ABCFT - YOUnionews - October 30, 2020
KEEPING YOU INFORMED - ELECTION 2020
4 Days Until Election 2020 - No Need to Wait - Vote Today!
What’s Your Plan to Vote?
Now that registered voters have received their ballots be sure to make your plan to vote. Seal, sign, and date your ballot. Secure your ballot inside the official return envelope provided by your county elections office. Make sure the signature on the return envelope matches the one you provided when registering.
You have multiple safe, secure, and reliable options for returning your ballot:
Dropbox – Many counties will offer secure drop boxes to return your ballot. Make sure your ballot is deposited by 8:00 p.m. on November 3, 2020
In-person – You can return your ballot to a polling place, vote center, or your county elections office by 8:00 p.m. on November 3, 2020. Many counties will have early voting locations available before Election Day. Voting locations will offer voter registration, replacement ballots, accessible voting machines, and language assistance.
Mail – No stamp is required to return your ballot through the US Postal Service. Make sure your ballot is postmarked by November 3, 2020.
You can also take action to ensure a smooth voting experience
Click here to find a Ballot Dropbox
Sign up for ballot tracking alerts. You can sign up to receive updates on your vote-by-mail ballot via text (SMS), email, or voice call through the state’s official “Where’s My Ballot?” tracking tool at WheresMyBallot.sos.ca.gov
Click below to learn more about
California’s Election and Voters Guide
Register to vote
Learn how to vote
Check your voter status
Official Voter Information Guide
The CFT Educators Choice Voters Guide
MEMBER BENEFITS - WELLNESS WEDNESDAYS
Maintaining our mental health and well-being is important for all of us. ABCFT will be offering Wellness Wednesdays. Wednesdays from 3:00 to 3:30 pm members will have an opportunity to virtually participate in Guided Meditation and Chair Yoga. These weekly sessions will give members a chance to practice self-care.
In partnership with Kaiser Permanente, you can also access mindfulness resources for all ABCFT members. For Kaiser members, you have free access to the app Calm and myStrength which offers personalized self-care programs based on the cognitive behavioral therapy model.
Please be kind to yourself and find time in your busy schedule to take care of yourself.
This week, Donna focuses on dealing with difficult people and how sometimes we have automatic thoughts such as assumptions, mindreading, blaming, or taking an all or nothing approach can make it more difficult to deal with these types of people. Participants used breathing meditation with the mantra, “I am calm, confident, and compassionate.”
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.
What a rollercoaster of a week this has been in ABC. On Monday, all of the ABC employee union groups were invited by the District to attend a virtual meeting to discuss our current hybrid agreement and possible disruption this agreement could cause. The presentation also proposed an alternative hybrid plan that would try to address what the district saw as problems with the original agreement that would impact students negatively. Our current hybrid MOU was designed to be implemented at the start of school and was not intended as a mid-year solution. However, ABCFT is happy with how our current MOU gives teachers choices if they would like to teach in person or virtually from home. The District’s alternative hybrid presentation was thought provoking but ultimately any changes to our current MOU would need to happen at the negotiating table. Furthermore, the ABCFT leadership feels that it is critical that members are a part of the negotiating process.
ABCFT thought it was critical that members would have an opportunity to voice their thoughts and concerns about the proposed changes before the ABCFT Negotiating Team sat down with the District on Wednesday. By now many of you have heard or were participants of the YOUnion Chat on Tuesday where we discussed the districts proposed hybrid changes. It was a lively discussion and at one point 150 members were in attendance. ABCFT is grateful for the members who take time out of their busy schedules to join us weekly or whenever their schedule allows. I would like to personally thank all of you for riding that rollercoaster of a YOUnion chat with us, your input was invaluable.
Wednesday, we were at the negotiating table discussing the district’s proposal, and ABCFT Chief Negotiator, Ruben Mancillas, and the negotiating team members were able to express our concerns with the changes. The ABCFT informed the district of what obstacles that would need to be addressed before moving forward with an agreement. No agreement was reached.
