No School Monday - thank you for your service, President Lincoln
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Week in Review – February 9, 2018
ABC FEDERATION OF TEACHERS THIS WEEK…
SAVE THE DATE!
Join us for a
Day of Action-Public School Proud
on Friday, February 23rd
By wearing a BLUE shirt to show you’re a Proud Public School Educator!
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In case you’ve missed previous Weeks in Review, you can find all of them here: ABCTeachernews To find previous editions, just click on “Blog Archive” which is the menu on the right and click on the specific week.
(ABC Federation of Teachers)
In Unity
ABC Federation of Teachers
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ABC SCHOOL BOARD Update - by Tanya Golden
The ABCUSD School Board met this Tuesday for a lengthy but productive meeting. This meeting highlighted the ABC Head Start program and with a video presentation of this crucial program for 3-5 year olds and how these ABCFT members serve their students and their families. There was an interesting discussion about the open enrollment process and some crucial questions were asked by the board about how open enrollment works in ABC. If you want to know more about open enrollment it is worth the time to watch. The district PTA President LaQuisha Anderson gave her organizations quarterly report and during her comments thanked ABCFT for helping out with their new Parent Resource Center which we would like to highlight in a future Week in Review.
Lastly, Membership Coordinator Tanya Golden gave the ABCFT Employee report this week so she could share with the School Board the latest news and actions of the ABCFT Teacher Leaders.
Below are the times for the school board highlights:
1:02 - Headstart video
1:10 - Open Enrollment Process and Procedures ppt.
1:51 - District PTA President Report
2:13 - ABC Federation of Teachers Employee Report- Tanya Golden
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ABCFT MEMBERS GET ACTIVE
It’s been a busy two weeks for the ABCFT Teacher Leaders. Not only did eleven of the TL’s advocate for us in Sacramento, they also participated in our monthly meeting as well as presented about their Lobby Day experiences during the monthly Site Rep Meeting. The TL’s encouraged our Site Reps to spread the word about advocating for education. More information will follow on how to become activated.
Each month, the TL’s focus on specific topics which support their action research as well as learning how to advocate and stay informed about topics that influences educators, presentation skills, time to collaborate, conduct community reach out, and listen to guest speakers such as elected officials and a journalist.
There is no doubt these fourteen educators understand the importance for all of us to do our part and become activists to support our rights as union members as well as protecting our public schools. #PUBLICSCHOOLPROUD
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CURRICULUM LINK OF THE WEEK
How many of you are using Flipgrid in your classroom? Flipgrid is a website that allows teachers to create "grids" of short discussion-style questions that students respond to through recorded videos. Each grid is effectively a message board where teachers can pose a question and their students can post 90-second video responses that appear in a tiled "grid" display.
If you are using it in your classroom or you are thinking of using Flipgrid, let us all know. We invite you to make your own Flipgrid response to my video so you can share with others. Go here to post your own video ------> ca67ae
Sharing resources and ideas are what keeps our classrooms innovative, interesting, and organized. Each week, ABCFT will highlight an education resource that we heard was great for teachers. If you have a website, book, or training that you found helpful in your classroom let us know at abcft@abcusd.us so we can share it with everyone. If you send an idea or link and we use it in the Review, we will send you a Starbucks gift card for the helpful hint.
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Time for a couple of three day weekends and with this weather I hope everyone is able to spend some time with their families. Over this past week I attended/worked with unit members in representations, contract resolutions, email/text/phone call questions, site concerns, and mediations. Here are a couple of highlights from my week:
This week Membership Coordinator, Tanya Golden and myself visited with the teachers of Melbourne and Niemes. We discussed updates that we have about negotiations, the Week in Review, and answered site specific questions. When we visit sites we always try to encourage members to read the Week in Review to stay up on the latest information on negotiations or happenings in your YOUnion, ABCFT. Thank you to the teachers of Melbourne and Niemes for their hospitality and conversations.
On Thursday, ABCFT had its monthly Representative Council meeting where site reps from around the district hear the latest news and share what concerns or situations they are dealing with across the district. Almost all of the representatives voiced their concern from their school staffs that teachers are sick of the professional learning all year long, many are discouraged about not having continuity with their students. This is a pressing time of year as we inch closer and closer to the testing window so it is understandable that every teacher is concerned about the number of days they are required to be out for professional learning at the district office. It was Hedy Chang from the national organization Attendance Works that stated that a student loses a full grade level of learning for every ten percent of the school year they miss. We as a district should be concerned about how the absence of teachers from their classrooms is impacting the teaching and learning continuum in our classrooms.
