Click the picture below to see all of this year's Halloween pictures!
KEEPING YOU INFORMED - Negotiations Update By Ruben Mancillas
The ABCFT negotiating team is scheduled to meet with the district team on Tuesday, November 14. This will be after the board meeting of November 7, where our proposal can be discussed in a closed session.
I spoke with Dr. Fraser (Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources) last week as part of our regularly scheduled PAL meetings. We do not negotiate away from the table, but it does allow us the opportunity to talk about related issues and exchange ideas in a less formal environment.
The ABCFT executive board met recently to work on our strategic plan. One of the most productive conversations that came out of the day was when we were discussing our goals for compensation. We talked about what being competitive looked like in terms of our salary schedules and the tension between what ongoing dollars are available versus what percentages are hoped for. Los Angeles County publishes a district salary survey every year, and the answer to “Are we remaining competitive?” depends so much upon which particular metric is being used. For example, ABCUSD offers a top-quartile starting salary for new hires, but our salary schedule lags behind in the mid-career years. The negotiating team recognizes this issue and has made proposals to address the need to shore up these areas of our compensation. Similarly, our maximum salary is not as high as in some districts, but our annual district contribution to health and welfare benefits is among the best. As I wrote in an earlier update, maintaining free family coverage comes with a cost, but when it is factored in as an overall compensation package, this helps keep our schedule competitive.
There is also the matter of attempting to compare like districts. The executive board talked about the differences between a unified school district like ABCUSD and a high school or elementary-only district as these offer varying salary schedules. Even among unified school districts in L.A. County, there are distinctions in demographics, often in the form of unduplicated students and related LCFF funding, that impact available dollars. Other districts also have their own philosophy in terms of how they handle such issues as class size and layoff procedures. In future updates, I will delve more into some of these details so that we can make more precise “apples-to-apples” comparisons when evaluating our competitive rankings.
Movie recommendation for this month: Ikiru is playing at the New Beverly Cinema on November 16 and November 17. This 1952 film by Akira Kurosawa is widely available, I believe it is currently streaming on Max as well. The plot is simple but is presented in a compelling structure and features an incredibly moving performance by the lead actor, Takashi Shimura. Shimura portrays a bureaucrat searching for meaning and purpose, working within a flawed system that too often rewards the wrong actions. It is not an overtly “labor” film like Norma Rae (please tell me some of you gave that one a try!) but the simple daily humanity of an individual trying to make the world a better place for others resonated with me as a testament to working people and their small everyday triumphs in the face of adversity.
In Unity,
MEMBERSHIP UPDATES
Elementary Report Cards Timeline By Tanya Golden
Elementary's first trimester ends on November 8th, with report cards posted on the parent portal on the 27th. When the calendar was negotiated, there was an error in providing enough time for the preparation of the report cards. Currently, the calendar reflects six work days, including the student-free day on the 9th, which is intended to allow teachers time to prepare report cards. Teachers should not be expected to complete report cards during their Fall break time. With this shortened timeline, ABCFT re-negotiated the report cards' due date. The revised report card due date is now December 4th. So you will hopefully have time during your Fall break to enjoy the season and get some much needed R&R.
OBSERVATIONS/AWARENESS FOR NOVEMBER
El Día de los Muertos is not, as is commonly thought, a Mexican version of Halloween, though the two holidays do share some traditions, including costumes and parades. On the Day of the Dead, it’s believed that the border between the spirit world and the real world dissolves. During this brief period, the souls of the dead awaken and return to the living world to feast, drink, dance and play music with their loved ones. In turn, the living family members treat the deceased as honored guests in their celebrations and leave the deceased’s favorite foods and other offerings at gravesites or on the ofrendas built in their homes. Ofrendas can be decorated with candles, bright marigolds called cempasuchil, and red cock’s combs alongside food like stacks of tortillas and fruit.
https://www.history.com/topics/halloween/day-of-the-dead#how-is-the-day-of-the-dead-celebrated
Days of Observance/Awareness for November
November 16: International Day for Tolerance
In 1996, the UN General Assembly (by resolution 51/95) invited UN Member States to observe the International Day for Tolerance on 16 November, to encourage respect among various people regardless of culture, language, religion, or ethnicity. You can learn more from the National Day website.
November 13 - 19: Trans Awareness Week
Each year between November 13 – 19, people and organizations around the country participate in Transgender Awareness Week to help raise the visibility of transgender people and address issues members of the community face. Learn more about it here.
November 20: Transgender Day of Remembrance
Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) is an annual observance on November that honors the memory of the transgender people whose lives were lost in acts of anti-transgender violence. You can read more about the Transgender Day of Remembrance here, and find out how you can show support for the community on this day.
