ABCFT - YOUnionews - February 14, 2020
Updated Salary Schedules
In case you missed it, the new 3% salary increase has been applied to paycheck you received February 1st. Unit members also received a one-time 2% check last week as well. Hope you get a chance to celebrate the hard earned salary increases. Click on this link to access the updated salary schedules.
Negotiations Survey
The Negotiating team would like to hear from you! In preparation for Master Contract negotiations we are seeking your input regarding contract language. You have until February 18th to access the survey.
Click on this link for the Master Contract Survey.
PERSONAL LEARNING OPPORTUNITY -
MAXIMIZE YOUR KAISER HEALTH PLAN
The sixth in the series of free members-only Personal Learning Opportunities is Maximize Your Kaiser Health Plan offered by Alicia Loncar of Kaiser Permanente.
Get the most out of your Kaiser Permanente health plan. Come learn about all the benefits that are available through Kaiser Permanente. Did you know that Kaiser Permanente offers members a reduced gym membership and discounts on massage therapy, chiropractor and acupuncture? Kaiser Permanente also offers many options for accessing care (some of which are co-pay free and more convenient). KP’s Center for Healthy Living has a wide array of health classes, and our website provides podcasts, encyclopedia, and healthy recipes. Come learn how to access these resources to save yourself money and time.
Maximize Your Kaiser Health Plan
Personal Learning Opportunity
Tuesday, February 18th from 3:30-5:00 p.m.
at Fedde Middle School MPR
21409 Elaine Ave. Hawaiian Gardens
Light refreshments will be provided.
Click here to register for the "Maximize Your Kaiser Health Plan"
MORE BOOKS STILL AVAILABLE
Last week we offered a free resource for those interested in Ruby Payne’s book,
Working With Parents: Building Relationships for Student Success. This book can help educators who want to reflect on how they build relationships with parents in hopes of improving the academic and behavior success of their students. Having strategies on how to understand our student’s parents is a critical component for a successful outcome for our student’s achievements. We are offering a limited number of books for our members. If you would like a copy of this book please send an email to ABCFT@abcusd.us for a free copy.
Top Free Lessons: Driving Innovation with Quality Content
When AFT launched Share My Lesson as a crowdsourcing site for educators, AFT had a strong desire for educators from across the country to collaborate on classroom resources. And, today, Share My Lesson continues as a popular open-source site that drives innovation and excellence by remaining free and open to all. Our members and content partners share and download some of the best content, while also rating and reviewing resources so we know what’s hot and what’s not. Take a look at the Top Free Lessons: Collections of the Decade.
School of Choice Important Dates
Schools of Choice (SOC) is an open enrollment process for students and families seeking admission to an ABC school that is not the "home school" based on the residence address. SOC is done via online application and students are selected based on a random, unbiased, “lottery” process. SOC results depend on many factors including pupil enrollment by school and grade level, district capacity, and the total number of applicants vs. openings.
Schools of Choice Application Period - Applications will be accepted online:
- Beginning - Friday, March 1, 2019 at 12:00 A.M. PST
- Ending - Monday, April 1, 2019 at 2:00 P.M. PST
Schools of Choice Parent Notifications
Parents will be informed by Wednesday, May 1, 2019 of their application status.
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FEBRUARY ACADEMIC SERVICES UPDATE
Each month Kelley Forsythe and Rich Saldana work with Beth Bray and Carol Castro to provide teacher input about professional development, curriculum changes, and testing changes. ABCFT believes that the biggest working condition impacting teachers are the key curriculum and the professional development being churned out of academic services. Many times the district is implementing changes that are coming from the State of California but rarely do unions get involved in those changes. ABCFT believes that the teacher's voice helps to provide the district office with classroom advice and input that helps to deliver better comprehensive changes. Each month at the ABCFT Representative Council Rich and Kelley give reports and take questions on all things related to academic services.
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ABCFT PRESIDENT’S REPORT - Ray Gaer
Each week I work with unit members in representations, contract resolutions, email/text/phone call questions, site concerns, site visits, presentations, state/national representations and mediations. Here are some of the highlights of interest. Throughout the year I find articles that are interesting and food for thought;
This week has been extra busy around the office as the leadership of ABCFT begins preparation for the next two months of intense preparation for the Master Contract. Tanya Golden, the negotiating team members and I will be visiting schools, holding grade level and program meetings and meeting with members face to face as part of our ABCFT listening tour 2020. I hope that you have seen the bargaining survey that came out last week. Your responses in the survey are a critical component in helping the team gather information about the working conditions and compensation changes ABCFT will take to the bargaining table. Thanks in advance for your responses.
