The St. Paul Federation of Teachers are planning a strike and the timing couldn’t be better, as this coming week hundreds of thousands of people and corporations spending millions of dollars will be flooding into the Twin Cities for this year’s Super Bowl. After months of fruitless negotiations where city and state officials say that kids need to tighten their belts, the teachers union is done watching corporate greed win out the day. From City Pages:
The union's 3,400-some members serve 65 locations in the St. Paul Public Schools (SPPS) district, which has a total enrollment of 37,000 students.
St. Paul's teachers have not gone on strike since 1946, when union members walked off the job in pursuit of equal pay for men and women. Teachers also wanted district compensation for textbooks, which teachers and students had formerly been forced to purchase out of pocket.
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So far, the district has wanted nothing to do with the union’s demonstrations, insisting that SPFT agree to sign up for the state’s Quality Compensationprogram, which provides alternative funding for districts that pay teachers based on performance. There’s currently no funding available for new schools under this program, but St. Paul Public Schools could join the tail end of a waiting list which is 22 districts long.
Meanwhile, in “unrelated news” the Intercept reports that by the teachers’ count, all of these corporations swimming in new tax cuts are spending tons of money … on the Super Bowl! The union has decided to go the more progressive route of wondering why corporations can’t pony up for the schools.
The argument the teachers are making in their contract negotiations is straightforward. Cuts, they say, are not the answer. The school district’s financial situation can never really improve until corporations start paying their fair share. In particular, teachers are focusing on the companiesthat make up the founding sponsors of the Super Bowl Host Committee – companies the union says have avoided paying $300 million in state income taxes over the last five years alone.
The companies say they have made up for some of that with donations, but the generosity has limits. According to a public records request filed by the teachers union, only seven of the 25 Super Bowl Host Committee founding partners donated to the St. Paul public school district last year – for a total of $1.1 million. All 25 companies, by contrast, paid $1.5 million to be founding Super Bowl partners.
Minnesota’s Public Radio elaborated on the union’s position.
The union says it has a specific problem with a business incentive program called Tax Increment Financing, or TIF. When property in designated "TIF districts" increases in value, the additional tax revenue goes to pay for development of the site, which teachers argue siphons revenues from schools.
U.S. Bank's operations center near downtown St. Paul, Wells Fargo Place and Securian Center are in TIF districts.
But state law says TIF districts can only be established if the development in question would not otherwise have happened. The Securian and U.S. Bank properties were declining in tax value prior to the establishment, said Hannah Burchill of the city Planning and Economic Development Department.
St. Paul schools, like many public schools across the country are looking at huge debt, and this siphoning of students d money to the less “public” charter schools is a vicious cycle that been used to break down the already undervalued teachers in our country. The corporations for their part have been crying about how much they donate to public schools, saying they are getting gouged by these greedy teachers.
Mesa Denny, an Ecolab spokesperson, told The Intercept that the company does not consider the situation “to be a dispute,” and it is “merely trying to correct the inaccurate and untrue information” promulgated by the teachers union.
“Ecolab believes that strong public schools are vital to a healthy community, and that’s why we have supported the St. Paul Public School System for more than 30 years,” Denny said. “Over the last five years, the Ecolab Foundation has provided more than $3.6 million to the St. Paul Public Schools, supporting strategic imperatives outlined by the school district leadership. Given that we are headquartered in St. Paul and many of our headquarters employees live in St. Paul, we are happy to devote our foundation dollars to these efforts.”
When you consider the tax breaks, the hiding of other tax monies overseas, it isn’t hard to see that companies like Ecolab’s position is the same as an old-timey gangster. They take 10 times from you, threaten you livelihood and your family and then hand out some turkeys on Thanksgiving to show what nice guys they are.