On Thursday, the distinct proposal was presented at the ABCFT Executive board meeting by Dr. Valencia Mayfield. Your ABCFT Executive Board Representatives fully engaged Dr. Mayfield and were able to express the difficulties they saw with the implementation of this new direction…..
Many phone calls and discussions after the meeting ensued and I will report that for the moment, both the District and the Union will not proceed with any further negotiations until the Los Angeles County Health Department moves our county status from Purple (widespread) to Red (substantial). ABCFT will have more information as this continues to develop. I encourage you to join us for our live YOUnion chat on Monday, November 2 from 3:00-4:00 for more details.
Please be aware that ABC’s Human Resources Department will send out a survey on Monday/Tuesday to ask if you will have a doctor’s note for in-person instruction. Here is a clip of the survey:
“At this time, we are hoping to gather information for employees who have health situations and due to COVID-19, we may need to consider an accommodation if more employees and students were to eventually be on sites.
ABCFT encourages you to begin to have discussions with your doctors about any health concerns you would have with in-person instruction.
As a reminder, ABC will not open for in-person instruction prior to January 28.
My sincere thanks for all of those who spoke truth to power during this crucial negotiation process.
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
AFT campaigning amid pandemic explored
Patrick O'Donnell explores how the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has had to change its mobilization tactics this election season amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The union of 1.7 million members nationwide usually relies on large rallies to throw a mass of voters behind issues and candidates it supports, however text messages, a new mobile app, and “virtual chats” on Zoom and the like are now the norm. In Cleveland, Chicago and Los Angeles, touring president Randi Weingarten has doubled down local tax issues affecting schools, with presidential or Congressional races more of an add-on.
Follow AFT President Randi Weingarten: http://twitter.com/rweingarten
----- NEWS STORY HIGHLIGHT- Totally worth your time-----
School reopenings driven by politics, report warns
A working paper released this month through Brown University’s Annenberg Institute for School Reform suggests that policymakers are guided more by the voting preferences of their neighbors than coronavirus case numbers. It found that partisanship, as expressed by the share of voters in a given county who supported Donald Trump in 2016, as well as the strength of local teachers’ unions, drove reopening plans “far more” than public health conditions. Using a dataset of over 10,000 school district reopening plans, the authors found that the link between a district’s relative intensity of coronavirus spread and its decision whether to reopen was “substantively trivial.” Tabulating the average daily case rate in each county during the two weeks prior to August 31 (by which time most districts would have had to advise the public of their strategy for the new school year), they found that a district with 20 new cases per 10,000 residents was just 1 percentage point more likely to open schools virtually than one with zero new cases. By contrast, local partisanship held much more sway, and specifically the 2016 vote share received in each area by President Donald Trump. In a district in which Trump won 40% of the vote, there was a 27% likelihood that schools would keep their doors closed to begin the 2020-21 school year. But in a district where the president secured 60% of the vote, that chance was reduced to just 10%. Hartney said that he intended his research only to serve as a vantage onto the political economy of school reopenings, not a means of upbraiding part-time school board members for adopting a particular course of action. But he expressed disquiet at the possibility that science took a backseat to politics when the lives of children were at stake.
----- NATIONAL NEWS -----
Eight potential consequences of the election for K-12 schools
Even though education has not been at the center of President Donald Trump’s or Democratic contender Joe Biden’s campaigns for next week’s election, the two candidates nevertheless offer vastly different visions for the future of America’s schools. Chalkbeat looks at the different implications of the choices by Americans made on November 3 – examining factors including public school budgets, the pressure exerted on districts to reopen school buildings, the form that standardized testing takes this school year, and the strength of civil rights enforcements on campuses.