I’m going to keep this ultra short since I have just flown across the country with the ABCFT Negotiating team preparing for a presentation that the ABCFT team will be giving at a national collective bargaining conference. Here is the summary of our session:
Internal Communications for Contract Ratification
Ray Gaer, ABC Federation of Teachers (Calif.) president Tanya Golden, ABCFT vice president
Ruben Mancillas, ABCFT chief negotiator
Planning for contract ratification should start before a tentative agreement is reached with an employer. It begins with decisions about how the bargaining team communicates with and engages members during negotiations. All tentative agreements contain some tradeoffs, good and bad, and managing members’ expectations starts with helping them understand the context in which these tradeoffs are taking place. Join this workshop to hear how the ABCFT engages members in preparation for the contract ratification vote.
ABCFT is honored to be among the dozen workshops for this national labor negotiations conference. I’ll have a complete recap of our workshop and the materials we present in next weeks YOUnionews.
In the meantime, have a happy Valentines and a relaxing President’s Day.
In Unity,
Ray Gaer
President, ABCFT
CALIFORNIA FEDERATION OF TEACHERS
The latest CFT articles and news stories can be found here on the PreK12 news feed on the CFT.org website.
AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS
Follow AFT President Randi Weingarten: http://twitter.com/rweingarten
----- NEWS STORY HIGHLIGHT-----
Active-shooter drills traumatize students
The American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, along with leading gun-control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety, have released a paper calling on schools to halt extreme active-shooter drills like those that occur without advanced warning and include simulated gunfire. They paper cites mounting anecdotal evidence that the drills, while intended to keep students safe, are inflicting trauma and leaving children anxious, rattled and unable to focus in the classroom. Researchers who have begun to study the problem are making similar findings. For other kinds of lockdown drills the groups have laid out guidelines they say could minimize trauma for students, while emphasizing that little proof exists the drills make students safer in a shooting. Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, which is part of Everytown, comments: “There’s very little data that shows that these drills are effective. There is data that shows that they cause trauma and anxiety in kids.”
----- TEACHER STRIKES -----
San Ramon Valley district teachers edge closer to strike
Ann Katzburg, the president of the San Ramon Valley Education Association, announced yesterday that 98.2% of its 1,688 members have voted to authorize a strike. The union is negotiating for a three-year contract; although it is seeking a 2.5% salary increase, Ms Katzburg said pay “is not an issue.” The sticking points include a variety of issues, among them class sizes, additional counselors and psychologists, and security for temporary teachers, she said. The next step in the negotiations will be a state-ordered fact-finding decision, and depending on how that goes, the San Ramon Valley Education Association could call a teachers strike.
UC Santa Cruz teaching assistants go on strike over pay
Around 400 University of California, Santa Cruz graduate students started a wildcat strike Monday to demand higher wages to keep up with living costs in an area that has recently seen housing costs skyrocket. The students have been demanding a cost of living adjustment because most of the teaching assistants are spending at least half their salaries on housing, said Veronica Hamilton, co-vice president of the UCSC Graduate Student Association. As part of the strike, the graduate students won’t teach, do research or grade their students. The strike comes after administration officials refused to negotiate and threatened to fire them, Ms Hamilton added.
St. Paul Teachers Union To Vote On Strike Authority
The Minneapolis Star Tribune (2/11, Lonetree) reports, “Leaders of the union representing St. Paul teachers have set a rank-and-file vote for Feb. 20 on whether to give leadership permission to call a strike.” The decision comes two years after “members of the St. Paul Federation of Educators (SPFE) were on the verge of a walkout” but a deal “was struck in the early-morning hours of the day of the strike.” This year, however, the two sides “remain in mediation, but the union has been frustrated with the pace of talks.” The union has “cited as its top priority the establishment of mental health teams in every building.” The next mediation session is set for Feb. 19.
----- NATIONAL NEWS -----
Trump budget proposal would cut school spending
The Federal administration announced on Monday a budget proposal to cut billions of dollars in education aid. The move, which is practically assured not to win House approval, does however signal the president’s policy priorities heading into an election year. The proposal aims to cut 7.8% in spending on federal Education Department programs, from $72. 8bn to $66.6bn, while 29 formula and competitive grant programs, including Title I and the federal charter school program, would be merged into a single block grant to states. Nina Rees, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, comments: "From this budget proposal, it's clear that for them it's really about private school choice rather than public school choice." In total, the “Elementary and Secondary Education for the Disadvantaged Block Grant” would receive nearly $19.4bn in 202 1. The Education Freedom Scholarships program, which is aimed at helping to subsidize private school tuition, would receive $1bn in 2021 and $5bn in subsequent years. Some in the education community, including Montana’s superintendent of public instruction Elsie Arntzen, welcomed the announcement: “Consolidated federal grants will allow school leaders and the Office of Public Instruction to spend more time serving students and less time on burdensome federal reporting,” she said. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, however suggested that the proposal to merge federal education programs into a single block grant “is simply code for less funding to the schools and communities that need it most.” The budget also proposes ending the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program for new borrowers, which benefits teachers and other public sector workers, as well as recommending a $900m increase in education spending to teach skills a nd trades.
