his union would be whistling a different tune, and fighting to keep the teacher in the classroom.

     It’s obvious that the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers feel betrayed by the President and his pro-reform policies. After spending so much time and money getting him elected, they no doubt expected a four to eight year free ride.

     But the President has rightfully promoted the interests of school children. The unions would be wide to follow suit.

     As part of Gallo’s plan to turn things around at Central Falls High School, the district can hire back up to 50 percent of the school’s terminated teachers. Let’s all hope that this educator seeks another profession, and in the meantime keeps his thoughtless antics to himself.

     Leaders of the nation’s organized labor groups put on quite a production outside Washington D.C.’s Ritz Carlton Hotel last week in an attempted “citizen’s arrest” of insurance executives meeting inside.

     Among the theatrical instigators was one woman who has perfected the art of blowing hot air: American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten.

     She was joined in solidarity with her radical left-wing cohorts at the AFL-CIO, USAction group, UFCW, the Steelworkers, AFSCME, The Newspaper Guild, the Letter Carriers, Communications Workers, Office and Professional Employees, SEIU, and AFGE.

    They denounced the insurance executives with scary words like “dark titan” then strung crime scene tape up in front of the hotel as they took turns badmouthing the industry for its “crimes against humanity,” according to People’s World.

     The goal: to pressure Congress into voting on the President’s health care bill.

     Weingarten focused her ire at rising insurance premiums.

     “Isn’t that criminal? And shouldn’t they be arrested for it?” she questioned to the crowd, according to ABC News reports.

     We believe that Randi is the last person who should be pointing fingers. Instead, her members would be much bettered served by a leader focused on rebuilding AFT associated schools in Detroit, New York City, Washington D.C. and others, which are literally the worst in the nation.

     Some could even argue that the way Weingarten’s union leaches money from large, dysfunctional inner-city school districts is a crime against the nation’s school children.  Some believe that AFT union contracts that keep hundreds of misbehaving New York City teachers on the public’s payroll is a heinous crime against taxpayers.

     Perhaps if Weingarten focused some attention on those issues, she would be less inclined to fill her day with nonsensical protests that have nothing to do with educating our nation’s youth.

     Recent testimony before the U.S. Senate education committee shows that American students continue to slip farther behind their peers in other developed countries, and suggests the path to reverse that trend lies in the charter school model.

     The news comes as the Senate committee is considering a rewrite of the federal policy governing public schools, known as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. We believe the sobering statistics are further evidence that our nation’s teachers unions continue to stand in the way of educational progress. We hope the senators on the education committee understand that, as well.

     Of the world’s 30 richest countries, only New Zealand, Spain, Turkey and Mexico graduate fewer students from high school and college than the United States, where roughly seven in 10 students receive a high school diploma, according to Andreas Schleicher, a senior education official at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, one of the world’s foremost experts on comparing national school systems.

     Canadian 15-year-olds typically are more than a full school year ahead of their American counterparts,  the New York Times reports.

     “The question for the U.S. is not just how many charter schools it establishes,” Schleicher said, “but how to build the capacity for all schools to assume charter-like autonomy, as happens in some of the best-performing education systems.”

     We’re not exactly surprised by that assessment.

     For decades, the nation’s two largest teachers unions, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, have gone to great lengths to hamstring education officials with teacher tenure provisions, mandatory raises, archaic and ineffective teacher evaluations and countless other bureaucratic barriers to real education reform.

     Charter schools, meanwhile, are absorbing the mass exodus from the crumbling public education system, and producing well-educated, successful graduates. The key to their success, of course, is that charters demand much more accountability from their teachers, and are free to rid themselves of poor performers without the arduous “due process” imposed by the union.

     President Obama’s federal “Race to the Top” competition is one of the most ambitious plans in U.S. history to change sagging public school fortunes by essentially bribing states into adopting many of the reforms inherent in the charter school model. It also pushes states to turn around their lowest performing school districts, by imposing control over the failed schools.

     In ways, RTTT gives state education leaders the authority to buck the teachers unions and push forward with a more effective education model, with or without their cooperation. Unfortunately many states have included  the unions in their RTTT application process, which has watered down the reforms that were meant to improve schools.

     Let’s just hope the sobering international statistics are enough to persuade the Senate committee to impose education regulations that put students first and union concerns at the bottom of the list.

     Los Angeles students in 30 failing public schools can expect much of the same, inadequate instruction they have for years thanks to its weak-kneed school board and political pressure from the local teachers union.

     The school board recently voted in the interest of the United Teachers Los Angeles union to turn 30 “chronically underperforming” schools over to a conglomeration of nonprofit education groups, most of which are formed by the very teachers and administrators who already work in the buildings.

     We are baffled by the decision, to say the least. How exactly can the same teachers and administrators who drove these schools into the ground be expected to turn them around?

     They’ve had their chance for years. They failed.

     The sad part is that the school board was heading in the right direction with a plan for nontraditional school operators to take over about a third of its 800 schools. About 160 of those schools have been transformed.

     So what gives?

     “I think it was completely political pressure,” said Lauren Carter, spokeswoman for ICEF Public Schools, one of the private management firms that were recommended by the LA superintendent to revive the schools.

     “They weren’t making decisions on behalf of the kids. These were adult-based decisions, not what was best of children,” Carter said.

     Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa called the action a “terrible blow to reform” and accused the school board of “trying to protect a failed status quo.”

     We couldn’t have said it better ourselves. After all, that seems to be what the nation’s teachers unions do best.

     Hopefully the public backlash from the board’s decision, and the obvious self-serving agenda of the UTLA will gain enough media coverage to give other school leaders pause before deciding to sentence their kids the more of the same.