KEEPING YOU INFORMED - Negotiations Update By Ruben Mancillas
Our most recent negotiated raise should be seen in your upcoming April paycheck. We can expect the off-schedule payment of our raise to come in a separate check before our last duty day in June with the retro portion scheduled to be in another check during our summer break.
Thank you to the many members who made their voices heard during the ABCUSD board meeting last Tuesday night. There are many ways that we can register our concerns and demonstrate our presence but a board room full of people is one of the most visible and impactful.
Members of the ABCFT negotiating team met with the district on Monday to discuss how the virtual school will expand to include grades 7-8. We will be meeting next week to talk about how a new Independent Study program may be implemented.
As you know, we just voted to ratify our new master contract that will run through the end of the school year in 2025. But when issues arise in between master contracts one of the tools we use is a Memorandum of Understanding or MOU. An MOU is an agreement that we negotiate that can then be brought into the master contract during the next ratification vote. MOU’s are often used for time sensitive issues that require a change in working conditions or for programs that we are introducing or piloting. COVID and our attendant responses is an example of those changes that needed to be dealt with quickly with such a side agreement. The gradual introduction of what our virtual school looks like as well as our new Independent Study is an example of a piloted program that we can come to an annual agreement on and then make changes as needed based on input and experience throughout the year.
ABCFT delegates attended the CFT state convention last weekend. We took a smaller team than usual to reflect our current budget and dues situation but our team was still effective as they participated in committees, voted on resolutions, and made our collective voice known. Thank you to all of the delegates who learned about the latest legislation affecting education and represented ABCFT so well.
In Unity,
KEEPING YOU INFORMED
ABCFT Leadership Approves Sending Local Union Dues Proposal to Members for a Vote
In an effort to keep the local union financially solvent, the local operation dues committee members recommended a local union dues increase. The ABCFT executive board, site representatives, and alternates then unanimously approved sending the local union dues proposal to the general membership for a vote. Although there have been numerous cuts or budget line reductions to the union budget in the past few years those cuts have been unable to keep up with inflation. Rising costs are the main driver for needing to increase the local union dues especially since local dues have not been increased since 2007. In order to maintain and grow the strength of our local union a dues increase is needed.
Now that the local union dues proposal has been approved to send to a vote by the general membership, what happens next? Below is a link to the proposal and supporting documents highlighting how union dues are used to support our local, county, state, and national union affiliates. Please take a moment to familiarize yourself with the documents. If you have any clarifying questions please feel free to email ABCFT@abcusd.us or attend the general meetings.
Timeline:
Monday, March 27th the proposal and supporting documents will be emailed to the general membership.
Tuesday, March 28th and Wednesday, March 29th from 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. there will be in-person general meetings held at the ABCFT Union Hall at 19444 Norwalk Blvd., Cerritos to answer any questions or concerns you may have about the proposal.
Wednesday, March 29th at 6:00 p.m. Election opens and ABCFT union members will have an opportunity to cast a secure online and anonymous vote. Ballots will be sent to members’ ABCUSD.us email accounts.
Monday, April 3rd at 4:00 p.m. Election closes.
Tuesday, April 4th Election results will be emailed to all members.
A special YOUnion thank you to the Local Operation Dues Committee members: Vera Altebarmakian, Sandra Espino, Mary Fitterer, Karen Miramontes, Catherine Pascual, Krystle Patacsil, Marvin Rejon, and Nate Rogers-Madsen for volunteering their time and thoughtful consideration.
ABCFT Local Union Dues Proposal and Supporting Documents
ABCFT leadership encourage a YES vote
ensuring a strong YOUnion today and in the future.
ACADEMIC SERVICES UPDATE
This month’s academic service update is vital for all teachers. We hope you will take a moment to look at this monthly report which discusses changes in academic services. This document provides the union with a means of giving the District feedback on the many programs or changes they are proposing at any time. Without your feedback or questions on these changes, it is harder for ABCFT to slow down and modify the district’s neverending rollout of new projects. Please submit your comments and questions to the appropriate ABCFT liaison.