Puerto Rico students left adrift after quake
Nearly a month after a string of earthquakes rocked Puerto Rico, tens of thousands of children remain out of school, and the island’s government has no long term plan for getting them back into classes. Classes in this U.S. territory were supposed to start Jan. 9, and while 331 schools opened late as a result of the quake, 61% of the island’s 856 public schools remain shuttered as a growing number of critics blame the island’s Department of Education for the situation. Mercedes MartÃnez, president of Puerto Rico’s Federation of Teachers, said it’s unacceptable that no alternatives have been found for children who attend one of the 525 schools that remain closed. “The government of Puerto Rico has been negligent from the beginning,” she said. “They have not been quick. They have not been strategic. They don’t have a plan on how to start the semester at this point.”
----- STATE NEWS -----
Largest school bond in California history would provide $15bn for improvements
Proposition 13, the largest school bond in California state history at $15bn, will go to voters in March, as part of an effort to reduce a $100bn backlog of improvements needed at K-12 schools and universities. Supporters, which include the education establishment as well as the construction industry, would allocate $9bn to K-12 schools, $4bn for California’s public universities and $2bn for community colleges. Prop. 13 would not increase individual property taxes, but instead require the state to make annual payments of $740m out of the general fund budget, or about one-half of 1% of that budget. Dennis Meyers, assistant executive director of governmental relations at the California School Boards Association, said it is a good public investment. “You can’t educate students in old, rundown facilities,” he said.
Poor science test results also reveal achievement gaps
While California works to place greater emphasis on science education most of its students did not score well on the California Science Test, a new test developed by the California Department of Education to better measure progress on the Next Generation Science Standards adopted by the state in 2013. Just 32% of 5th-graders, 31% of 8th-graders and 28% of high school students met or exceeded standards on the California science test aligned to the new standards, while the scores also revealed a wide gap between black and Latino students and their white and Asian peers. Across all grades, just 14% of black students and 19% of Latino students met or exceeded standards, compared with 44% of white students and 59% of Asian students. The portion of students who met or exceeded standards was also strikingly low among English learners (3%), special education students (8%) and low-income students (19%).
----- DISTRICTS -----
Berkeley High students walk out of class, rally against sexual violence
Hundreds of students walked out of class at Berkeley High School Monday to call attention to reports of sexual assaults on campus, and to protest how administrators have handled the allegations. On Friday, a girl known only as Jane Doe, sued Berkeley USD and individual staffers for allegedly failing to report or adequately address an attempted rape reported on the Berkeley High campus in May 2019. The school district will not say whether anyone involved in the suit is still attending the school. United with the color red, students from the rally eventually moved from campus to a park across the street. Part of the students’ action included creating a list of demands they plan to give to administrators. “We need training for every single grade. We need training for teachers and we need a clear process that everyone knows of and that survivors can rely on from t he administration,” said Abigail Sanchez, a high-school senior.
San Ysidro School District plans for budget cuts
The San Ysidro School District anticipates that it will need to cut $2.5m-$3m for the 2020-21 school year, and is looking at ways to cut from its budget to address deficit spending that is depleting its reserves. The district said the increase in anticipated cuts stems from lower attendance figures than previously projected and a lower cost-of-living adjustment in the most recent proposed state budget, an adjustment that is used in the state’s school funding formula.
----- CLASSROOM -----
DonorsChoose requests shed light on what teachers most need
A new analysis of 10 years of DonorsChoose records shows that online crowdfunding requests are on the rise. Grantmakers for Education, a consortium of education philanthropists, analyzed 1.8 million teacher requests, from the years 2009 to 2019. During this time period, requests grew at a compound rate of 23% annually. Requests for academic materials far exceed any other type of request, with around 70% of requests for literacy and language, and for math and science materials. The fastest-growing categories of requests are in “warmth, care and hunger,” health and wellness, and character education. Teachers in high-poverty schools are more likely to request projects related to warmth, care, and hunger, English as a Second Language, and team sports. Teachers in low-poverty schools are more likely to request projects related to economics, foreign languages, and special needs.