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. This weekly report informs members about issues impacting their working/learning conditions and mental well-being. Our work as a Union is a larger conversation and united, we make the YOUnion.
‘The word of the day is Broker.” - This was part of a discussion I was having with someone about the difference between a representative and a broker in the context of advocating for others. A representative is, by definition, a person chosen or appointed to act or speak for another or others and a broker arranges or negotiates a settlement, deal, or plan.
The ABCFT Union is an organization comprised of representatives who are brokers on behalf of teachers and nurses. However, I would like you to consider how our mission as representatives and brokers has expanded and now has become critical to the positive outcomes of our students. This expanded role in the advocacy for the whole student started in 2008 when ABC site representatives and principals looked at our attendance data together for the first time. Until that time, the issue of attendance had fallen on the district and administrators, but in 2008, we as a district were looking for possible solutions to create funding for ABC, and the Great Recession was in full swing. In other districts, pink slips were flying, educators were being treated like bargaining chips for concessions and reductions in health care. In ABC, every employee acted in unison to collectively protect each other's jobs by taking furlough days, resulting in salary cuts of 2.14% for four years. It was a financially painful time, but ABC stood alone in protecting EVERY permanent employee.
Looking at our attendance in 2008 not only increased our attendance from 94% to 98% over the next five years, but it had other wide-ranging impacts we are still feeling today. With every percentage increase in attendance, WE were able to generate a million plus dollars to save jobs. Out of this collaborative effort, there was a new investment in PBIS (Positive Behavior Intervention and support), the practice of having mental health support services, and a drastic drop in suspensions due to training and revisions of policies to be more equitable. ABCFT became the major broker of student support on behalf of the ABC community, and a few years back, when ABC was struggling it was the community that came to our aid and supported ABCFT during the successful Work To Rule Campaign.
Over the last couple of years, we have seen a number of teacher's unions become directly involved in brokering for better learning conditions and family resources for their student communities. The most recent example of a union organization advocating for the community's needs is what we are seeing in Fresno. The Fresno Teachers Association (FTA) averted a strike this week, which is a good example of a job action, but what I ask myself is how the situation devolved to cause this extreme job action. In reading about Fresno, there are examples of inequity across the district and a complete lack of effort by the district to maintain competitive wages. Fresno’s current top teacher salary is $94,059 (ABC is $122,378], and Fresno’s beginning teacher pay is $52,842 [ABC $64,496]. Fresno has no classroom maximums, and they have no health care plans that cover retirees before they qualify for Medicare at age 65. Also known as the retiree healthcare bridge, which ABC has. Some of the gains for the Fresno Teachers Association this week will begin to address these gigantic inequities for Fresno Teachers. What was critical to their success was FTA’s advocacy for better learning conditions and support of students and the community. By advocating for their community, they have lifted their own working conditions with community support. Parents and students in the community paid it forward.
All of ABCFT’s efforts right now are to work in partnership with the district to create better working conditions and competitive wages, but our advocacy for student support for the success of our students and their families will help us to avoid strike situations we are seeing happen throughout California. ABCFT is taking a proactive approach by doing the hard work all along the way rather than waiting for a crisis situation. However, let’s make a concerted effort to work with our ABC parents and students. When we lift our students as we’ve done in the past, the community will, in turn, lift us.
Let’s pay it forward.
In YOUnity,
Ray Gaer
President, ABCFT
CALIFORNIA FEDERATION OF TEACHERS
The latest CFT articles and news stories can be found here on the PreK12 news feed on the CFT.org website.
AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS
Follow AFT President Randi Weingarten: http://twitter.com/rweingarten
----- NEWS STORY HIGHLIGHT-----
Strike averted for students: Fresno Unified, teachers reach ‘historic’ contract
Less than 24 hours before a strike by thousands of educators was scheduled to start, Fresno Unified School District and its teachers union agreed on a tentative contract, the two announced during a joint press conference Tuesday morning.
The “historic” agreement, which was still being revised as late as this morning, brings more than a year of negotiating to an end and prevents a divisive strike that would’ve undoubtedly harmed the Fresno community and the district’s over 74,000 students.
“Our students have been the innocent bystanders waiting through the difficulties of negotiations,” Superintendent Bob Nelson said. “This deal is really about you (students): it’s our joint commitment to avoid a strike because there’s really nothing more important than making sure our students have the opportunity to be in school every day, all the time.”
District and union leaders as well as board members touted the contract for investing in teachers, supporting students and maintaining the district’s fiscal solvency.
