The California Federation of Teachers has targeted three priorities in the 2020 mid term election:
The CFT is currently raising money and is seeking your assistance (money, volunteering) to get the job done. We hope to count on you to support your profession and fight for the improvements necessary to best educate the students of this state.
The House of Representatives recently passed a supplemental spending bill, HR 4899, that contains $15 billion for education spending. The point of the bill is to provide quick financial assistance to school districts in order to preserve teachers' jobs during these difficult times.
However, Senator Dianne Feinstein is balking at the measure.
Contact Dianne Feinstein and ask her to vote for this bill.
Call your representative to support the $15 Billion supplemental education funding bill.
Ten billion dollars will go to local districts to save the jobs of up to 300,000 teachers and another five billion dollars will go to Pell Grants.
A rally scheduled for today protesting became exciting for non-tenure track faculty at Central Michigan University. CMU and the American Federation of Teachers agreed on Tuesday to recognize non-tenure track faculty as a bargaining unit.
Ian Fulcher, a project organizer for the AFT Michigan, said the agreement will allow non-tenure track faculty teaching at quarter time or greater to be in the union. Fulcher said it means those teaching three credit hours a semester will be included. If they didn’t they could just … undercut the union people and the students,” he said. Fulcher said the next step for the group is to go over lists with the university to see who is covered as well as negotiating a contract.
GUTTENBERG FEDERATION OF TEACHERS
Contract Bargaining Update
June 25, 2010
The Guttenberg Board of Education is seeking to provide little to no wage increase over the next three years, while our members become laid off and our class sizes grow. Meanwhile very little, if any, “shared sacrifice” is being discussed for the upper-levels of administration. We need you to ask, “why not”?
The Board would like to provide us with a less-than-comparable health insurance plan while we pay 1.5% of our salaries towards it. They would like us to extend our work hours without ample compensation. What are you willing to do about it? We will need to call upon all GFT members to support our alternate budget choices during the summer and into next school year. Researchers from AFT have begun analyzing financial information from the
The GFT Negotiations Committee has met with the Board for a total of six meetings to date. The most recent meeting was held on June 9th, 2010. Our next meeting will be held on July 7th, 2010. The negotiations sessions are moving at a slow pace, in part because of the uncertainty of both the State and local budgets. Our voices must be heard on this issue.
Based upon your input, we have proposed about a dozen items (some are new contract articles while some seek to modify existing articles). We feel that our proposals are both practical and proactive in nature. For example, we have proposed a professional development language that is creative yet cost effective. Most of the Board’s proposals seek to eliminate long-standing benefits and to create more work for our members with little/no compensation. This is unacceptable!
Unfortunately, no provisions or new articles have been tentatively agreed upon to date, and the Board seems reluctant to make progress at the bargaining table. This is also unacceptable! Again, we need your support outside of the bargaining table as we continue to meet throughout the summer.
In solidarity,
Negotiations Committee
Guttenberg Federation of Teachers
Director of the Public Employee Labor Relations Board makes a decision.
This year's detailed calendar
The GFCCE is happy to report that the Classified unit has reached a tentative agreement with the GJUHSD. The District received its three furlough days from the classified unit and restructured some of the contracts of classified employees, while the classified unit received some stronger language in the contract in discipline and harrassment.
While the financial solvency of the District is vitally important to the GFCCE, it seems unreasonable that the District's goal is a balanced budget for the upcoming school year when the District has a comfortable reserve fund it refuses to tap into. This negotiating position by the District has been a stumbling block in negotiations for both the classified and certificated units over the last couple of months. However, it is great to see both the distirct and classified unit work together in a constructive way to move forward.
The classified members will be receiving a ballot in June to ratify the tentative agreement and the school board will vote on it after that.
Education historian Diane Ravitch explains how schools can best address meaningful reforms. Essentially, American society needs to invest in neighborhood schools and abandon the fads of the "choice" and "accountability" movements as they are currently structured. Keep in mind, that charter schools, for example, provide no clear cut evidence of providing superior education from public schools dispite charter schools' ability to move out those students who do not fit their needs.
She goes on to mention that there is no positive or negative correlation between student academic performance and teacher unionism. Southern states where unions are weak tend to have weaker academic performance records and Massachusetts, where unionism is strongest, has high academic results. Additionally, Finland, where teachers are nearly 100% organized into unions, scores highest on international assessments. Ultimately, economic well-being is the most causcal relationship to academic performance. Students in wealthier areas tend to score better than students in poorer areas.
An opinion editorial by AFT-WV president Judy Hale