For Elementary curricular issues, please email Kelley at Kelley.Forsythe@abcusd.us if you have any questions or concerns.
For Secondary curricular issues, please email Catherine at Catherine.Pascual@abcusd.us if you have any questions or concerns.
Click Here For This Month’s Full Report
ABCFT PRESIDENT’S REPORT - Ray Gaer
Consistent and regular communication is a union’s most important tool for advocating for its members at the bargaining table. Every conversation with members is focused on the end result of negotiating for the future prosperity and well-being of ALL ABCFT members. The goal of this weekly report is to keep members informed about issues that impact their working/learning conditions and their mental well-being. Our work as a Union is a larger conversation, and together we make the YOUnion.
It was another eventful week in ABC as you may or may not already know, there are a number of administrators that will be moving schools or positions next school year. I wrote about this last week in the YOUnionews and I focused on the importance of having “educational partners” give their input in important decisions. My message was lifted and attached to an article in the Los Cerritos Community News that was put out last Friday concerning the potential changes that the newspaper was reporting. Over the weekend and early in the week, ABCFT was in discussions with district administrators to remedy this situation by sending surveys to affected staff, students, and community members. ABCFT stressed the importance of the input of these surveys as a tool for leading to successful transitions in the coming school year as staff and administrators start working together.
The tension caused by both the rumors of administrators being moved and the report in the newspaper culminated to a crescendo at the Tuesday night school meeting where a room full of concerned and angry parents, students, and teachers expressed their displeasure with the decisions of the school board and interim superintendent over the moves. In an unusual but prudent move, School Board President Brad Beach ensured that every speaker at the meeting had an opportunity to speak about their concerns. This point is important because, over the past decade, there has been a reluctance to allow additional time for speakers during the public comment sections of the board meeting agenda. I am pleased that the board and interim superintendent were thoughtful about the number of speakers and took the time to listen to their passionate speeches. At the beginning of the agenda, ABCFT always has an opportunity to speak so this Tuesday I used my time to set the stage in hopes that the board would listen to their constituents. You can read the transcript of my speech below.
Over the next week, we will collectively hear the decisions of which principals will be moving and in some cases which schools will have new administrators next year. ABCFT appreciates that the district is providing statements and timelines to help clarify these moves. Without any clarifying information all employees, parents, and students would continue to be haunted by rumors and anxiety over this situation.
School Board President, Brad Beach’s Report
Interim Superintendent, Toan Nguyen’s Report
ABCFT President, Ray Gaer’s Report
Introduction-Head Start Parent Policy Committee
“Good evening Board President Beach, board trustees, interim superintendent Mr. Nguyen, Administrative cabinet, ABCFT teachers and nurses, and ABC parents, students, and community members.
My name is Ray Gaer and I’m president of the ABC Federation of Teachers which is made up of 950 ABC teachers and nurses.
Last week ABCFT Executive Vice President, Tanya Golden and I visited Tracy Infant Center as part of our process of visiting school sites and district programs. This program is one of the hidden gems of the ABC school district which provides services to the youngest children up to about three years of age. About half of the students are infants from ABC families and the toddlers are those with special needs which has increased since the pandemic. This program is vital for ABC families and families of other nearby districts and provides parents and students the support they need to transition into the academic setting. Everything from eating, hygiene, early cognitive learning and parent training are part of the services the teachers provide for our youngest ABC superstars. We were extremely pleased to hear that the administrative cabinet members including interim superintendent Nguyen recently visited this facility across the street. Not more than one day after their visits the staff felt their support as leaks were fixed, holes in the walls were patched and there was discussion about how to upgrade a facility that has languished for decades. This facility might be the last facility in ABC that has the original 1970s yellow-painted walls and Brady Bunch era cabinets.
The teachers and support staff are excited about the possibility of their site finally getting new furniture and learning materials to help the quality of educational opportunities for their students. I want to thank the ABC administration for taking the time and resources to renew our commitment to early education. You are already enriching the lives of the future generation of ABC students and families.
