President’s Report to Rep Council

December 1, 2008

Welcome New Representatives

Thank you to all of our new Site Representatives – we will be scheduling more Rep trainings in the coming months, and invite you to become more active by joining a committee, stopping by the OEA office to volunteer, or calling on any of the OEA Officers, Executive Board members and Executive Directors for support and advice.

Post-Election Thoughts and Plans for OEA’s Bargaining Campaign

Last Rep Council was the eve of this very historic election, and I said then, “If Barack Obama is elected, it won’t be an end but hopefully a new beginning in the struggle to take back our country and take back public education. It certainly won’t happen if we don’t raise our voices loud and clear against the abuses that are being heaped on working and poor people nationwide, and teachers and students under Oakland’s unique combination of No Child Left Behind, state administration, and the business model of education promoted by wealthy ‘education reformers’ like Broad, Gates, and others.” Well, that day has come – and we have an awesome opportunity and responsibility to act.

Public education is under attack, and we are at a crossroads. No Child Left Behind will be up for reauthorization under the new administration, a new Secretary of Education will soon be appointed, and the forces of so-called “educational reform” are prominently in the news with their latest brand of teacher-bashing. The latest Time magazine features Michelle Rhee, the Chancellor of DC Public Schools and former head of The New Teacher Project, on the cover, with an eight-page article inside extolling her Sarah Palin brand of tough talk and quick fixes for systemic problems. Notwithstanding the fact that she taught for only three short years (with Teach for America) and has no experience running a school, she’s grabbed the attention of other “education reform” luminaries like Joel Klein of New York, and got positive reviews from President-Elect Obama during the campaign. If we don’t act and speak up against her platform of merit pay, ending teacher tenure, and blaming all of public education’s woes on ineffective teachers and teachers’ unions, we can be sure she’ll continue to be promoted in the media as the answer to what ails education. Send letters to Time, cc them to our local newspapers – we are the only ones who can tell the public what it is really like in our schools, and what is needed to make them successful.

What else can we do? The Executive Board is proposing a winter/spring campaign that brings together our struggle for a new contract, plans for a progressive new parcel tax for public education, and our “ASK a Teacher” outreach to members and the community. We recently approved the formation of a new committee on Education Resources that will help lay the groundwork for this campaign, and we need more members to do the important work it has set for itself. The Executive Board also voted unanimously to schedule a membership meeting and an action in January or February, and you will hear more about these in the coming weeks. In the meantime, personal stories are critical – send your stories to President-Elect Obama and to the newspapers.

District Updates

School Safety Survey: If you haven’t done so already, please fill out the very short questionnaire on School Safety with your colleagues and return it to us as soon as possible. You AND your students have the right to be in a safe and supportive environment, and we will support you in any way possible if you are being scapegoated for the lack of a responsible safety/discipline policy at your school site. After the recent gun incident at Cole Middle School, it is even more imperative that we are actively at the table planning for a responsible safety policy at each school site. Our members need to be centrally involved in your School Site Councils, making sure anything that is sent to the Board of Education for approval has had OEA participation and input.

Restructuring at PI 4 & 5 Schools: Schools in Year 4 & 5 of Program Improvement have received a letter from Brad Stam outlining the process of restructuring and calling on them to finish a revised School Plan for Student Achievement by December 19^th. The good news is that the district is clearly supporting “Option 5” as opposed to the other NCLB options for so-called “failing” schools (closing, converting to charter, reassigning all staff). The letter also cited the OEA contract calling for per diem pay for members engaged in helping work on the restructuring plan. Again, be sure that you have active OEA members involved in this work! This is an opportunity to push back against some of the specific restructuring options being proposed, and to propose our own more teacher and student-centered plans.

Payroll: We need the names of all members who have been audited and told they either:

<!–[if !supportLists]–>1)      <!–[endif]–>Owe money to the district due to being placed on the wrong step/column;

<!–[if !supportLists]–>2)      <!–[endif]–>Are owed money by the district for the same reason.

As those of you in that situation already know, the district claims that by Ed Code they can go back 4 years to collect from you, but YOU can only go back ONE year to collect what they owe you! We are having CTA lawyers look into this, and need more names of members who have been affected.

If you have not yet been paid for services rendered (in-services, summer PD, etc.), let us know. I have been emailing the district on behalf of teachers at a number of sites, and have been invited to attend the “Pay Accuracy Steering Team” meetings. Send us your payroll issues, and we’ll see if we can get this district to live up to their claim of following a business-oriented model in the area of Payroll!