Students need consistency. How can we expect to model to students the importance of attending school regularly when it appears to students and parents that we aren’t in our classrooms far too often? This norm is not good for public education nor for the teachers of ABC. The ABC Federation of Teacher leadership will continue to advocate for alternative times, means, structures, or technologies that can help to make professional learning less intrusive. Teachers can advocate locally by having ground truth discussions with their principals about how PL is impacting the curriculum delivery. Any comments or suggestions on how to make this situation better for teachers and students are welcomed.
This weekend (Friday/Saturday), I’m at the AFT Western Regional Presidents meeting in Oakland to hear presentations by AFT and to network with other presidents throughout the West Coast. I’ll report next week on what I learn this weekend about the future labor unions.
Thank you for all you do with our students and how you all support each other.
As always, have a great three day weekend and we will see you back here next week.
In Unity!
Ray Gaer
ABCFT President
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CALIFORNIA FEDERATION OF TEACHERS
Sexual misconduct revelations demand changes in the workplace and society
By Joshua Pechthalt, CFT President
The daily revelations of sexual misconduct by men in authority seem like a turning point in the struggle for gender equality. While this appears to be a sea change, we must remember that Donald Trump’s claim he could grab women inappropriately without their consent failed to derail his run for the White House. That, however, may have been the opening salvo.
This year has seen an avalanche of sexual misconduct charges, with women courageously stepping forward to speak out about how they had been abused by high profile, powerful men. Women are now being believed — an important first step.
Missing from the headlines so far are the abuses suffered by working class women in their workplaces and the constraint they feel to tell their stories. A 2016 study by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found that 90,000 women reported incidences of sexual abuse on the job. The EEOC believes this number falls far short of those who have suffered sexual harassment and who are unwilling to come forward.
Even for women who reported such abuse, disclosures seem to go nowhere. One reason is that according to a recent study, as many as 75 percent of those who have reported sexual harassment suffer some form of retaliation. Those who have a union have greater recourse to report such behavior and see some justice. However, most of the workforce is not unionized.
Sexual harassment was first addressed in California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act as part of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964. The law was strengthened in 2016 with the requirement that any workplace with 50 or more employees include a training on sexual harassment.
Unfortunately, according to the EEOC report, “Much of the training done over the last 30 years has not worked as a prevention tool — it’s been too focused on simply avoiding legal liability.” Because of this overemphasis on liability, training can become part of the problem and does not address the underlying culture and power imbalance that produces sexual harassment.
While going public may work when it involves a politician or television star, it will likely have little impact for women in less high profile areas of work. The training needs to include the issue of power dynamics and why those in power feel entitled to assert their power by demeaning those less powerful, and specifically why men assert their masculinity by demeaning women. Training should cover how to create a culture in which women are empowered to report an abuse and not feel embarrassed by or responsible for the harassment.
Another approach that may lessen retaliation for women reporting sexual misconduct is to create an independent body of individuals trained and well-versed in this issue. Such a reporting board may allow women to feel less hesitant in reporting sexual misconduct.
We do, however, have to be mindful that charges of sexual misconduct have the potential to be used as a way to settle scores or extract payoffs. An independent body would be more likely to discern fact from fiction.
The CFT and all unions should be part of the process that develops these and other just solutions. Ultimately, changing the behavior of men will require more women speaking out, and more women being elected to positions of authority. Clearly, we have a long way to go
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AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS
AMPR and AFT on Puerto Rico Gov. Rosselló’s Bad Plan for Puerto Rico Schools
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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—Asociación de Maestros de Puerto Rico President Aida Diaz and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten issued the following joint statement responding to Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló’s misguided plan for Puerto Rico public schools.
“Gov. Rosselló has it exactly the wrong way around: In the aftermath of hurricanes Irma and Maria, he needs to invest in public schools to support and stabilize kids’ learning, not abandon and privatize schools. You can’t, in one breath, claim to support the things Puerto Rico kids urgently need, including strengthening technical and bilingual education, or the things teachers need, such as professional development or materials or a raise, and in the next breath say you’re closing schools, pushing vouchers and diverting cash to charter chains.
“By closing schools, rather than seeing public schools as the centers of the community that Puerto Rico needs in order for people to stay and the island to recover, rebuild and thrive, the governor is taking a step backward. This is not about ideas and innovation; we hunger for them and have many ourselves, but we need more than rhetoric. Investment in public schools, transparency, and honesty about the ideas being bandied about are imperative. We already know, for example, that wherever vouchers have been tried, they’ve benefited the few at the expense of the many. As it stands, stripped of the beautiful rhetoric about the importance of teachers and good programs, this proposal to deprive public schools of investment is tantamount to abandoning them and must be condemned in the strongest possible terms.”
