ABCFT - YOUnionews - August 7, 2020
TEACHER LEADERS PROGRAM by Tanya Golden
In collaboration with our national affiliate, AFT we are honored to offer the ABCFT Teacher Leaders Program for the 2020-21 school year. More now than ever, educators are needed to advocate for policy which affects the entire education family. Teacher Leaders will complete action research and along the process learn how to identify and self-select education policy to change or influence. The Teacher Leader program help educators find their inner voice and learn how to advocate for their students and colleagues. Now is the time to use your voice and become a part of the ABCFT Teacher Leaders community.
Below are the details regarding this national program as well as the online application process.
These attachments offer highlights of the program:
Teacher Leaders Program Participant Guidelines
Teacher Leaders Program Application
Application due date extended to Monday, August 31, 2020
KEEPING YOU INFORMED - Negotiations Update By Ruben Mancillas
To access the MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) Click Here
The negotiating team recently completed a lengthy bargaining process and we now have a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to announce regarding some key elements of the 2020-2021 school year.
In terms of scheduling, the most time-sensitive issue is that we have three upcoming Professional Learning (PL) days on Monday, August 17, Tuesday, August 18, and Wednesday, August 19.
These PL days are optional and will be conducted virtually. The rate of compensation for these six-hour online days is detailed in the MOU but a key point for ABCFT is that every member has the opportunity to participate in and be paid for these three optional days of professional development.
Instructional minutes are as follows:
TK/K will be 200 minutes daily when conducted virtually and revert back to 250 minutes when we return to a hybrid model.
Grades 1-6 will be 250 daily instructional minutes.
Grades 7-12 will be 250 daily instructional minutes
Tracy High School will be 195 daily instructional minutes.
Instructional minutes will be based on the time value of assignments as determined by the teacher and teachers will be available live during virtual instructional blocks to ensure that students will have similar access to teachers in both the hybrid and virtual formats.
Secondary schools will use an 8-period block odd/even format with regular education teachers teaching three periods a day and having one duty-free period each day. Special education (RSP and SDC) teachers will be responsible for five periods over two days with one duty-free period each day and one articulation/testing period every two days.
An underlying goal of these models is to be able to have a smooth transition from the virtual model that we open the school year with a hybrid model consisting of in-person and asynchronous instruction. The 8-period block, for example, allows us to spread students out over more periods and have more options to safely distance during an in-person model.
Any switch to hybrid would absolutely be grounded in the necessity of healthy and safety for our members and students. Every detail of what in-person instruction may look like has not been worked out yet but that is something that we will be working to address in the coming months as we track the relevant health data. Clearly, there are a number of crucial logistical issues and questions that need to be answered before we can safely return to our classrooms with our students. We will continue to use state and local guidelines as well as listen carefully to all of our member concerns as we propose any potential solutions.
In our virtual environment, teachers may choose to work remotely or come to their classroom to deliver their live synchronous instruction. The exception to this flexibility is if your classroom is temporarily unavailable due to a safety issue. For safety reasons, members who choose to work at their site should inform their principal/site administrator ahead of time.
One feature of this MOU that ABCFT is very proud of is an acknowledgment of the challenges presented by teaching remotely and the resources needed for successfully engaging with our students in a virtual environment. Thus every member will receive a one-time payment of $500, subject to standard withholdings, to help support the costs associated with virtual instruction.
A new feature of our schedules this year will be Wednesdays as a day set aside for professional development, teacher planning, teacher collaboration, staff meetings, as well as a student attendance check-in. The specific minutes allocated for each of these elements is listed in the MOU but the overall intent is to acknowledge the amount of time and work that will be required to teach live synchronous lessons on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. When we return to a hybrid model, Wednesdays will be used to deep clean our classrooms and work environments. Please note that staff meeting time is built into the minutes of the day itself and is not scheduled for after school. We have also specified that responsibilities such as Keenan training will now take place within the time allocated for professional development. We listened to you, and those Keenan videos will no longer be required on your own time!