School Board meetings: Thanks to Cluster 1A for a small but strong showing at the last School Board meeting! Highlights included two reports on Results Based Budgeting, both of which essentially upheld the concept but found fault with some of the implementation… One of the more interesting observations from the American Institutes for Research report was: “To make room for innovation in planning, need culture shift to move away from compliance mentality.”  As one interviewee for the report stated, “There’s more accountability for how you spend the money versus the impact of what you spend the money on.” We could have told them that…

There are meetings December 3 and 10, so check to see when your cluster is scheduled to attend and get members there. December 10 promises to be particularly important: they will be discussing reports on the first Interim Budget, FCMAT, and charter schools.

OUSD Changes: Kirsten Vital, Chief of Community Accountability and member of OUSD’s “Cabinet” (formerly known as the “Strategy Group”) has signed on as Superintendent of Alameda USD. Meanwhile, Chief Financial Officer Leon Glaster has finished his contract, and been replaced with former OUSD employee Vernon Hal.

Successes

Measure N: This is a significant victory for OEA and our allies in the labor movement and on the School Board! As we suspected, this parcel tax failed to get the 2/3 required for passage, garnering 61% to 39%. Clearly, our generous Oakland community was willing to consider another regressive tax, and had we supported it, it would have passed easily. This is a clear signal that we need to get to work as soon as possible to craft an alternative plan for funding public education to go on a future ballot, a progressive tax that looks to corporate Oakland to pay their fair share, and one that doesn’t give a blank check to charter schools. A meeting is set for December 12 to start discussing such a parcel tax, and the new Committee on Education Resources has begun discussions on specifics of such a tax.

Early Childhood Centers: Recently one of our ECE teachers called to report that the next day she would potentially be in charge of 24 3-year olds by herself! After a few phone calls to administrators, two substitute IA’s were miraculously found and on duty the following day. DON’T allow yourselves to work under unsafe conditions. Call OEA and we will support you in any way we can.

Lesson Plans: There still seem to be some administrators who haven’t gotten the word that lesson plans are NOT in any given format and that they are primarily for the teacher’s use. If your principal hasn’t gotten that email from Troy Christmas, feel free to use this excerpt from an email I recently sent to a principal on this subject:

Please be aware that the District does not yet have a standard form of lesson plans for all sites, and until any such forms are agreed upon by the District and OEA, any suggestions/recommendations should come through the Faculty Council (see Article 9.2 of the contract, and refer again to http://tinyurl.com/4fnd6k).

Williams Complaints: I spoke to Marc Tafolla-Young of the Education Equity Project, and he reported that Claremont Middle School had filed 122 complaints! They started with one, and ended up creating a committee to work on a myriad of issues. Take advantage of the support we can get from the Education Equity Project and call them at 415-543-9444 x208 to file any complaints you have that fall under Williams.

Other OEA News

STRS: As announced previously, be sure to check your STRS statements to make sure you haven’t been shorted. If you see 0.9 instead of 1.0 credit for any year, and you worked a full year, you need to call us. Bill Britton of CalSTRS has noted that a number of members who’ve had appointments with him are showing only 0.9 credit for 2007, and the problem appears to be in March 2007. Don’t let retirement catch you short!

Bargaining Update

David de Leeuw will report on the latest bargaining sessions.

School Site Visits

I continue to especially enjoy getting out to the school sites and visiting with all of you. I just wish there were more time to do so, but the district continues to set constant fires that must be put out. I meet so many dedicated teachers who are heartsick at not being able to TEACH, but instead are asked to spend countless hours on assessments, compliance issues, and useless Professional Development. If you haven’t already, get your Faculty Council elected, get active teachers on your School Site Councils, get trained, and involve your staff in taking back your power to make decisions at your site. Congratulations to those who already have active FC’s and SSC’s, and keep those FC minutes coming to OEA! 

As always, thank you for taking the time to be Site Representatives – you truly are the heart and soul of our union. 

In unity,

Betty

Are you one of the 200 OEA members eligible for a bilingual stipend? As of last week, the district had only received FIVE applications! Don’t let time run out on you — the deadline for turning in your paperwork is December 18th. Remember, our contract states in Article 21.4.1: To be eligible for a BCLAD stipend, a unit member must meet all of the following conditions:

• Hold BCLAD certification
• Work at a school/site where, within the student body, there are at least 15% or at least 75 English language learner designated students.
• Willing to conduct a maximum of ten (10) hours of translation of school to home written or verbal communication as directed by the site administrator.

If you are at a site where you don’t meet the numbers requirements and yet do ten hours or more of translation, be sure to ask your site administrator for extended contract reimbursement!

Every year OEA sponsors a Toy Drive for needy children and a Holiday Reception for our members. With the current state of the economy, we know there are even more children than usual whose parents will not be able to afford toys for the holidays. Please drop off a new, unwrapped toy to the OEA Center between now and December 19th, and be sure to join us for some holiday cheer on the 19th at 4:00pm!