There are a lot of people here tonight and I hope we all recognize that open dialogue with a school board is one of the cornerstones of democracy because a school board is made up of district residents. Recently there have been articles in the newspaper discussing possible administrative moves within ABC. I would like to clarify for the community that these proposed administrative changes are for next school year. I think that some people may have read the Los Cerritos News and got the misconception that any changes were happening right away.
However, attached to one of the articles online the past weekend was my full weekly report from the ABC federation of Teacher YOUnionews which we put out for our members each week. I did not write about any specific principal names or situations but I did write a reaction about the lack of stakeholder input. Let me rephrase that, we don’t call each other stakeholders….hi stakeholder…well hi Mrs. stakeholder. NOPE!
The language in education is always changing because the human condition and understanding are always changing. We are transitioning from stakeholders to educational partners and the point of my column last Friday was that as educational partners it would be nice if the parents, students, and teachers were asked to provide input into what qualities a school community was looking for in their administrators, what situations need to be addressed to meet the specific needs of that student body, parent community, and teachers and staff.
Educational partner input is critical to any major decision in our school communities because as is stated in the ABC District vision statement, “we believe that people are the cornerstone of our district and students are the reason we are here.” People are more than names on a ledger that can be moved from one site to another, people have feelings, people have formed trusted relationships, and a school or program as a community relies on each other day to day to watch over our most precious resource, their children who are our students. With such strong bonds, I hope that going forward the district will reflect on what people say here tonight. Even if we don’t agree on everything in our society, the community has entrusted us with their children. That trust means that they have a say in the well-being of the schools they support and send their children to each school year. As your child's teachers and nurses, we value that trust.
ABCFT is happy to hear that the district has put out a survey to both parents and to the staff of impacted schools that will have different administrators next year. These changes are difficult for some and even harder for others. We are pleased to hear that the district administration will work with staff to provide ample support for staff and community transitions. Our members have expressed their concern about whether their surveys will be read. I’m sure the community would also appreciate some word of assurance that our collective educational partner's voice will be heard.
I know that there has been talked in open sessions about the need to possibly repurpose or close a school or schools because of declining enrollment. I think that the process of moving administrators is an exercise in how as educational partners this community can listen, reflect, and understand before there are any final decisions. This ABC school board and every school board that I have seen in the past 25 years has this educational community at the center of all their most important or difficult decisions. We are all adults raising kids to be the next generation of astronauts, scientists, plumbers, teachers, nurses, artists, musicians, mathematicians, etc.
The adults need to continue to talk about how we can improve our communication so we can make these decisions with the guidance of all stakeholders…….did you catch that….its the guidance of all educational partners. Remember we are all partners with invested trust in our relationships.
Thank you for listening and considering the voices of ABCFT members and the ABC community for our collective input.”
In YOUnity,
Ray Gaer
President, ABCFT
CALIFORNIA FEDERATION OF TEACHERS
Jeff Freitas re-elected as president of California Federation of Teachers
Jeff Freitas has been re-elected as president of the California Federation of Teachers, the teachers union announced.
Delegates for the state’s second-largest teachers union re-elected Freitas, who has been president for the past four years, to a third two-year term.
“As public education in the U.S. faces unprecedented attacks, it is more important than ever for our educators and classified professionals to come together, united in our commitment to our students and our communities,” Freitas said in a statement, adding that his top priority will be to “address the education staffing crisis.”
CFT is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers and represents teachers and classified staff at public and private schools and colleges in California.
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 - Los Angeles Strike -----
Talks resume as L.A. school strike enters second day
L.A. mayor pushes negotiations. Walkout in nation's second-largest school district could last three days
The strike that shut down California’s largest school district carried into its second day on Wednesday, as bus drivers, custodians and other essential workers in Los Angeles Unified continued their protest over low wages while families struggled to find activities for their children.
However, negotiations between the union and district resumed with the help of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. While both sides said they were eager to reach a resolution, there were no announcements of progress.