There is also language detailing the weeks of the year that we will not be having any Wednesday professional learning, information sessions, collaboration time, or staff/department meetings. For example, the Wednesday during the week of elementary conferences will be completely free for teachers to schedule and hold these meetings.
The MOU also suspends evaluations for the 2020-2021 school year. Exceptions include those teachers on a temporary contract, those who participate in the Teacher Induction Program, and those teachers who participate in the PASS program.
Another highlight is that combination classes will be suspended while we are in a virtual-only model.
Please let me thank the negotiating team for their work on this MOU. We are aware that this MOU will understandably generate more questions but we fought for the priorities that you identified via our surveys, the SOS Task Force, and our YOUnion chats and were successful in achieving many of our goals. As noted earlier, a number of issues remain to be discussed, but we now have a framework for schedules that is based on reasonable expectations for our members. We have opportunities for paid, optional, virtual professional learning as well as a one-time payment to support costs associated with teaching online. The majority of our members will not have to deal with evaluations, and we have one day a week set aside for professional development, collaboration, and planning time.
Teachers may work remotely or from their classrooms as they deem appropriate. We are aware that there are a number of substantive changes as well; the 8-period block will be an adjustment for many of our secondary teachers. The flexibility inherent in the elementary minutes is intentional and designed to allow teachers to plan their day so that it best meets the needs of their students. Sample schedules will be provided but the autonomy of teachers regarding the delivery of instruction and grading is a foundational principle of this entire MOU. We look forward to hearing from you during our all too brief remaining vacation before we return to (virtual!) work as well as your insights and needs that you identify as we make our way through a school year unlike any other.
In Unity,
MEMBER ONLY RESOURCES
AFT’s Share My Lesson offers free resources for ABCFT members. Below are a few of the many resources available for members. Click here to take advantage of the numerous back-to-school resources.
Engagement Strategies for Reimagined Classrooms - Jennifer Ehehalt, Common Sense Education
For Grades K-12 Webinar on Demand | REGISTER
Whether we are in a 6-foot, socially distanced classroom or online, our classrooms are going to look different. No longer can we rely on our regular pair-and-share or group work formats. That doesn’t mean collaboration and sharing are over. How can we take what we already know about engaging students and translate it to distanced learning experiences? This webinar will provide examples from a range of tech options that turn your in-class activities to ones you can use this fall.
Collaboration for the Whole Child - Chelsea Prax, AFT
For Grades PreK-12 Webinar on Demand | REGISTER
With increasingly dynamic and challenging students, instructors and specialized instructional support providers must work to identify strategies and team approaches that address the whole child. This webinar will highlight ways that teachers work closely with these providers, such as school counselors, therapists, behavioral analysts, social workers, psychologist and social workers. Participants will engage in a dialogue about excellent communication to implement student-centered solutions.
MEMBER WELLNESS RESOURCES
Kaiser Permanente is now offering its’ members no cost online fitness classes. There are over 4,000 on-demand fitness classes, including cardio, dance, meditation, boot camp and more. To learn more go to kp.org/exercise
ABCFT PRESIDENT’S REPORT - Ray Gaer
Communication is a union’s most important tool for advocating for its members at the bargaining table. Every conversation with the membership is focused on the end result of negotiating for the future prosperity and wellbeing of ABCFT members. This weekly report aims to keep the membership informed about issues that impact their working/learning conditions and their mental well-being. Together we make the YOUnion.
I hope that all of you had some downtime this Summer break. I only wish our vacation was a little longer this year but the anticipation for the opening of school this year keeps our minds working day and night. I’m optimistic that we will continue to rise to the expectations we hold for our students and ourselves in the coming academic year. From my observations this week, it feels like Educators are determined to make this school year a success even with the extraordinary challenges we are facing as a society. It makes me proud to be in such a professional occupation.