There are still a number or OEA employees who haven’t turned in their TB test clearances. If you are one of those, you should have received a certified letter in October and a follow-up letter in December. Don’t risk getting put on unpaid leave — get that proof of testing in to HR!

Quality Public Education is a Civil Right!

The OEA Bargaining Team, assisted by Adult Education teachers, Special Education teachers and nurses, negotiated issues in Adult Education and Special Education/Special Services with the OUSD bargaining team on 10/27, 10/28, 11/6 and 11/7,. 

Overload and understaffing are facts of life in many parts of OUSD, but nowhere is the situation worse than for nurses. OUSD employs 29 nurses to cover its approximately 37,000 students.  With 4 nurses doing state-mandated screening, and 9 nurses working with 4,000 special education students, 16 nurses must handle the needs of 33,000 general education students—a ratio of 1 to 2050.  Every nurse must travel to multiple sites, often in the course of a single day. At a time when the number of students with diabetes is increasing, the District has eliminated or lost its dedicated diabetes nurses. This work has been added to the workload of other nurses, who must drop everything at certain times of day and drive to a school site to administer insulin to students. (The District must recognize some of this as well—the only OEA proposal in these four days to which the District partially agreed was to guarantee nurses a designated workspace.)

Reasonable case loads—for nurses, special education teachers, and others—are the key to providing the services which our most vulnerable students need. Resource teachers asked to take on additional students beyond their caseload will be unable to give enough attention to the students on their caseload.  A nurse rushing to get to the next child at the next school may not pay enough attention to the student in front of her.  So far, the District has not agreed to any limits on caseload in Special Education/Special Services except those few already in the State Education Code—and even these limits are routinely violated.

Issues discussed in these four days:

Adult Education

Subcontracting of work to hourly employees

Increasing the floor number of contracted teacher FTE’s in Adult Education

Split assignments and travel time.

Special Services

District proposal to delete the current requirement that Resource Specialists only serve students with an IEP

Class size/caseload maximums

Required student/aide to handicapped  ratios for SDC and Resource classes

Stipend for supplies for Special Education classrooms.

Union member participation in developing the district special education plan (SELPA)

Nurse caseloads, training and time for record-keeping  and report-writing

Definitions of Full Inclusion (which is regulated in the contract) and Mainstreaming (which is not)

In both Adult Education and Special Education, we are waiting on important data we have requested from the District regarding current assignments and caseloads/class sizes—but thus far, the District has been unable to produce valid current lists.  The District gave us data about Special Education assignments — which they almost immediately withdrew from consideration when we raised questions about its accuracy.  We will meet on 11/17 to continue our discussion of special services and nurses.  In subsequent sessions, we will take up other provisions in Article 21, including substitutes.  Soon after, we will be discussing compensation.

What will you do to help win a better contract this year?

Quality Public Education is a Civil Right!

The OEA Bargaining Team met with the District on 10/9 around issues in Adult Education.   Our team was joined for this session (and next) by members of the Adult Education Caucus Bargaining  Sub-committee.  The District team arrived more than an hour late and announced that they had to stop early, so bargaining time was limited.

·  We proposed restoring the three teacher preparation days that adult education teachers gave up during the Adult Ed financial crisis.  The District team said that they would respond at a later date.

·  Both sides agreed that we needed to discuss 10.1.3.2, the Adult Extended Contract Rate, but that this should be done when we discuss compensation and several other rates in Article 24. 

• We had an exchange regarding negotiating a procedure for the Adult Education calendar; OEA and the District will continue to discuss the adult ed calendar. The District’s belief is that it’s their prerogative to assign Adult Ed teachers to work any schedule, and any day, even Saturdays.

·  Both sides presented proposals on 10.6.5 regarding Adult Education travel time.  The District proposed to eliminate any travel time allowance if the “split” time between the two sites was greater than two hours.  In response to Adult Education members’ complaints about “splits” that can start as early as 8:15 AM and end as late as 9 PM (for a six-hour work day!), the OEA team proposed that all “splits” of longer than two hours, whether at different sites or at the same site, be paid for half an hour of time for travel and to pack up/set up classrooms.

The District cancelled the planned 10/16 bargaining session, so we will meet on October 27 and will continue to discuss Adult Education. On October 28 we will be discussing Special Education/Special Services.

What will you do to help win a better contract this year?

We need every member to get involved and let our legislators and the community know that we cannot afford to have ANY more cuts to education! The future of public education is at stake, and we have the responsibility to fight for our students and our profession. Download these materials and schedule your site meeting as soon as possible. Your CAT cluster leader will be calling you with more information:

Agenda for meeting 

Member Letter: Don’t Mask the Problem

Assembly Member Roster

Budget Crisis Timelines for Organizing 

Sign up Sheet