The strike resulted in another day of canceled classes for the district’s 420,000 students. The teachers union, which is also in contract negotiations with the district, joined their Local 99 colleagues on the picket lines. The strikers say they will return to work Friday if nothing changes.
https://edsource.org/2023/strike-shuts-down-l-a-unified-as-families-grapple-with-disruptions/687223
Striking workers close Los Angeles schools
Tens of thousands of workers in the Los Angeles Unified School District plan to walk off the job today following stalled contract talks. They'll be joined by teachers in a three-day strike that will essentially shut down the nation’s second-largest school system. Demonstrations are expected at schools across the city by members of Local 99 of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents about 30,000 teachers’ aides, special education assistants, bus drivers, custodians, cafeteria workers and other support staff. SEIU members have been working without a contract since June 2020, while the contract for teachers expired in June 2022. The unions decided last week to stop accepting extensions to their contracts. Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho accused the union of refusing to negotiate and said that he was prepared to meet at any time day or night. He also stressed that the district has offered a wage increase totaling more than 20% over a multiyear period, along with a 3% bonus. In addition, the deal would include a “massive expansion of healthcare benefits.” Notably, as part of LAUSD's food distribution program, the L.A. Department of Recreation and Parks, the Boys and Girls Club and several local cities will host 24 locations to provide grab-and-go meals for students. Through this program, families will be provided six meals per student to cover breakfast and lunch for three days.
----- Sacramento District Supports Trans Day of Visibility -----
Sacramento district raises transgender pride flag
Sacramento City Unified School District held an event this week to raise the transgender pride flag over its headquarters in advance of the Trans Day of Visibility on March 31.
The Sacramento Bee reports that the event was held to show support for transgender students, especially during a time when schools have become the focus of hundreds of anti-LGBTQ bills across the country.
“We are all here today in solitary and understanding that every student deserves to be seen, every student deserves to be supported, and that every student deserves to be loved,” said school board President Chinua Rodes. “This is especially important for students who are historically most vulnerable.”
Sacramento City Unified School District held an event this week to raise the transgender pride flag over its headquarters in advance of the Trans Day of Visibility on March 31.
The Sacramento Bee reports that the event was held to show support for transgender students, especially during a time when schools have become the focus of hundreds of anti-LGBTQ bills across the country.
“We are all here today in solitary and understanding that every student deserves to be seen, every student deserves to be supported, and that every student deserves to be loved,” said school board President Chinua Rodes. “This is especially important for students who are historically most vulnerable.”
----- UNIONS -----
Teachers union 'power plays' examined
The three largest big-city teachers unions in the country are this week simultaneously working to improve their standing with city and district administrators. The unions are using three different methods to achieve their aims - inside influence in New York City, strikes and rallies in Los Angeles, and electoral politics in Chicago. The United Federation of Teachers in New York City's contract expired in September, but wage expectations are limited by the city's system of "pattern bargaining," meaning that one union's contract establishes a pattern the rest must follow. UFT President Michael Mulgrew has suggested in a recent interview that increased funding for teacher recruiting and retention will be a major focus of negotiations. "If you can't get much higher pay for your members, you might as well try to get more members," he said. Meanwhile, United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) emerged from a period of relative inactivity to help organize a huge demonstration March 15. Both UTLA and SEIU Local 99, the union representing school support employees, are in the midst of contract negotiations. Superintendent Alberto Carvalho has much experience dealing with unions from his previous position in Miami-Dade in Florida, but this is much bigger. The union's demands also come in the context of the district holding more than $3bn in unrestricted surplus funds. In Chicago, a proxy war over the mayor's office is underway between the city teachers' union and progressives on the one hand, and business interests and mainstream Democrats on the other. Former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas and union organizer Brandon Johnson took to the debate stage last week in their mayoral runoff.
School strikes banned in 37 states
Laws ban public sector strikes in 37 states across the United States. Penalties for breaking these laws include fines, termination, and even jail time. Strikes have nonetheless taken in place in at least six K-12 school districts this year, including three in states where strikes are illegal, according to the Labor Action Tracker from the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Education researcher Melissa Arnold Lyon has compiled a list of states prohibiting public employee strikes, drawing on federal and state sources and existing research, which includes some states with a history of political and popular support for labor. Lawmakers in at least one state, Massachusetts, are currently considering a bill that would loosen the ban on K-12 school strikes.
