Week in Review – August 25, 2017
We hope you survived your first week of school and that you will have a chance to recuperate over the weekend. The Week in Review is a snapshot of what the ABCFT Union representative and officers are doing behind the scenes to help you concentrate on what's important, teaching. It is our hope that these reports will also keep you informed about important educational issues throughout the year.
If you have a great comic/graphic/illustration you'd like us to post at the top, send it in! Any submissions are appreciated.
ABCFT This Week –
Membership Coordinator - Tanya Golden
Although our official work day began August 22nd, like you, since mid-August, I have been actively serving in my new job as membership coordinator and executive vice-president by planning and attending E-Board and Rep. Council meetings, Advanced PAL, Negotiations preparation, New Teacher Orientation, District Interview Panel, School Board Study Session as well as processing new members and preparing the union office for the 2017-18 school year. As soon as next week, the launching of our new locally supported AFT Teacher Leaders Program will be emailed to all members.
Despite the fact that it has been an exceptionally busy last two weeks, I am honored to serve and support our ABCFT members. I’m looking forward to visiting the sites and getting to know each of my union sisters and brothers. I have been an elementary teacher in ABC for thirteen years and union activist for ten years, if I can be of assistance with any questions or if you just want to say hi, feel free to contact me at the union office at extension 21500!
PRESIDENT’S REPORT
First, I hope that you all had a great start of your school year and if it was a rough week for you I hope that this weekend will ease your nerves. The start of a new school year is always both a challenge and a joy simultaneously. Together teachers and nurses are a support system. Your fellow ABCFT sisters and brothers are there to help, inspire, and motivate you throughout the school year. Remember, that the ABCFT Site Representatives at your school are there to support your needs, hear your concerns, and share your victories. Your site representative is your connection to other schools, teachers, and resources. This is Your Union and You are all the Union.
Over this past week I attended/worked with members on representations, contract resolutions, site concerns and mediations. Throughout the week I’ve been working closely with the Child Development teachers in our district and the Child Development administrators at the District Office to work on situations that are directly impacting their programs and their ability to deliver instruction. Together we are looking for solutions to help make our Child Development program even better. A special thank you to all the Child Development teachers who are working to look for solutions and advocating for their colleagues.
On Tuesday Ruben Mancillas, Tanya Golden, Lori Eulberg, and teachers from the ABC Extended Day Program attended a special school board meeting to discuss the ABC District Budget. I have included the powerpoint from the meeting. In my remarks to the board, I stated that this Union focuses on three areas: academic excellence, working conditions, and compensation. ABCFT takes pride in helping to provide teacher voice to the academic vision of ABC. Teachers and Nurses are the boots on the ground and have the most contact with our students, parents, and community. Your voice is vital in keeping ABC on the right track. ABCFT is always concerned with working conditions, so in the powerpoint slides you can see the four pages of upgrades and maintenance to the school sites. Master contract language is another way we protect and monitor working conditions. Lastly, ABCFT has a focus on compensation. We all love our work but it has to pay the bills at home. We need wages and benefits that show the District values our work. It is important that the board understands that the ABC Federation of Teachers believes these are the core values that make a successful solution driven union. On September 8th we will be in negotiations with the District to discuss all three of these focus areas.
Lastly, I worked with candidates for the school board election. Next week we will have a link for you to follow to get information on the ABCFT endorsed candidates. So, more to come.
Have a great weekend and we will see you back here next week.
In Unity!
Ray Gaer
ABCFT President
or
(ABC Federation of Teachers)
Or
On our Blog Site @ http://abcteachernews.blogspot.com/
Now the news...
AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS
AFT Applauds Mass. Attorney General’s Lawsuit Against Student Loan Servicer over Systemic Failures
Legal Action Comes after Labor and Community Groups Sent Letter to State Attorneys General Demanding Action Following Betsy DeVos’ Abandonment of 44 Million Student Loan Borrowers
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WASHINGTON—AFT President Randi Weingarten issued the following statement applauding the lawsuit filed today in state court by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey against the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, a loan servicer doing business as FedLoan Servicing. PHEAA is accused of overcharging public employees and teachers in Massachusetts and across the country, and failing to properly process monthly payments for Public Service Loan Forgiveness recipients:
“Maura Healey has acted where Betsy DeVos and the Department of Education have repeatedly failed. Instead of protecting borrowers from systemic harm from servicers like PHEAA, DeVos betrayed and abandoned them. That’s why the AFT and a broad coalition of labor and community groups wrote 56 state attorneys general and banking commissioners in April to demand a crackdown on bad actors to prevent an imminent financial catastrophe on the scale of the mortgage crisis. The AFT applauds Healey and the state of Massachusetts for taking action against PHEAA, and for putting teachers and public employees—not lenders—first. Teachers and other public employees who have answered the call of public service rely on the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program to defray the cost of their college education. We continue to call on other states’ attorneys general and federal regulators, like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to step up to the plate to fill the regulatory gap left by the department and DeVos’ reckless ignorance and inaction.”