----- LEGAL -----
Appeals court rules against blogger in free-speech claim against Ocean View trustee
A state appeals court has ruled against Charles Johnson, a Huntington Beach blogger who challenged an Orange County Superior Court judge’s decision to strike down his claim that Ocean View School District trustee Gina Clayton-Tarvin tried to stifle his freedom of speech by pursuing a restraining order against him. She claimed he had threatened violence against her and her family at school board meetings and in social media posts. Following the ruling from a three-judge panel of California’s 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana, Ms Clayton-Tarvin commented: “What I said all along has been reaffirmed. Threats of violence are never protected speech.” She added that she hopes the ruling will prompt people to “think twice before they threaten to kill somebody or harm their children just because they don’t agree with their political ideology.”
----- HEALTH & WELLBEING -----
California counseling
San Francisco USD is among dozens of districts across California that has invested in counseling in recent years, hiring more staff to guide students through the college and career process and help with their mental health needs. While state schools have added more than 2,200 new counselors over the past eight years, an increase of over 20%, student-to-counselor ratios remain high at most districts and the state average of 609-to-1 is well above the national average and the 250-to-1 ratio recommended by the American School Counselor Association. For many districts, the investment has paid off with higher graduation rates, a drop in absenteeism and more students submitting financial aid forms and completing the A-G courses required for admission to UC and CSU, though Loretta Whitson, executive director of the California Association of School Counselors, asserts: “We have to do better. Counseling is crucial if we want more kids to graduate, be prepared for adulthood and ultimately be contributing members of society. It’s about the future of the California economy.”
----- TECHNOLOGY -----
Trump administration launches SchoolSafety.gov to help educators prepare for threats
The Trump administration has launched a new online resource that aims to be a one-stop shop of tools for K-12 administrators, educators, parents, and law enforcement to use to prepare for and address various threats related to safety, security, and support in schools. SchoolSafety.gov includes the School Safety Readiness Tool, an assessment that assists users in evaluating their respective school's safety posture across 10 foundational elements of school safety; a Secure Information Sharing Platform for designated school personnel to share school safety ideas, practices, plans, and tactics in a protected environment; and a wide array of resources and best practices on key school safety topics to assist with building awareness within the school community to promote vigilance and build capacity to respond to incidents. "All students deserve a safe learning environment, and the Federal School Safety Clea ringhouse is an essential resource for information and best practices," said U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, chair of the Federal Commission on School Safety. "Because every school community has its own unique needs, SchoolSafety.gov equips decision makers with resources for developing, customizing, and implementing actionable school safety plans."
Clearinghouse data about to get much more revealing
Michele Gralak, a senior business analyst for the National Student Clearinghouse nonprofit in Virginia, who works with K-12 schools, discusses the wealth of data that her organisation collects and the various ways in which US schools use the information to help their students. It costs just $425 per school per year to get eight years of data on a school’s graduates, she asserts, and already around 20% of US school districts utilise the service to gain knowledge of their students' progress post-graduation. The basic report already sheds good insight, Gralak adds, but the data is about to get much more revealing with demographic and academic data elements. "Currently, districts that send us this extra data get one-dimensional reports broken out by these data elements. We have plans over the next couple of years to make that dynamic, so you could combine race and gender, or gen der and poverty. We want to make it more interactive and dynamic," she adds.
Voice technology: skill of the future or bad idea?
Voice technology has quickly become a common tech tool in homes and workplaces, and many children are as comfortable giving verbal instructions to an Amazon Echo or Google Home device as they are talking to a person. These developments are forcing educators to think more deeply about the role they play in developing the technological fluency necessary for students to communicate effectively with artificially intelligent machines. However, the possibilities of such devices sit alongside issues such as student data privacy. The U.S. Education Department provides a list of several instances in which recordings from voice assistants in the classroom could be considered violations of federal student privacy laws, such as an audio recording of a student being disciplined or having a medical emergency. "I don't see any evidence that students are being 'taught' here how to use these devices appropriately or warned of their risks," said Leonie Haimson, founder and executive director of Class Size Matters. "Instead, it appears that there is a push to condition students early to accept the inevitability of surveillance and the violation of privacy it entails, as well as the mechanization of their classroom experiences, rather than resist this."
----- OTHER -----
NTA Life Insurance - An ABCFT Sponsor
About three years ago ABCFT started a working relationship with National Teachers Associates Life Insurance Company. Throughout our partnership, NTA has been supportive of ABCFT activities by sponsorship and prizes for our various events. This organization specializes in providing insurance for educators across the nation. We have been provided both data and member testimonials about how pleased they have been with the NTA products and the opportunity to look at alternatives to the district insurance choice.
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