----- NATIONAL NEWS -----
Teacher apprenticeships 'booming'
The number of states with federally-registered apprenticeship programs for teachers has doubled in just six months. An apprenticeship, or residency, program allows prospective teachers to undergo training through a teacher preparation program while they work in schools and earn a paycheck, and registering such a program with the U.S. Department of Labor opens up federal funding to pay for tuition assistance, wages, and other supportive services, such as textbooks and child care assistance. Tennessee was the first state to get the stamp of approval from the Department of Labor in January 2022. By October, seven other states had gotten approval, and now a total of 16 states have at least one registered apprenticeship program for teachers. Many of those states have more than one. Iowa, for instance, has 17 registered apprenticeship programs hosted by school systems. Research on teacher residency programs find that program graduates tend to stay in the field longer than average. Residents are also more likely to be teachers of color, who only comprise about 20% of the teacher workforce overall. And some studies have found that students of teachers who participated in a residency program outperform other teachers’ classes on state assessments, although that research base is more limited.
----- STATE NEWS -----
More funding for California’s community schools mission
California has approved another $45m for community schools across the state, the latest phase of a $4.1bn initiative to expand education, health and social services for students and their families. A decades-old model, community schools offer expanded support for not just students, but families and communities around the campus. That could include before and after school programs, learning opportunities for parents, extended food support, or other initiatives that fit the specific needs of a neighborhood. The new funding will provide $200,000 to 226 school districts, county offices of education, and charter schools. With this third round of grant funding, the state is providing more than $700m to nearly 460 schools throughout the state, with a focus on high-need communities. Once all $4.1bn has been rolled out, California is hoping one in every three schools will become a community school.
Advocate urges continued investment in California's teacher pipeline
Marvin Lopez, executive director for the California Center on Teaching Careers, the statewide agency charged with recruiting and retaining teachers housed within the Tulare County Office of Education, argues that now is the time to "double down" on investments in shoring up the educator workforce and its pipeline. Nationwide, he notes, public schools spent about $14.2bn in federal Covid relief aid in fiscal year 2021, with the bulk of the money going to address learning loss and teacher recruitment and retention, according to the U.S. Education Department. Here in California, we allocated more than $915m for education staff development and recruitment in 2021-2022 — more than was spent in the previous five years altogether, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office. State leaders also invested $1.45bn, apportioned in the 2021-22 school year and available to be spent through June 2026 on programs to support teacher recruitment and retention, while eliminating barriers to entry. "Much like we have rightly expended millions to combat learning loss, we cannot stop that expenditure just as students are starting to turn the corner and make progress through tutoring and other supportive programs," Lopez asserts.
----- DISTRICTS -----
West Contra Costa Unified rejects layoff proposal
The West Contra Costa Unified School Board has rejected proposals to layoff or reduce hours for dozens of playground supervisors, instructional assistants, food service workers and other school staff. The board did, however, approve a different proposal which reduces hours for school counselors and cuts a handful of mostly part-time positions for instructional coaches and other specialists. By moving staff around to positions that are currently vacant, none of those employees will be laid off. The proposals at Wednesday’s school board meeting were only the latest challenge in West Contra Costa Unified’s ongoing struggle to maintain a balanced budget while offering staff pay that keeps up with the Bay Area’s high cost of living. The District submitted a longer-term financial plan earlier this month to the Contra Costa County Office of Education that anticipates having to cut nearly $20m from its budget for the 2024-25 school year in order to afford the raises negotiated with the United Teachers of Richmond teachers' union for this year and next.
----- WORKFORCE ----
Young children develop better when taught by teachers of same ethnicity
New research suggests that young children develop better learning and problem-solving skills by the age of seven when taught by a teacher of the same ethnicity as themselves. Specifically, the research, which used data from the U.S. Department of Education-led Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Kindergarten class of 2011, looked at the effect of matching the race/ethnicity of Asian, Black, Latinx and white teachers and students on two measures of brain power known as "executive function" that help children to engage in behavior working towards a goal. One measure was working memory, the ability to hold and process information in our minds. The other was so-called cognitive flexibility, the ability to change our attention and perspectives. "Diversifying the educator workforce represents a key step toward promoting greater equity in schools across the United States," says lead author Professor Michael Gottfried from the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education.
