| Comment Number: | OL-10509242 |
| Received: | 3/15/2005 1:55:04 PM |
| Subject: | Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Request for Comment |
| Title: | National Security Personnel System |
| CFR Citation: | 5 CFR Chapter XCIX and Part 9901 |
| No Attachments |
Comments:
It is a travesty to include educators of the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) in the NSPS under the guise of "National Security." First, educators have nothing to do with national security. I have yet to see a study which links educators to national security. Second, DoDEA is one of the best school systems in the country. Just look at the Vanderbilt University Study and the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) scores and the smallest achievement gap between minority and non-minority students in the DoDEA school system to see the achievement/contribution of DoDEA educators. Why tamper with success here? Educators have been able to produce one of the best school systems because they have a voice through their unions. Taking away educators' bargaining and appeals rights will do nothing to promote national security! NSPS will only create a demoralized workforce and the quality of education will suffer tremendously. The children of our service men and women deserve better! Stop this madness. NSPS will just set us back a hundred years by returning the DoD civilian workforce to the long-ago rejected "spoils system." Stop politicizing the civilian workforce! How do you recruit and maintain good teachers when you don't give them a collective voice or the rights to due process? For political expediency, the DoD is destroying an extremely good school system. "[N]othing in this subpart may affect the authority of any management official or supervisor of the Department...to take whatever other actions may be necessary to carry out the Department's mission." (9901.910). This is absolute power and dictatorship! Where are the checks and balances? Do we address the Secretary of Defense as "Mr. Secretary" or "Your Majesty?" If we do not call him " Your Majesty," is it a "Mandatory Removal Offense" as proposed? And if we are removed, under the proposed regulations, only the Secretary can reduce and/or modify the removal penalty, not a third and impartial party! See what you are creating? The DoD is spending millions of dollars to promote independent trade unions and democracy in Iraq but is eliminating and/or drastically reducing basic and fundamental rights of its own workers!!! Stop this draconian and undemocratic idea.