Amy Coney Barrett confirmed to U.S. Supreme Court
The U.S. Senate has confirmed Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court, voting 52-48 in favor of her appointment to fill the seat the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Barrett will join the high court in time for its next two-week argument session, which will be conducted over the telephone beginning Monday, when she will immediately participate in two cases of interest to the education community. From next Wednesday, in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, the justices will consider a challenge by the social-services agency of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia to that city's refusal to continue to use the agency for its foster-care system because the agency would not place such children with same-sex couples. The case has implications not only for the ongoing debate over religiously motivated objections to same-sex marriage, but also for a 30-year-old Supreme Court precedent that made it easier for neutral laws to restrict religious practices, and that issue has arisen in education. The following week, California v Texas is on the docket, a case about the Affordable Care Act, which has implications for health insurance for young people and, to a degree, for school employees.
Education Secretary faces 455 lawsuits against Department
Betsy DeVos has emerged as the most-sued secretary in the 41-year history of the U.S. Department of Education. Since her confirmation on February 7 2017, Mrs DeVos and her department have been the target of more than 455 lawsuits, reflecting to a large degree how controversial certain aspects of her core agenda, including issues related to civil rights, special education and for-profit colleges, have proven to states, teacher unions, and other education organizations. At a speech last week at Hillsdale College, Michigan, Mrs DeVos offered a defense of her record of loosening federal control over education, particularly in school choice, the area for which she has become most closely identified. “At the end of the day we want parents to have the freedom, the choice, and the funds to make the best decisions for their children,” she said. “The ‘Washington knows best’ crowd really loses their minds over that.”
----- STATE NEWS -----
State lawmakers look to Gov. Newsom for leadership on school reopenings
California assemblymembers have called on Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state Department of Public Health to provide more specific statewide guidelines for school reopening, emphasizing that equity gaps will otherwise grow as some students return to classrooms faster than others. While the state issued guidelines for schools in June that included mask and temperature check requirements, reopening decisions are otherwise left up to local school districts. That has resulted in private schools and schools in more affluent communities opening while large public districts continue to debate their return timeline and call for more support from the state. “We’re creating the perfect storm, where private schools can figure it out - they have enough money to figure it out, and we have some public school districts that are just going like the wild west and running into problems,” Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego) said. Assemblymember Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento) pressed Newsom's staff about more funding for schools to tackle issues like testing, suggesting that adjustments be made to the current budget. In response, Jessica Holmes, budget manager for Newsom’s Department of Finance, pointed to $5.3bn in state and federal funds given to schools for pandemic response and said “schools have what they need on a macro level.” But she said that could change, as the pandemic is constantly evolving
----- DISTRICTS -----
Huntington Beach elementary schools welcome students back on campus
Huntington Beach City School District officials and teachers have welcomed elementary school students back to campus for the first time since the pandemic hit in March. Children will be at school for 160 minutes four days a week, while Wednesdays will still be distance-learning days. Smith Elementary Principal Maria Ashton, in her third year in charge, said bringing the school’s 650 students back to campus helps bring some sense of normalcy. “I think the fact that we opened a little bit after the other districts, we were able to see what they did, we were able to modify our plans a little bit,” Ashton said. “At least here, things have gone incredibly smoothly, which I would have preferred to rushing into opening and then having things go wrong.”
LAUSD nears giving approval for athletes to return to campuses for workouts
Trent Cornelius, Los Angeles USD’s coordinator of athletics, has set a tentative date of November 2 for students to resume using school sports facilities. The workouts would be voluntary. Coaches won’t be paid but the workouts will be school-sponsored, Cornelius said. Coaches and students are expected to be allowed on campuses only after being tested for COVID-19. Official fall practice is scheduled for December 14. The coordinator also said there will be specific plans for conditioning, with pods of players and restrictions on how many athletes can be on campus at any one time.
Elk Grove announces campus reopening plan
Elk Grove USD has released a school reopening plan that will bring back students in the middle of next month, provided Sacramento County’s coronavirus risk level is downgraded by the state. If the county has a lower infection rate by November 3, and moves from the state’s red tier to the orange tier, students in preschool through third grade will return to campus on November 17. Students in grades four through six will return on December 8, and middle school and high school will return on January 7. Students will not return to campus five days a week, according to the announcement. A hybrid model will still be in effect. While nearby districts that have reopened campuses have opted to move distance learning students to virtual academies, Elk Grove Unified students who choose to continue distance learning will stay with their current teacher and school.