This week was a busy week centered wholly on the MOU that the ABCFT Negotiating team has been working on for the past two months. I’m very proud of the work we have all done as a YOUnion in preparation and in the negotiation of this agreement and although there are topics and specifics we are still working on. A majority of members I’ve spoken with seemed satisfied with the negotiated expectations for this coming school year. The hardest part of negotiating is setting expectations and balancing that with the fact that bargaining at the table is between two parties with often different visions of what is best for those they represent. As a general rule in ABC, we do not usually hold public negotiating battles to reach our agreements, and I’ve found over the past 20 years that ABCFT has significantly benefited from this understanding. However, I will say that going into the negotiations in June, we were collectively looking at instructional minutes of at least 300 minutes of live instruction, a ten percent reduction in the district budget, and the very real expectation that we would have at least four furlough days. Your ABCFT Negotiating team worked almost daily for the length of the summer to ensure that any agreement that we entered into would be best for our members. No MOU is perfect, especially after it sees the light of day. Still, I. am satisfied knowing that all ABCFT members will have an opportunity to not only get the paid PL that they need but also that teachers will have more opportunities this year to collaborate and lesson planning for this year. We are aware that there are issues that are not covered in the MOU and we are working to either get language or get clarification on your questions.
In my discussion today with the ABCFT TOSAs (teachers on special assignment), they described how they would be building on the professional development framework that they used to prepare teachers for summer school. The TOSAs are working at a frantic pace to align the pacing guides for this year with State requirements while balancing the fact that we will be spending fewer instructional minutes with our students. This is a genuine challenge for every teacher. I remember three years ago when Artesia High School restructured their school day to have eight periods and there wasn’t a lot of understanding of how that would impact the curriculum delivery Artesias finest were successful in tackling this challenge with the correct supports. As was pointed out by the TOSA team, “ some strategic decisions are going to be made about what to focus on.” This shift will be an adjustment for everyone, however, there is no need to panic. Remember that the district has built-in a buffer period of 20 days for building classroom procedures, expectations, assessments, and most importantly time to build a virtual rapport with your students. This extra time to prepare for curriculum delivery will be crucial to our success this year as an educational institution.
For now, get those extra days of sleep, spend time with your loved ones, and enjoy the wonderfully cooler weather this Summer.
I look forward to talking with you all soon! See you all at the PL days.
In Unity,
.
Ray Gaer
President, ABCFT
CALIFORNIA FEDERATION OF TEACHERS
Click here to go to the CFT website for the latest information
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
Click here for information and daily reports from the AFT National Convention
Follow AFT President Randi Weingarten: http://twitter.com/rweingarten
----- NEWS STORY HIGHLIGHT-----
California computer glitch causes confusion for schools
A bug in California’s electronic system for collecting infectious disease data is causing mass confusion over the state coronavirus response at a time when public health, education and business leaders are already struggling to plan for an uncertain future. State officials revealed the computer problem Tuesday, and admitted that it has led to cases being underreported in many if not all counties. The malfunction is also hampering some counties’ ability to do critical case investigation work that relies on quick identification of new infections to stop spread of disease. While many public school districts don’t intend to seek waivers for elementary schools to reopen for in-person learning, the data issue could affect many private or charter schools that would have an easier time meeting state criteria. “It certainly doesn’t make me feel more confident in all of what’s happening,” said Dan Glass, who runs the Brandeis School of San Francisco. “The consistency of that data that we’re supposedly basing our decision-making on is critical.”
----- NATIONAL NEWS -----
Virus is largest disruption to education in history, UN warns
The coronavirus pandemic has created the largest disruption to education in history, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Tuesday. With schools now closed in more than 160 countries, over 1 billion students are already impacted. The UN leader also warned that at least 40 million children worldwide have missed out on education in “critical” preschool years. “We are at a defining moment for the world’s children and young people. The decisions that governments and partners take now will have lasting impact on hundreds of millions of young people, and on the development prospects of countries for decades to come,” Guterres said in a video message and a 26-page policy briefing.