Fresno teacher strike averted
Less than 24 hours before a strike by thousands of educators was scheduled to start, Fresno Unified and its teachers union agreed on a tentative contract. The agreement, which was still being revised as late as this morning, brings more than a year of negotiating to an end and prevents a divisive strike that would’ve impacted over 74,000 students. District and union leaders touted the contract for investing in teachers, supporting students, and maintaining the district’s fiscal solvency. To Fresno Teachers Association president Manuel Bonilla, the contract meets and exceeds requests including reducing class size, reducing special education caseloads, keeping educators competitive in pay, and maintaining certain healthcare benefits.
----- NATIONAL NEWS -----
Post-pandemic chronic absenteeism has doubled
Chronic absenteeism among U.S. students has nearly doubled since before the pandemic. New data released on the Return 2 Learn Tracker from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) shows chronic absenteeism, defined as students missing more than 10% of the school year, went from 15% in 2018 to 29% in 2022. The problem is particularly prominent in districts that already have a history of trouble with student success, such as low-achieving schools, ones with high poverty rates, and districts with a high minority population. In high-poverty districts, chronic absenteeism jumped 16 percentage points compared to 11 points in low-poverty schools. Among the states with the biggest rises is Wyoming at 35 points, while Arizona, Vermont, and New Mexico had increases of 23 percentage points. Notably, in school districts with high masking during the 2021-2022 school year, there was a 17 percentage point increase in chronic absenteeism compared to a 13 point one in low-masking schools. Similarly, schools that went mostly remote in the 2020-2021 school year have a 16 percentage point rise compared to 12 points in schools that were mostly in person.
Chronic absenteeism soaring nationwide
A new report by Attendance Works reveals that two-thirds of American students attended schools with high levels of chronic absence in the 2021-2022 school year, a significant increase from pre-pandemic levels. This translates to at least one in five students missing almost four weeks of school. The data also shows that nearly 14.7 million students were chronically absent, a staggering increase of 6.5 million compared to the year before the pandemic. Attendance Works warns that such high levels of chronic absence not only make teaching and learning more challenging but also overwhelm schools' capacity to respond. Additionally, early data from 11 states for the 2022-2023 school year indicates that attendance levels are not returning to pre-pandemic levels. The report also highlights the negative impact of chronic absenteeism on student academic scores, with math and reading scores reaching their lowest rates in decades.
After-school meal participation declining
Though after-school meal participation remained steady throughout the pandemic’s disruptions to school operations, momentum has since slowed down. After-school programs served 1.42m children in October 2019, 1.45m in October 2020, 1.49m in October 2021, but just 1.15m in October 2022, according to the Food Research & Action Center (FRAC). On an average weekday in October 2022, over 1.6m low-income children missed their opportunity to eat an after-school meal because the meals weren’t served at all. That equates to $116.5m missed in federal reimbursements, according to FRAC, an advocate for expanding the Afterschool Meal Program. To increase access to after-school meals, FRAC recommends Congress lower the area eligibility requirements to allow more communities to participate. There’s also a need to raise federal funding for after-school programs and to streamline the Afterschool Meal Program and Summer Food Service Program so sponsors don’t have to duplicate administrative hurdles, FRAC says.
----- STATE NEWS -----
California’s K-8 Students Guaranteed Outdoor Time with New Recess Law
Kids across California are getting a lot more time to play outside. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 291 into law last week, making a half-hour of recess mandatory for all elementary school students from kindergarten through eighth grade in the state.
The new law will also prohibit educators from withholding recess as a form of punishment. Laura Medina Quintanar, executive director of the nonprofit Playworks, Northern California, which encourages kids to stay active while building valuable social and emotional skills through play, sat down with KQED’s Brian Watt to discuss the impacts quality outdoor recess can have on growing minds.
She also discussed what parents and educators can expect once the law goes into effect next school year.
California allows students with mild COVID-19 symptoms to attend school
California has released new COVID-19 guidance stating that students can still come to school as long as their symptoms do not prevent them from participating meaningfully. The change in guidance aims to reduce student chronic absenteeism rates, which have increased during the pandemic. The focus has shifted from saving lives to educating children, as the public health risk from COVID-19 has declined. Schools are working to inform parents that strict quarantine and isolation protocols are no longer necessary. The guidance emphasizes the importance of maintaining high air quality, surface cleaning, handwashing, and vaccinations to minimize the spread of diseases in schools. The American Academy of Pediatrics in California, the California School Nurses Organization, and the California Association of Communicable Disease Controllers have endorsed the guidance.
