Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

Connections

Post author:Greg Weyandt
Post published:June 8, 2011
Post category:Legal Practice Marquette Law School

The inside cover of America magazine always has a column entitled “Of Many Things.” A recent piece by Edward Schmidt, S.J., focused on the importance of connections. “Connections great and small help us find balance and identity”, he wrote. Is that what I was seeking as we drove southeast from St. Paul headed to Milwaukee for my reunion?

Reunions of lawyers are like other reunions in that they connect or reconnect those that life has flung to places, close and far, from where the original connection took place. But lawyers are sui generis, and I use that term thinking of Justice Hugo Black who, I am told, did not use Latin in his opinions. Our uniqueness comes from our training and what we do. Over the years I have used examples of my “job” such as this past weekend’s match between Nadal and Federer. For every stroke of one, the other quickly and frequently with devastating accuracy counters with a stroke intended to thwart or defeat the other. Not unlike a wide receiver trying to run a post pattern or Dirk trying to stop our beloved D Wade, the lawyer is constantly countered by defenses offered by another lawyer. Unlike athletes, we seldom have throngs cheering our moves. Frequently the cause we advocate is unpopular

What we have done over the years has formed what we have become.

Correction: Make That Milwaukee Montessori

Post author:Alan J. Borsuk
Post published:June 7, 2011
Post category:Public

I made a sloppy error in the section of the blog item posted Monday rounding up some recent education news. I named Downtown Montessori as a voucher school where many parents opted to have their children not take Wisconsin’s standardized exams. I meant to say Milwaukee Montessori, a private school on the west side that takes part in the voucher program. Downtown Montessori, on the south side, is an independent charter school where all the students take part in the state exams, Virginia Flynn, the head of school, said. My apologies. The blog item should have read like this:

Education Round-Up: Union Leader Out, Voucher Testing In

Post author:Alan J. Borsuk
Post published:June 6, 2011
Post category:Education & Law Milwaukee Milwaukee Public Schools Public

So much going on. It’s hard to keep up. So here’s a round-up of a few things on the local education scene that are actually pretty important, but haven’t gotten much attention in recent days:

MTEA executive director is out: Stan Johnson, the executive director of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association, is out, continuing a period of difficulties and instability in leadership of the union. Johnson resigned last week “for personal reasons,” according to a union spokesman who said there would be no further comment. But Johnson’s abrupt departure suggested it was not an amiable matter.

Johnson was previously president of the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the union organizations which has been at the heart of education politics in Wisconsin in recent decades. He was one of the most widely known teachers’ union figures in the state.

In a period when all teachers’ unions have been facing a lot of challenges, the MTEA has had had the complication of continuing leadership issues. Tom Morgan was named executive director in 2007, succeeding long-term union leader Sam Carmen. But Morgan died of a heart attack while on a vacation cruise in March 2010. Since then, the union went through several interim directors and a search for a new executive director that ended with no candidate being selected Carmen came out of retirement for several months and it was during Carmen’s return that the MTEA reached a four-year contract agreement with the Milwaukee School Board. Johnson was hired after Carmen returned to retirement last fall.

With Johnson gone, long-time union staffer Sid Hatch has been named acting executive director. Separately, the union is installing a new president this week. Mike Langyel, who was president the last two years (and was president from 1991 to 1993 as well), has retired and Bob Peterson, a veteran teacher who is nationally known for his work on social justice issues and his founding of the Rethinking Schools education publication, is the new president.