New York Times US News and World Report
President Trump pushes for school reopenings
President Donald Trump has continued his push for schools to reopen as fall approaches, regardless of the state of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak, adding that keeping schools closed “is causing death also.” In his call to reopen schools, Trump reiterated that the risk of C OVID-19 patients becoming severely sick and dying from the disease falls with age. “The lower they are in age, the lower the risk,” Trump said Thursday at a news briefing in the White House. “We have to remember that there’s another side to this. Keeping them out of school and keeping work closed is causing death also. Economic harm, but it’s causing death for different reasons, but death. Probably more death.” Of the 15 biggest school districts in the country only one, Orange County in Florida, is at present offering schools the option of in-person instruction, and 10 of them have opted to begin the school year with online learning only. New York City, Chicago, and Hawaii Public Schools, have opted for a hybrid model.
----- STATE NEWS -----
State makes tablets available to nearly 1m students
California education officials working to equip all students with computers and internet at home announced a new initiative on Wednesday that could connect up to 1m students with internet-enabled tablets during distance learning this school year. Apple and T-Mobile have agreed to provide discounted iPads with built-in LTE internet to districts, which will provide them free of charge to students. At least 100,000 iPads will be ready for districts over the two months in time for back to school, state education officials said, and the companies will continue to fill requests while supplies are available through the end of 2020. The cost will vary depending on district size and needs, but administrators can expect to pay around $580 per student. “We know there has been a rush and demand for hotspots, and in many cases, there has been nothing available for weeks,” State Superintendent of Public Ins truction Tony Thurmond said, noting that some districts do not use Apple hardware or might prefer to wait until other products come back in stock. “We don’t want our students waiting for 12 weeks to have access to a great machine that allows them access to distance learning.”
California elementary schools could reopen if they meet state waiver rules
Some California elementary schools may be able to reopen for in-person classes this fall under a strict waiver system announced Monday by state officials. The state Department of Public Health released the guidelines for public, private and charter schools seeking permission from local health officers to resume in-person instruction if they are located in one of 38 counties that remain on a state watch list because of troubling COVID-19 increases. The waivers only apply for kindergarten to sixth grade because health officials say those students are less likely than older children to become infected or transmit coronavirus. The state guidance requires individual schools that want to reopen to submit plans that include rules for social distancing, protocols for how to handle outbreaks, a plan for testing if exposures do occur and criteria for when to close, among other information. District approval would be required for any school that seeks the waiver. The plans must be posted publicly.
----- DISTRICTS -----
Free child care on offer to Monterey Peninsula staff
Monterey Peninsula USD teachers and staff are being offered free child care by the district. Superintendent PK Diffenbaugh said when it was clear over the summer that the district was going to start the school year in a hybrid or full distance-learning model, the child care program started to come together. He said the program is for any MPUSD employee who has a child and the child does not have to be a student in the district. “We’re calling it extended learning opportunity rather than child care because it’s going to be more academically focused, more structured than child care is,” Diffenbaugh said. “It will be free. Because our employees are essential workers, we’re allowed to offer it on-site if we follow the guidelines and that’s what we’re doing.”
LAUSD Board agrees November bond measure language
The Los Angeles USD Board of Education has approved the title of the $7bn bond measure to be put before voters in November, School Upgrades and Safety Measure, as well as a description that will be submitted to the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder to appear on the ballot. The average tax rate for this particular bond assessed on property owners amounts to roughly $21 per $100,000 of assessed value until 2055 generating nearly $330m annually. The bond measure needs at least 55% voter support within the district. If approved by voters, the bond measure would be among the largest school-district bond measures in United States history. Of equal size, 2008’s voter-approved LAUSD Measure Q was said to be the largest ever for a school district.
LA County will not consider school opening waivers
The L.A. County Department of Public Health said Tuesday that it would not consider any applications for waivers enabling elementary schools to reopen, citing high local COVID-19 case rates. The decision comes one day after the California Department of Public Health announced new guidelines for granting school reopening waivers, indicating that counties with case rates above 200 per 100,000 residents should not consider applications. The case rate in L.A. County is currently 355 per 100,000 residents. The department said it would reevaluate its decision once the county’s case rate falls to levels recommended by the state. “We know that to many families, this is a disappointing announcement, but it’s based on the existing science and data that is guiding all of our decision-making,” the department said in a statement. “We need to ensure the health and safety of our children, school teachers and staff and all of their families.”