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AFT President Randi Weingarten on Trump’s Recent Remarks on Vocational Education
and Community Colleges
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WASHINGTON—Statement of AFT President Randi Weingarten on President Trump’s recent reference to vocational schools in his State of the Union speech and his remarks at a Republican leadership retreat about vocational education and community colleges:
“President Trump clearly needs an education about America’s career and technical education programs. They are not the vocational programs he recalls from his high school days; they are chock-full of programming that leads to jobs, opportunities and further learning. They are not just focused on auto repair, masonry and construction, as Trump called for, but also on healthcare, robotics, coding and engineering, and they are providing kids the skills they need for today’s economy. And frankly, community colleges have a broader and even more diverse set of opportunities.
“I’d say Trump could ask his education secretary, Betsy DeVos, for a tutorial, but that probably won’t help since she spends more time trying to defund and destabilize public education than she spends in public schools and listening to teachers and communities.
“I am quite surprised DeVos hasn’t alerted the president about the wonderful transformation of CTE programs, as she visited at least one of them with me in Van Wert, Ohio, in April 2017, where we got an in-person demonstration from the school’s robotics team at a school that won the state robotics championship.
“Indeed, in 2017 alone, I visited 13 schools that feature robust CTE programs. These ranged from the Woodruff Career and Technical Center in Peoria, Ill., which offers classes in healthcare, construction and law enforcement, to Fontainebleau High School in Mandeville, La., which offers Jump Start graduation pathways featuring courses on subjects from information technology to agriculture. At Bertram A. Hudson K-8 School in Birmingham, Ala., I got to see kids build and race electric cars and construct drones. Great programs like these are in peril because Trump’s proposed budget makes deep cuts to career and technical education and job training.
“Maybe DeVos and Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta should visit some of these great workforce development programs with us to see why we are so proud of our public schools. And because DeVos has visited so few of these schools, next week, we’ll be bringing public schools to her doorstep, highlighting the great things she has not taken the time to see or acknowledge, and letting her know why teachers and communities are ‘public school proud.’ Hopefully, she’ll share some of what she learns to help educate President Trump.”
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Follow AFT President Randi Weingarten: http://twitter.com/rweingarten
----- NATIONAL NEWS -----
Education Department closes doors on ‘report card’ union leaders
The U.S. Education Department locked the front doors of its Washington headquarters when Randi Weingarten, leader of the American Federation of Teachers, and Lily Eskelsen García, president of the National Education Association, tried to deliver “report cards” on Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s first year in office. The union leaders were there representing a coalition of education and civil rights groups called the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools, which is using the report card initiative to highlight their opposition to DeVos’s policies, which, they say, have undermined traditional public education. “ Her actions during her first year in office have betrayed and undermined the fundamental mission public schools have to provide opportunity for every student who walks through the door,” Eskelsen García said.
Student loan program losing money
According to a report from the Education Department’s inspector general, the U.S. student-loan program is rapidly heading towards becoming a net cost to the federal government, reversing years of projected profits. Overall, borrowers using income-driven repayment will repay less than what they originally borrowed, the report said, draining the program of billions of dollars in expected revenue. “The data show the total costs for all loans...approaching an overall positive subsidy,” meaning a net cost to taxpayers, according to Patrick Howard, the department’s assistant inspector general for audit. The report also criticizes the agency for failing to provide more transparent financial information about the student loan program, which over the past 15 years became one of the country’s largest consumer loan portfolios - about 43m Americans currently owe almost $1.4tr in federal student debt, the highest form of highest debt in the U.S. excluding mortgages.
Millions living in education deserts, report says
Researchers at the Urban Institute think tank say 3.1m Americans live more than 25 miles from an open-access public college and lack a suitable Internet connection needed for online education. “Access to degrees starts with actual access, being able to get to a place where you’re able to earn a degree,” Kristin Blagg, the co-author of the report, said. “This study demonstrates what many Americans living in education deserts already knew: The internet has not untethered all of us from our geographic location. As long as broadband access depends on geography, place still plays an important role in access to higher education.”