----- DISTRICTS -----
Portland teachers walk out
Teachers in Portland, OR, have gone on strike, resulting in the closure of schools for over 45,000 students. The strike, the first of its kind for the union representing more than 4,000 educators, is due to the failure to reach an agreement on compensation and classroom size limits. The district claims that the union's requests are financially unfeasible due to inadequate state funding. Portland Public Schools, one of the largest districts in the Pacific Northwest, has not specified how long the strike will last. The district has offered a 10.9% cost-of-living increase over three years, while the union is demanding a cumulative 23% increase. Grab-and-go meals will be provided for students during the strike.
Gilroy Unified and teacher association reach contract agreement
Gilroy Unified School District and the Gilroy Teacher Association have reached a tentative agreement on a contract with its teachers. The agreement includes a 13% salary increase over two years, retroactive to last school year, and a 4% bonus this school year. Dual-language immersion teachers will receive additional compensation. Class sizes will also be reduced to 24 students in first through third grade for at least two years starting next school year.
Oakland Union late in reimbursement to District
The Oakland Education Association, the teachers union, owes Oakland Unified $403,434 from the last two school years. The union owes the money for the salary and benefits of educators on leave for union business. State law requires unions to reimburse districts for paying the salary and benefits within 10 days of payment confirmation. The union’s over $400,000 debt includes missed payments in the 2021-22 school year and no payments last school year in 2022-23. Even though law dictates that payments be made within 10 days, Oakland Unified’s accounting team recently discovered the lapse during its year-end reconciliation process. The lack of payments means the district paid the salaries and benefits of union leaders through months of negotiations and a strike. Union leaders declined to respond to questions about the overdue payments. Mike Hutchinson, president of the Oakland Unified school board, says: “It is hard to accept that we are now subsiding OEA leadership.”
----- WORKFORCE ----
Registered teacher apprenticeships 'challenge the status quo'
Twenty-six states, plus Puerto Rico, now have their own registered teaching apprenticeship programs, according to New America, a public policy think tank. Though the details vary by state, the model essentially pays for a prospective teacher to receive mentoring as they go through in-classroom training, along with coursework to earn a teaching degree and license. New America also found that registered teacher apprenticeships are under development in five other states, plus Washington, D.C. The model has also expanded to include principals, with the Labor Department’s approval of North Dakota as the first state to have a registered principal apprenticeship program in July. Apprenticeships have “the potential to transform teacher preparation in a number of positive ways and at the very least will challenge the status quo,” New America wrote.
Widespread school staff reductions predicted
Widespread school staff reductions are likely ahead, according to new research. The districts most at risk will be those that have lost the most students and those that got the most ESSER money, which tend to be large, urban, high-poverty districts. To further appraise those most at risk, non-profit Education Resource Strategies (ERS) examined how ESSER receipts compared with states' typical education budgets. Assuming that districts spent federal aid evenly over the entire grant period, the figures ranged from 4% to 5% in states like New Jersey, Connecticut, Colorado, and Utah, and up to 12% to 17% in states like Alabama, New Mexico, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Furthermore, about three-quarters of school districts across the country have reduced their student-teacher ratios over the course of the pandemic. That is, they have more staff per student than they used to. Overall, ERS found that if every district in the country went back to the same staffing ratio it had in 2018-19, the nation would lose 136,000 teaching positions. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2021 had the fewest layoffs in public education in the last two decades. Last year was just a bit higher, and 2023 is so far tracking about the same. Marguerite Roza at the Georgetown Edunomics Lab has called the expiration of federal relief funds in September 2024, combined with unprecedented enrollment declines, a “perfect storm” for school budgets.
----- SECURITY -----
Assaults on California's Black students increasing
Hate crimes and incidents targeting African American children are increasing in California, particularly in predominantly Latino neighborhoods. A Black student in the Santa Barbara Unified School District was assaulted by Latino students, who called him racial slurs and referenced George Floyd. The school failed to provide adequate mental health support, according to some, despite state laws requiring action. Santa Barbara Unified has since commissioned a survey to address the problem.
-----CHARTER SCHOOLS -----
Home schooling numbers appear to be soaring
Home schooling has become the nation's fastest-growing form of education, a Washington Post analysis shows. The dramatic rise in home schooling at the onset of the pandemic has largely sustained itself through the 2022-23 academic year, defying predictions that most families would return to schools. The Post was able to collect reliable data from 32 states and the District of Columbia, representing more than 60% of the country’s school-age population. The resulting analysis, which includes home-school registration figures for nearly 7,000 individual school districts, is the most detailed look to date at an unprecedented period of growth in American home schooling. Home schooling’s surging popularity crosses every measurable line of politics, geography and demographics. Despite claims that the home-schooling boom is a result of failing public schools, the Post found no correlation between school district quality, as measured by standardized test scores, and home-schooling growth. The National Center for Education Statistics reported that in 2019 there were 1.5m kids being home-schooled in the United States. This was the last official federal estimate.