Los Angeles Times Press-Telegram
LAUSD, teachers reach tentative deal on remote learning
After weeks of negotiations, Los Angeles USD and the United Teachers Los Angeles union have reached a tentative deal on how to proceed with distance learning amid the coronavirus pandemic. In the proposed deal, which still awaits the approval of the union’s 30,000 teachers, as well as the LAUSD Board of Education, students will virtually attend school from 9 a.m. to 2:15 p.m. and will have three to four hours of live interaction with their teachers daily in groups and independently. Time also will be set aside for the social and emotional needs of students and families through counseling. “We have all learned from our experiences with distance learning since March and we’ve applied what we learned to this agreement,” said Superintendent Austin Beutner and teachers union President Cecily Myart-Cruz in a joint statement. “Our shared goal is to provide the best possible education for students in our schools.” The more structured, 30-hour minimum week contrasts with an agreement in April with no set schedule and a 20-hour minimum week for teachers; UC Berkeley education professor Bruce Fuller called the new pact a vast improvement, but added that the obvious missing piece is attention to child care and academic supervision for low-income families, including those of essential workers.
Los Angeles Times US News and World Report CBS Los Angeles
----- CLASSROOM -----
Teaching in an empty classroom during COVID-19
Education Week examines the pros and cons of teachers working from school buildings, while students are learning at home. Proponents point to several advantages, including the sense of normalcy it offers to students and the way it gives teachers room to spread out, which may not be possible at their homes. Nevertheless, leaving the home and working in a building with other people, even spread out for the most part from one room to another, increases the risk of spreading the COVID-19 virus, while teachers who have young children or children with special needs at home due to school building closures could struggle to balance their childcare and teaching responsibilities. For some districts, the health risks of bringing adults back to school buildings outweigh the benefits for students and staff. Jason Kamras, superintendent of schools in Richmond, Va., wrote in the district’s reopening plan that allowing virtual teaching to happen in school buildings “would violate our commitment that no one would be forced to work in-person” because custodians and some administrators would need to be there as well. Bringing people back to the school building, even a far lower number than usual, could lead to an outbreak, Kamras said. “People even with the best of intentions tend to congregate, using one bathroom or connecting at lunch in the teachers’ lounge,” he said. “It had the potential to undo the very reason we closed, which was health and safety.”
No more standardized tests, academics assert
Lorrie Shepard, a former president of the National Academy of Education, the American Educational Research Association and the National Council on Measurement in Education, Kathy Escamilla, a professor in the BUENO Center for Multicultural Education at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Jorge García, chief executive officer of the Colorado Association for Bilingual Education, assert that responding to student needs can be done much more effectively with curriculum-embedded assessments and benchmark instructional tasks than with standardized testing. "For decades, tests — first IQ tests and then achievement tests — have been used to sort children of color and English-language learners into low-track classes where learning opportunities and outcomes have been worse than in regular classrooms. The same disproportionality and negative effects for children from low-income households and communities of color have been shown for grade retention, which some are saying should be part of the testing strategy," they say.
Parents say distance learning failed too many special education students
Because of the abrupt switch to remote learning when COVID-19 swept the country, districts nationwide have sometimes struggled to follow through with the services students are required by law to receive, the situation made even more challenging by the fact that individualized education programs, or IEPs, that determine services for each special education student were never meant to be delivered virtually. Survey results released in May showed that almost 40% of parents whose children typically receive individual support in school did not get those services during school closures. Those with IEPs were also twice as likely to be doing little to no remote learning, and were just as likely to say that distance learning was going poorly. Georgianna Kelman, a special education attorney in Los Angeles, is currently representing 60 families in southern California with complaints that their children didn’t receive services they were entitled to when schools closed in the spring. “I can only imagine the bottleneck of litigation that is coming,” she said. “I have clients to this day who have not heard from their teachers or their service providers.” Some districts and regional education agencies that provide special education services say they are already being sued, and they expect litigation costs to further strain budgets when many are already facing cuts.