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Gov. Brown proposes quick increase to school funding
At a state budget meeting, California Governor Jerry Brown proposed an earlier implementation date of his Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) for California schools from kindergarten through 12th grade. The LCFF was enacted in 2013-14 and introduced more concentrated base funding streams, constituting an estimated $18bn boost to state investment in schools. Brown’s proposal to move the LCFF implementation for school districts from 2020-21 to this year, 2018-19, would mean an extra $3bn for school funding, in a move that USD executives have praised.
School districts to be asked about funding for high-needs students
Gov. Jerry Brown is planning to call on school districts to publish in their annual budgets a summary of the funds they plan to spend on low-income children, English learners and other high-needs students. However, the proposal has raised concerns among school district administrators that it will create an unnecessary extra bureaucratic requirement without contributing to greater transparency in how state funds are spent. “There is a belief that there is already a lot of transparency, so it is not clear what the added transparency is that you will be getting with this additional document,” said Leilani Aguinaldo, a director at the School Services of California, a leading consulting firm that works with school districts.
Despite low tuition costs, students in debt for other expenses
According to a study by the Institute for College Access and Success, California colleges and the state’s financial aid system have done a good job of keeping tuition costs manageable, but other expenses such as housing and food are pushing students into debt and damaging their ability to go to college. The institute’s report recommends the state provide greater and more broadly focused financial aid to cover non-tuition costs, and make more aid available to non-traditional students. “Housing, transportation, food - those items are expensive if you live and work full time in California, irrespective of your profession,” Lande Ajose, chair of the California Student Aid Commission, says in the report. “But those costs are especially steep for students with limited earning power and resources.”
California school budgets face soaring pensions without extra funding
Pension bill escalations across California schools are contributing to increased pressure on budgets in the state’s school districts. San Diego USD’s pension costs rose from $90m in 2016 to nearly $120m in 2017 and are predicted to continue growing, due partly to changes to state pension fund schemes CalSTRS and CalPERS that escalated employer’s pension rates. Poway USD andVista USD both cited concerns for future resources if no additional funds are allotted to cover the changes in policy.
Students campaign for free higher education
Inspired by Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign proposal to institute free higher education, California students have begun the task of collecting over 585,407 signatures from registered voters to put their “College for All Act” on the ballot for this November. The act would generate an estimated $4bn a year in revenue and this would go directly to funding free public college for the 2.6m students at California’s community colleges and universities. “All of the revenue raised will go to making public community colleges and universities in California tuition-free and reducing the barriers to young people attending college,” said Estuardo Mazariegos, a student at California State University in Los Angeles.
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Technology will affect higher education
In an opinion piece, Kenneth Rogoff, Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Harvard University, says universities and colleges are pivotal to the future of our societies, but, given impressive and ongoing advances in technology and artificial intelligence, it is hard to see how U.S. campuses can continue to play this role without reinventing themselves over the next two decades. He says education innovation will disrupt academic employment, and while college faculty are no keener to see technology cut into their jobs than any other group, the benefits could be enormous..
----- HEALTH & WELLBEING -----
Concern over rising Xanax abuse by students
School and law enforcement officials have said a growing number of students are abusing the anti-anxiety drug Xanax in high schools and middle schools throughout Sonoma County , where 765 students were suspended this past school year for drugs, including alcohol and marijuana. One Santa Rosa SDstudent was recently rushed to hospital after taking too much Xanax, said Sgt. Dave Linscomb, from the Santa Rosa Police Department, while Morgan Shepherd, an alcohol and drug counselor who works with students at Piner High School said kids come to her with a Xanax abuse problem nearly every week, most often getting the drug from their family’s medicine cabinet.
----- OTHER -----
Online teacher training for active school shooters
The Department of Homeland Security is now offering online training for teachers and first-responders to prepare for active shooters in schools.According to the department’s Milt Nenneman, such training had been available depicting an active shooter in a 26-story hotel, but now there’s a simulation in a large school, which has an auditorium, cafeteria, gymnasium and classrooms. Training is offered for teachers, staff and administrators, he said, which “will allow schools and law enforcement to train to a response without disrupting the students and be able to train repeatedly.”
Teacher accused of assaulting student for not standing during Pledge
A 20-year veteran teacher, Karen Smith, has been accused of assaulting a student at Angevine Middle School in Denver for refusing to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Principal Mike Medina told families that “we will have a substitute teacher working with some of our PE classes for the time being,” and added that Smith had been placed on paid administrative leave and the school was “working closely with our partners at the Lafayette Police Department.”Protests involving the American flag have become a flash point in the last two years since NFL player Colin Kaepernick knelt during the national anthem to protest racial injustice.
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