Poor data shadows pandemic principal attrition rate challenges
Evolving data suggests that principal attrition rates during the pandemic paint a complex picture further blurred by challenges around data availability. A new review of pandemic-era data on principals in Nebraska, Texas, and Pennsylvania from 2014 to 2022, found that principal attrition fell in 2020-21, the first full school year of the pandemic, and rose the following year. The increase was not necessarily higher than in pre-pandemic years however, according to Edward Fuller, an associate professor of education at Penn State University and Andrew Pendola, an associate professor at Auburn University, in Alabama. Of the three states they studied, only Texas' principal attrition rate was higher in the 2021-22 school year than in the years immediately preceding the pandemic. The data also show differences in attrition among the type of schools that principals led and whether they were located in cities or rural areas. Rates varied by school level too. In Texas, all three levels—elementary, middle and high school—followed the same pattern of declining in the first full pandemic year and increasing the second year. In Pennsylvania, the reduction showed up at all levels that first year but was more pronounced in elementary and middle schools. In the 2021-22 school year, however, attrition rose at all levels, with the highest increase, a 2.2 percentage point jump, in high schools. Rates also varied by school location. In Texas, principal attrition rates fell for all locations—city, town, rural, suburban—in 2020-21, but the increases were highest the following year in schools in the suburbs and in towns. Though principal attrition rates in cities were higher than in town, rural, and suburban schools in Pennsylvania, they generally held steady during the pandemic. Notably, while states have administrative data that give a window into principals' movement in the pandemic years, they're not readily available to the public, and national data on principal turnover and attrition from the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics won't be published until the fall. Frustratingly therefore, the education community can't get critical insights into what's happening in schools or make nuanced decisions about how to address the challenges without knowing the depth of the principal churn.
Teacher salaries mapped
The current average salary for teachers in 37 states and the District of Columbia sits below $60,000, according to WalletHub research. New York leads the nation in teacher pay, with an average salary of $80,286, and educators there enjoy one of the best work environments in the nation based on metrics like class sizes, access to teaching materials and quality of school systems. Making up the top five states are Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Washington. On the other end of the pay scale, teachers, on average, earn as little as $47,156 a year in Hawaii, the lowest-paying state, which as followed by Maine, South Dakota, Florida and the District of Columbia. Relatedly, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., introduced the Pay Teachers Act last week, aiming to set a national minimum salary for public school teachers at $60,000 using federal funds. The bill joins another introduced late last year — the American Teacher Act — by Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., and Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., which would incentivize states to bring teacher salaries up to a minimum $60,000 using grant money from the Department of Education.
----- LEGAL -----
Supreme Court ruling could support claims of unfair treatment by students with disabilities
The Supreme Court unanimously decided a case on Tuesday in favor of a deaf student who sued his school district for denying his graduation after he was not provided a qualified interpreter, a ruling that could support new claims of unfair treatment by students with disabilities. The case involves Miguel Luna Perez, who attended public school in Sturgis, Michigan. Perez’s lawyers told the court that for 12 years the school system neglected the boy and misled his parents about the progress he was making and thus permanently stunting his ability to communicate effectively. In an eight-page opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch agreed with Perez that the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires plaintiffs who file a lawsuit under another federal law to exhaust all administrative procedures outlined in the IDEA only when they are seeking a remedy that the IDEA also provides. In this case, Gorsuch reasoned, Perez’s lawsuit under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) seeks compensation for the emotional distress and lost income resulting from the school district’s failure to provide him with a qualified interpreter – “a remedy,” Gorsuch noted, “everyone before us agrees IDEA cannot supply.” Gorsuch also noted that the court’s ruling did not resolve several issues in the dispute between Perez and the school district, such as whether the damages that Perez seeks are available under the ADA. Instead, the court sent the case back to the lower courts for the litigation to continue, having made clear that nothing in the IDEA’s exhaustion requirement precluded Perez’s lawsuit.