COVID-19 could transform education for the better, academic asserts
Former Massachusetts secretary of education Paul Reville, who now directs the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Education Redesign Lab, which works to boost equity in public education, discusses reopening schools this fall, online learning and the opportunities that he feels COVID-19 presents to transform U.S. education for the better. He champions the idea of providing every student with an individualized “success plan,” and also the creation of “children’s cabinets” to address all of children’s needs in a community beyond just K-12. "I do think we’re at a transformative moment, and this emergency, while it is punishing and problematic in terms of equity in the short term, in the long term, it’s getting us to become familiar with tools and opportunities for growing and developing a more equitable system of child development and education in this country," he asserts.
----- HEALTH & WELLBEING -----
Younger kids could spread COVID-19 as much as older children and adults
A study from Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, published in JAMA Pediatrics, has found that children younger than five years with mild to moderate COVID-19 have much higher levels of genetic material for the virus in the nose compared to older children and adults. Researchers examined 145 cases of mild to moderate COVID-19 illness within the first week of symptom onset. They compared the viral load in three age groups – children younger than 5 years, children 5-17 years and adults 18-65 years. It found that replication of COVID-19 in older children leads to similar levels of viral nucleic acid as adults, and that significantly greater amounts of viral nucleic acid are detected in children younger than five years. “Our study was not designed to prove that younger children spread COVID-19 as much as adults, but it is a possibility,” said lead author Dr Taylor Heald-Sargent. “We need to take that into account in efforts to reduce transmission as we continue to learn more about this virus.” As public health systems look to reopen schools and day cares, understanding transmission potential in children will be important to guide public health measures.
Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago JAMA Network
Congress urged to extend food aid to schoolchildren
A coalition of educators, activists and philanthropists, including the American Federation of Teachers, the NAACP and the charity World Central Kitchen, has called for Congress to extend and expand emergency provisions that allow school districts nationwide to feed children during the coronavirus pandemic. “We are urging you to rapidly pass legislation to address the nation's hunger crisis. This is a national humanitarian crisis that requires immediate action and innovation across several fronts,” the group wrote in a letter addressed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy.
-----CHARTER SCHOOLS -----
Firing of Black staff members sparks protest against Petaluma private school
Approximately 150 protesters gathered on Sunday outside St. Vincent de Paul High School, a private Catholic school in Petaluma, to voice objections regarding the termination of the employment of its only two black staff members. Nearly 215 St. Vincent de Paul alumni and community members signed an open letter July 20 alleging that Joanna Paun, former dean of counseling, and Kinyatta Reynolds, who taught physical education, were dismissed from their positions one week after attempting to discuss institutional racism and potential solutions with school leadership. The two are now looking to pursue legal action against the private Catholic school, claiming racial discrimination, harassment and retaliation. The controversy comes just three weeks after a group of 379 former students, staff and parents signed an open letter criticizing Principal Patrick Daly for joining President Donald Trump at the White House for a national forum on reopening schools.
----- TECHNOLOGY -----
Access to technology will limit many students' participation in remote learning
Hannah Natanson and Valerie Strauss explore the challenges that school districts across the country are facing amid the continued shift to online learning. As district leaders spend so much time trying to create reopening plans to meet coronavirus safety guidelines for classes inside school buildings, they suggest, there has been precious little time to focus on improving online academic offerings and millions of students nationwide still lack devices and internet access. States too are struggling to keep up. In Los Angeles, just 60% of students participated daily in online learning during the spring however, according to Los Angeles USD Superintendent Austin Beutner, and some 700,000 students in California alone are thought to be without the required technology for learning online.