Sacramento Bee Elk Grove Citizen
Mixed sentiments among San Diego parents on school reopening plan
San Diego USD parents have expressed mixed feelings about the district’s announced Phase Two plans for in-person learning. The schools will require daily health screenings and masks for students and staff, with exceptions for those with medical conditions. The district said it is working on a comprehensive testing and tracing strategy. However, parents said they still have questions and concerns about the district’s safety protocols. Wicho Flores, a father of four children who have asthma, said the district should look at the impact on individuals with underlying health conditions and low-income families. Flores, who works as a counselor for a different school district, questions how effectively those plans can be executed. “As a professional, I agree and understand the need for kids to be on campus with their teachers and peers,” Flores said. “But my priority as a parent and professional is the health of the person.” A district spokeswoman said Friday that families still have the option of continuing with online learning during all of the remaining phases.
San Diego Union-Tribune San Diego News San Diego Union-Tribune
----- CLASSROOM -----
High school reading scores fall
The average reading score for high school seniors declined between 2015 and 2019, according to the latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the Nation's Report Card, by the National Center for Education Statistics. Overall, just 37% of 12th-graders reached or exceeded the academic preparedness benchmarks for both math and reading that would qualify them for entry-level college courses, unchanged since 2015. Compared to 1992, reading scores in 2019 improved only for the very highest-performing students. However, scores for lower- and middle-performing students declined compared to 1992, with the largest decrease of 20 points seen among the very lowest-performing students in the country. Peggy Carr, the associate commissioner for assessment at NCES, comments: "The decline in twelfth-grade reading scores resembles the declines in fourth- and eighth-graders' reading scores, where we saw the largest declines among the lowest-performing students. This pattern of decline concentrated among lower-performing students – across grades and across subjects – is a troubling indication that too many students are falling behind." This particular NAEP assessment marked the first time it was administered digitally at grade 12.
----- FINANCE -----
Oceanside voters to consider $160m for school upgrades
Next month, Oceanside USD will put forward a $160,000 bond measure to upgrade classrooms and improve school safety at the district’s aging campuses. Measure W would levy up to $30 per $100,000 in assessed home value annually, providing about $9.1 million in facilities funds per year. The money would be used to renovate classrooms for science, technology, engineering, arts and math instruction; meet earthquake, fire, health and safety standards; modernize computers and technology; and fix aging roofs, plumbing, electrical, heating and cooling systems. An argument against the bond measure states that it will pay for deferred maintenance, calling it “a bailout for poor decision-making” that would make housing in Oceanside more expensive.
----- LEGAL -----
Student with special needs files lawsuit against Los Angeles USD
Los Angeles USD is being sued by a former special needs student who alleges he was sexually abused and provided alcohol by a teacher's aide whose job was to assist him getting to and from class during the 2018-19 school year. The plaintiff, now 18, was a special needs student who attended Grant High School from 2017-20. During the 2018-2019 school year, the district assigned Salas to be a special education assistant for the student, who was then 16, the suit states. The claim states Doe would not have been abused had the LAUSD properly monitored and supervised Salas. The plaintiff seeks unspecified damages.
Testing company ACT ordered to pay $16m to California students
College admissions testing company ACT has agreed to pay out $16m to California students with disabilities who alleged their rights were violated when the company flagged their disability status to colleges and excluded them from a beneficial recruitment program. A class-action federal lawsuit filed in California in 2018 alleged that ACT violated the Americans With Disabilities Act and California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act by indicating to colleges on students’ score reports whether those students had received special testing accommodations or otherwise indicated they had a disability. The lawsuit also alleged that ACT discriminated against students with disabilities by making it harder for them to participate in a student search service called Educational Opportunity Service. The lawsuit represents two classes of plaintiffs: those who had their disability disclosed on score reports, and those who were excluded from the Educational Opportunity Service because of their disabilities.