SCOTUS Blog AP News Washington Examiner
Few legal challenges to states' curriculum laws
At least 25 states are enforcing laws that have made it easier to remove books from school libraries, blocked certain lessons on race, gender and sexuality, restricted the rights of transgender students and cost teachers their jobs, according to an analysis by the Washington Post. Few lawsuits have emerged as a result however, reflecting the broad power states have to shape curriculums and underlining the lack of "favorable precedent" in a relatively unexplored territory of law. To date, at least four states (Arizona, Oklahoma, New Hampshire and Florida) have seen such lawsuits, brought by free speech advocacy groups, teachers associations and civil rights organizations including the AFT and the ACLU, and only one has been resolved - a suit filed in part by the Arizona School Boards Association and the Arizona Education Association challenging a law that prohibited certain ways of teaching about race. In November 2021, the Arizona Supreme Court struck down the law, finding its manner of enactment violated the state constitution. “These lawsuits are not easy to put together,” says Alice O’Brien, general counsel for the National Education Association. “Educators are scared in the current environment. A lot of these laws are enacted in states where educators have very few protections.”
Florida's 'Baker Act' examined
Donna St. George describes how Florida’s reliance on forced psychological exams is rising amid a national mental health crisis among school-aged children. Every day in Florida, she writes, children and adolescents are involuntarily committed for psychiatric assessments under the Baker Act. In fiscal year 2020-21, involuntary exams happened more than 38,000 times to children under 18 — an average of more than 100 a day and a nearly 80% increase in the past decade. While the law is useful for the most serious cases, critics say it's too often used with kids who have behavioral issues, students with disabilities and those who say something they don’t mean. Opponents also contend that some mental health facilities are profit-driven and substandard and fail to keep parents informed about their children. Of the six states that keep publicly available data on the practice — including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia and Wisconsin — Florida is an outlier, claims David Cohen, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles who studies the issue. In 2018, he notes, the state committed children nearly 16 times more often than Wisconsin.
----- HEALTH & WELLBEING -----
Poor sleep negatively impacts schoolwork, CDC says
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned that over three-quarters of high school students were not getting enough hours of sleep during the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to poor mental health and difficulty doing schoolwork. According to the CDC's nationally representative survey of thousands of high schoolers, students who slept less than seven hours on an average school night were more likely to report poor mental health and greater difficulty doing schoolwork during the pandemic compared to before the pandemic. Poor mental health was reported by over a third of the students (37%) and students who experienced poor mental health had a 17% higher chance of finding schoolwork more difficult. A quarter of students (25.2%) who met sleep recommendations still reported poor mental health, while about half of students (49%) who slept five hours or less reported the same. “Schools can consider addressing sleep duration within a broader strategy to bolster adolescent mental health and learning, including addressing protective factors,” the CDC suggests.
Social media companies sued over youth mental health crisis
School districts across the country are increasingly taking on social media, filing lawsuits that argue Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube et al have helped to create the nation’s surging youth mental health crisis and should be held accountable. School districts are generally seeking that the conduct of social media companies be declared a public nuisance, that their practices change and that damages be paid to fund prevention, education and treatment for excessive and problematic use of social media. The first of the lawsuits, filed in January by Seattle Public Schools, said research shows that the social media companies “exploit the same neural circuitry as gambling and recreational drugs to keep consumers using their products as much as possible” and that social media is so popular it is used by 90% of those aged 13 to 17. School districts in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Florida have followed suit in recent weeks. In San Mateo County, home to 23 school districts and part of Silicon Valley in Northern California, officials filed a 107-page complaint in federal court last week, alleging that social media companies used advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to create addictive platforms that cause young people harm. “The results have been disastrous,” the filing asserts, saying more children than ever struggle with their mental health amid excessive use of the platforms. “There is simply no historic analog to the crisis the nation’s youth are now facing,” it said.
NTA Life Insurance - An ABCFT Sponsor
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 online. 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 online.
Please contact Leann Blaisdell at any time either by phone or email.
562-822-5004
Leann.Blaisdell@horacemann.com
Click here to schedule an appointment
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