Coffee With Jerome & Orion

Inside TMS Communications:

Good Morning TMSD:

Dr. Weston:

There will be a VOLUNTARY informational meeting this Friday 9-23-11 at the Taos Middle School Cafeteria, in regards to school finances. Dr.Weston will hold a meeting at 3 PM for the THS and TMS and another meeting at 4PM for the Elementary schools. If you have any questions, comments or concerns please call me at 5202. Thanks, Carla

Hey everybody,

Hopefully your year is going well despite the shocks and the devaluing of what we all do. When we receive our first mutilated pay check on the next pay period, please remember a few crucial points:

1. We, the working/middle class are under an all-out attack by the wealthiest 2% of Americans and their political puppets.

2. Here in Taos, the cuts came about in some part because of poor management for many years, but mainly because of cuts at the state level. When you see that firstslashed check, think of Bobby Gonzales and Carlos Cisneros. Those are the people who will have to do a much better job of representing us if we’re ever going to see public education in New Mexico refunded. We are going to start organizing meetings with them, and when we do, everyone must be there so thatthey understand an entire professional community is ANGRY! The governor is arepublican and Taos votes 85%-90% democrat, so she probably doesn’t care what we think, but she is one of the worst culprits there is. We need to call and write her along with our regional representatives. The amount of Permanent Fund interest that is used for education is about to be REDUCED! That will mean amidyear legislative cut. TFUSE will not stand for any more pay cuts at all, so any further state level cuts will be the beginning of the end. We need to be prepared, organized and unified!

3. We are only as strong as our union. Now is not the time to quit TFUSE. We have to come together in a strong, decisive manner or we will all be buried together. Remember, the school board wanted us to work an extra hour in addition to taking this cut. Instead, because you had representation at the negotiating table, the school year is 6 days shorter. We hope everyone can use that time to be productive, generate alternative income, work at their homes and do whatever is needed in their lives.

4. The baseline for bargaining next year is our pre-cut 2007-2008 pay levels. We are not starting negotiations with the assumption there will be more cuts. We are starting negotiations with the intention of getting a raise. If everyone in this community and state is an education activist, anything is possible.

5. Part of our negotiating strategy was to form a public relations alliance with the school board and administration. We cannot fight each other when the cuts come from the state. We have to come together and FIGHT!

6. We are entering into interest based bargaining this year. This is a continuous process that involves regular meetings with the superintendents. If you have an issue, go from being a complainant to an advocate. Be active in your union: come to meetings, join the negotiating team, write editorials, write letters to the editor, call your representatives, come to rallies!

7. KEEP ALL OF YOUR PAY STUBS THIS YEAR!!! Look for an upcoming email about a general meeting at which time we will discuss the way forward.

United we bargain, divided we beg.

Editor:

True to form KCEC CEO Luis Reyes told Nancy of “Breakfast with Nancy” that the PRC had approved the yearlong rate request but he neglected to complete the rest of the story.

The PRC also mandated that the Coop has a year to prepare a cost reduction proposal to include the reduction of board expenses. The Coop also has 9 months to spin off the Internet business as they did with the propane business.

Mr. Reyes also neglected to say why commissioners Hall and Aguilar did not vote for the rate increase. They said that the Coop management had miss-managed the outside ventures in their quest to give competitors a run for their money as Luis has often stated.

In his usual modus operandi (mo), he blamed the interveners for the Coop’s need to hire attorneys at a cost if 1/2 million dollars to defend their position. But let’s get real. If you do the math at a cost savings of 6 dollars per customer, with 26000 customers that will see the cost reduction as proposed by the PRC, the 1/2 million dollar savings will not be paid by the consumers in 3.2 months. (Consumer members probably saved a million dollars in their pockets–thanks to the lengthy hearings, which kept the rate increase from taking effect.)

Luis was also trying to force the low power users to pay more than the high power users and that was flatly rejected by the PRC. And in fact the hearing examiner stated in his presentation to the commission that the Coop’s arguments defending their rate methodology was the worst he had ever heard.