----- WORKFORCE ----
Disadvantaged schools hit hardest by substitute teacher shortage
Jing Liu, Assistant Professor of Education Policy at the University of Maryland-College Park, outlines new research that, given such heightened health concerns amid the COVID-19 pandemic, warns that finding substitute teachers is becoming an increasingly challenging task for education leaders. Schools with higher needs and fewer resources currently have a harder time finding substitute teachers than they did before the pandemic, while disadvantaged schools exhibit systematically lower substitute coverage rates. Schools in the lowest achievement quartile, schools with the highest shares of minorities or students from lower-income census tracts, and hard-to-staff schools, he adds, endure between 0.9 to 1.3 more non-covered annual absences per teacher than schools in the most advantaged categories do. Almost half of teachers in schools with the highest share of Black and Hispanic students reported that their schools are not able or probably not able to find a substitute teacher when they are absent, while only 9% of teachers in schools with the lowest shares of Black and Hispanic students expressed such concerns.
Hiring teachers early can bring big benefits to school districts
A new study from the University of Minnesota has found that new teachers hired through Minneapolis Public Schools’ early offer program improved the pool of candidates for high-needs schools and may be more effective than typical new teachers. Beginning in 2014, under an agreement with the teachers union, the district began offering employment contracts in April or May to a limited number of high-scoring teacher applicants, rather than waiting until summer, placing them in the district’s internal labor market to interview for open positions. The research found that the cohort was more likely to be chosen for interviews, ranked highly and offered positions than incumbent teachers, despite the fact that on average they were younger and less experienced, and was also more likely to apply and be hired into hard-to-staff schools and to fill English as a Second Language, bilingual and math positions.
----- TECHNOLOGY -----
Creative use of technology helped save pandemic schooling
Neil Selwyn argues that the innovative use of digital technologies to support teaching and learning in schools amid the pandemic-prompted pivot to online education has been one of the few positive outcomes of the crisis. Teachers particularly have devised creative ways of teaching, he says, stretching way beyond the Zoom-based streamed lecture format to include live demonstrations, experiments, live music and even pottery workshops. There is a sound evidence base for the educational benefits of such technology, Selwyn claims, underlining how crucial the interplay between digital media, learning driven by students' interests and passions, and online communities of peers are now crucial to kids' futures.
----- SOCIAL & COMMUNITY -----
California student activists push to lower voting age to advocate for change
California student activists are mobilizing to try to lower the voting age in some elections so their views can be heard more forcefully from the polling booth. They say they want a stronger voice in a host of elections whether it’s for school boards, city and county offices or primary votes to determine who will run for president. A host of city and statewide measures this year and next seek to empower 16- and 17-year-olds in local, even national elections. “I think it’s especially important now,” said Sarah Cheung, 17, chair of the San Francisco Youth Commission’s Civic Engagement Committee, who is working to pass Prop. G in San Francisco. “During these past years, in unsure and politically tumultuous times, we’ve seen a lot of young people stepping up and getting politically engaged.” The youth-vote efforts have garnered powerful support from adult allies, including school board members, mayors, city council members, school board members, legislators, and teachers’ union leaders.
----- HIGHER EDUCATION -----
More than half of CSU campuses see enrollment gains
As California State University campuses shifted to mostly virtual classes this spring and closed their campuses, many college officials across the state worried that the effects of the coronavirus pandemic would devastate enrollments this fall. However, two months into the fall semester, more than half of the 23 campuses in the nation’s largest public university system have seen enrollment gains. Fresno State, which saw a historic enrollment gain at 5%, and the other CSU campuses that saw enrollment gains stand in stark contrast to what is happening nationally to other public universities and community colleges. In California, the CSU campuses hardest hit with enrollment losses are mostly located in Northern California and in the Bay Area region, including SF State and Humboldt State. Chancellor Timothy P. White said one of the reasons that enrollment has gone up is because CSU announced in May that fall classes would be virtual, giving students time to decide whether to join the system.
----- 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
No comments:
Post a Comment