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Follow AFT President Randi Weingarten: http://twitter.com/rweingarten
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NATIONAL NEWS
Performance gap between the oldest and youngest kids in class
A new study from the National Bureau of Economic research has found that children born in September have significantly higher test scores than those born in August, and that the performance gap persists through their school years and on into college. Researchers looked at Florida kids born in August and September. Floridians are eligible to enroll in kindergarten if they turn 5 years old by September 1st, so children born in August are the youngest in the class while September-born children are the oldest. They found that September-born children were on average 2.1% more likely than August-born children to attend college, 3.3% more likely to graduate from college and 7.2% more likely to graduate from a selective college. September-born children also were less likely to be incarcerated for juvenile offenses.
STATE NEWS
State publishes dyslexia guidelines
The state Department of Education last week released Dyslexia Guidelines for California’s schools, setting out exactly what dyslexia is, and what interventions have proved the most effective. Between 300,000 and 1.2m kids in the state show signs of dyslexia, based on estimates that it affects 5%-20% of the U.S. population. The 132-page guidelines, which are not mandatory, are the upshot of years of lobbying by parents, according to Tobie Meyer, state director of Decoding Dyslexia California, who says that many special education teachers maintain they are not allowed to even use the term. Being able to identify it, says Anjanette Pelletier, senior administrator for the San Mateo County Special Education Local Plan Area, increases the chances of being able to intervene with students before their reading “careers” are derailed.
Experts says California’s education plan falls short
According to a report by nonprofit Bellwether Education Partners, California’s proposed plan to achieve a major federal education law is falling short. While the report praises the state’s Every Student Succeeds Act plan for using multiple signs of student performance and employing up-to-date tests, it highlights the plan’s lack of detail about how it will identify and help low-performing schools. “The current method of measuring growth does not actually capture individual students’ improvement over time,” the report says.
DISTRICTS
District to go broke by 2019
Montebello USD is projected to go broke by the end of the 2018-19 school year, according to a letter. According to the letter signed by Patricia Smith, executive director of Los Angeles County Office of Education’s school financial services, the district is projected to have $15.7m in its general fund at the end of the current school year and be $9m in the red by the end of the 2018-19 school year.
CHARTER
More kids attend charters than ever before, report says
About 3m students were enrolled in charter schools in the 2015-2016 school year, up from roughly 1.8m students five years prior, according to a fresh report by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics. The number equates to around 6% of all students in public schools.
SOCIAL & COMMUNITY
Less popular kids may fare better as adults
A new study has found that while the most popular children might seem happier at school, by the time they reach adulthood they are more prone to social anxiety. By contrast, those who maintained a small group of school friends, even if that meant they were lower down the teenage social rankings, went on to be less depressed. "The kind of skills it takes to be popular are not necessarily the ones that adults need," Rachel Narr, from the University of Virginia, suggests. Her paper argues that things that might make one less popular at school – like being sensible – often prove useful later in life.
OTHER
The geo-political divide in civil war classes...
The Associated Press' Will Weissert explores the different ways in which the civil war is taught to students depending on where they live. Only Virginia has more confederate monuments than Texas' 178, he notes, and when curriculum standards were approved in 2010 by Texas' Republican-controlled Board of Education debate focused on slavery being a Civil War "after issue." Texas' fifth- and seventh-graders taking Texas history courses, and eighth-graders taking U.S. history, are currently asked to identify causes of the war including sectionalism, states' rights and slavery. "You don't know, as you speak to folks around the country, what kind of assumptions they have about things like the Civil War," says Dustin Kidd, a sociology professor at Temple University in Philadelphia.
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