In the end this was a win-win situation for all concerned despite what Luis says. The decision was an indictment of the shenanigans of Coop management practices.

Jerome Lucero

Incessant Hysterical Shrieking Is Bound to Get on the Nerves

By Orion Cervio

Ok, one last riposte because attention is what unhinged people crave, and I have infinitely better things to do than stick my toe in the toxic quicksand sludge that is Lorraine Coca-Ruiz’s worldview.

1. We’re all hoping you would explain the $500,000 number, Lorraine. As I recall, (2005 was my first year in the district), gentler souls thought you had lost the money by failing to apply for emergency supplemental funds, while the more cynical types thought you had padded the district cash balance into various line items privy only to you. There was still another camp that thought your hiring three different consultants to do your job was the beginning of the shortfall. Speaking of which, since you’re convinced I’m not qualified to be a teacher because I was hired on a waiver, what qualified you to be a finance director? Do you even have an Associates degree? Why did you resign so hurriedly? Never mind. These are rhetorical questions, Lorraine. More than anything, I assure you, everyone in the district just wants to put your wreckage in the rearview mirror.

2. You state we will have more budgetary cuts coming midyear. I know that current legislation will bring the amount of Permanent Fund and Severance Tax Fund interest toward education down from 5.8% to 4.7%. How can that happen? Your beloved governor, Susana Martinez, campaigned on a promise not to cut education. Why hasn’t she put re-funding education on the agenda for the special legislative session? Will you turn your impressive fury towards her because of this betrayal? Why hasn’t she fired her Secretary of Ed Designate for the $37,000,000 accounting error that occurred because 3,500 New Mexico students were not put into the funding formula? But obviously that kind of negligence passes for due diligence in your circles.

A teacher is like a five alarm blaze to a fire fighter, or an uninviting salad to a chef, or a slow march to a rock ‘n roller. The situation is in dire need of the professional’s skill set to survive but must also try to improve the outcome. Douse the blaze. Spice up the salad, inspire the student–and for goodness sake, rewrite the tune to get us rocking again. That’s one of the most profound turns of phrase I’ve encountered in a lifetime of studying the English language. It’s almost cabbalistic in its scope and dark lyricism. I’ll be sure to share it with district teachers. I have no doubt it will rouse them to towering heights of achievement.

3. The union-bashing testimonials you’ve included have caused me to seriously reconsider my involvement in TFUSE. I’m baffled as to how I could have ever thought that education professionals’ right to organize and self-advocate was an invaluable principle to a functioning democracy and a worthwhile school system. I believe from your last comment, (the one just before your ingeniously haunting tagline, I’ll be watching), you’ve threatened to file a defamation lawsuit against me because of my comments posted on this website. Allow me to save you the trouble of a public records inspection request with the county clerk. Have the process server come to 258 Lower Los Colonias any day of the week between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. (I have a 5 month old daughter and she has a strict bedtime schedule.) Alternately, you could have the papers served to me at the Chrysalis Alternative School, 522 Evergreen Lane, Canon between 12:00 p.m. and 12:45 p.m. (my prep period). I think it would be vastly entertaining to watch you explain your parochial (if staunch!) views of the first amendment in a court of law. It would also be useful to hear the depositions of the people who worked with you in the finance department during your 15-month tenure. My sincere advice, though, is that you wrap up the lawsuits you’re already involved in so that your focus is not compromised and your foaming wrath not diluted. And remember, Lorraine, when the process server is at your door with a legal notice for a frivolous litigation countersuit, you’ll be facing the prospect of having to pay all legal fees involved in both suits. And this time, you won’t be able to use money from the district, from Taos children’s classrooms, to hire your attorneys.

4. A final note, because I’m a Language Arts teacher and I never miss an opportunity for instruction: You would do well to learn the word bathos. If you spend your retirement years entangled in law suits and spouting incomprehensible gibberish about an important field you do not understand, dictionary editors the world over might start putting your picture next to the definition of this term. Forgive yourself, Lorraine, for the bumbling and muddling and the pain you’ve caused, and the community will eventually forgive you too.