Why teachers are buzzing about Bitmoji classrooms
With so many teachers having to plan for remote learning in the fall, many are creating virtual Bitmoji classrooms for their students, featuring avatar versions of themselves. Using the Bitmoji app to create their avatars, and other tools like Google or Canva to build the classroom backdrop, they're making welcoming spaces, complete with colorful rugs and posters, that can serve as a cozy home base for their classes. Students can move through the spaces virtually, clicking on a bookshelf image to get a reading assignment, for instance, or on a whiteboard to follow a link to read a science document. Erica Brooks, a special education teacher in Jefferson County, Ky., who recently gave a virtual presentation on designing Bitmoji classrooms for students with disabilities, said it’s important for teachers to imagine them as places where they work with their students in real time. “You don't just make this Bitmoji classroom and say, OK, here you go,” she said in an interview. “You’re in there with them, helping them find and use things in the room, and working with them on the assignments I’ve made for them there.” By uploading a Bitmoji classroom to a platform like Google Classroom, teachers can navigate the room, and the resources in it , with students in ways that are tailored to their needs, she said.
What educators need to know about TikTok
Education Week addresses some of the controversies that surround TikTok, the video-sharing platform on which users share short video clips of 60 seconds or less, including whether it is mining reams of data from children, sharing the information with the Chinese government in Beijing, engaging in political censorship, and leaving its users vulnerable to hacking. In recent weeks, President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and lawmakers from both sides of the political divide have raised concerns about TikTok’s Chinese ownership and relationship with the Chinese Communist Party. Central to their complaints are worries that the company might currently, or could be compelled to, share users’ personal information with the Chinese government, which is in the midst of building one of the most extreme digital surveillance states on the planet.
----- SOCIAL & COMMUNITY -----
Back-to-school spending habits reshaped by coronavirus
As the coronavirus pandemic continues into the new school year, it is severely impacting not just classroom reopening plans, but also the back-to-school shopping season, the second most important period for retailers behind the holidays. Parents are buying less dressy clothing and more basics for their kids, while stepping up purchases of masks and other protective equipment as well as electronics. They’re also holding back on spending amid uncertainty over what the school year will look like. “We are definitely seeing a delay,” said Jill Renslow, senior vice president of the Bloomington, Minnesota-based Mall of America, which reopened in mid-June with social-distancing protocols. “People just don’t know what they need.” The National Retail Federation predicts that parents of elementary and high school students will spend a total of $33.9bn this year, up from $26.2bn in 2019, and ahead of the record of $30.3bn set in 2012. However, Neil Saunders, managing director of retail consultancy GlobalData, has projected lower sales, with elementary and high school spending down 6.4% to $26.4bn, and back-to-college spending down 37.8%, with many students living at home and not buying dorm furnishings. “It’s going to be a difficult back-to-school season,” he said. “It’s retailers’ first big test. I don’t think the outcome is going to be good at all.”
----- HIGHER EDUCATION -----
Newsom urged to sign bill requiring CSU students to take ethnic studies
In under a fortnight, Gov. Gavin Newsom will decide which ethnic studies courses California State University students must take to graduate. Advocates of a bill that would require students to take a 3-unit class in one of four ethnic studies disciplines gathered Tuesday to lobby Newsom to sign the bill by August 15. The group included legislators, representatives of the California Faculty Association and some CSU students. The bill, Assembly Bill 1460, would require students beginning with those graduating in 2024-25 to take a class in Native American studies, African American studies, Asian American studies or Latina and Latino studies.
----- 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.
To All Members of the ABC Federation of Teachers,
National Teacher Associates (NTA) is committed in our efforts to helping educators through tough times. It’s what we do. After all…in our eyes you are the heart and soul of our communities.
Protecting you and your families has been our goal for over 45 years. Despite the current global pandemic, we are not about to slow down now. We know that many of you have had our programs for years and sometimes forget the intricacies of how they work. NTA wants to help facilitate any possible claims for now and in the future. Fortunately, all claims and reviews can be done by phone and on-line. I personally want to offer my services to guide you in the right direction with your NTA benefits.
We also apologize for not being able to finish the open enrollment for those of you who wanted to get our protection. We are still able to help by extending our enrollment window for the near future. Again, this can be done over the phone, email, or on-line.
Please contact Leann Blaisdell at any time either by phone or email.
562-822-5004
leann.blaisdell@ntarep.com
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