University of Illinois-Chicago faculty wage two-day strike
University of Illinois-Chicago faculty wage two-day strike
The University of Illinois-Chicago United Faculty is a joint affiliate of the AFT and the American Association of University Professors. “From the outset,” says AAUP President Rudy Fichtenbaum, “the UIC United Faculty has bargained and the administration has stalled. While the administration rakes in millions in profits, and has hundreds of millions of dollars in reserves, it refuses to pay faculty what they deserve. We support our brothers and sisters at UIC in their struggle for a fair and just contract.”
Illinois Federation of Teachers President Dan Montgomery, who is an AFT vice president, calls it “outrageous” that the university has increased tuition and burdened students with debt, all while socking away almost a billion dollars of students’ money. “Just as outrageous,” he adds, “is that the administration has spent the students’ tuition dollars on increasing the number of administrative positions and reducing the number of faculty.”
AAUP Collective Bargaining Congress Chair Howard Bunsis asks how the UIC administration can claim it has offered a ‘fair contract’ when newly hired faculty make more than faculty who have been at the institution for many years. “How can the administration claim that it has offered a ‘fair contract’ when many nontenure-track faculty earn just $30,000 a year (less than a living wage in Chicago)? How can the administration claim that it has offered a ‘fair contract’ when faculty, who have been teaching at UIC for more than 10 years, do not know until August each year whether they will have a job in the upcoming year? If the administration cared about the quality of education received by UIC students, it would have settled with the faculty after 18 months of bargaining.”
Send a message of support to the UIC United Faculty. Follow the conversation about the strike on Twitter: #UICstrike.
Louisiana members discuss Reclaiming the Promise
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More than 100 AFT members from New Orleans, Jefferson Parish, East Baton Rouge and other Louisiana cities and parishes turned out for an AFT town hall meeting at a downtown New Orleans hotel on Feb. 12.
The town hall gave the members, as well as parents, community activists and others, an opportunity to hear from AFT President Randi Weingarten and Steve Monaghan, president of the Louisiana Federation of Teachers, and to provide feedback on the Reclaiming the Promise program. Weingarten applauded the Louisiana members and their unions for standing up to those who have used Hurricane Katrina to undermine traditional public schools and the educators who work at them, particularly in New Orleans. She noted that polls show the community overwhelmingly supports its public schools and has “the same grievances and gripes that we do—and the same aspirations.” Several of the Louisiana members who spoke expressed concern about the out-of-control growth of charter schools in New Orleans, the gap between haves and have-nots and its impact on schools and education, and the overtesting of students and use of those tests to evaluate teachers.
Jefferson Federation of Teachers member Maria West, a teacher for 32 years, said she was tired of non-educators and school board members “who have not taught a day in their lives” determining what goes on in public school classrooms.
Beverly Cook, who only became a member of the United Teachers of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, said: “The union is what draws us all together. I could not possibly think about NOT being a union member now.”
Monaghan discussed the numerous obstacles that the LFT has confronted in recent years, many of them a direct result of an unfriendly governor and state Legislature. But he spoke with pride about how the state federation and its members have risen to those challenges, particularly in the courts, where the state federation has won a number of legal battles, including the recent vindication of some 7,000 teachers and school employees who were wrongfully terminated in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
The LFT president cautioned, however, that “real justice” will not come from court rulings but from success in the political arena, and from the election of leaders who value the voices of teachers, paraprofessionals and other schools employees. “We’ve been making the argument that the promise of public education” should be available to every child and that “we can have schools that actually work for children,” Monaghan said.
[Roger Glass/photo by Les Landon]
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Diane Ravitch: “Time to Halt the Madness, Greed, and Insanity”
Diane Ravitch describes herself as a 75-year-old reformed reformer. For her grandchildren and others, she is sounding the alarm about public education and its undoing through testing, accountability, choice and competition. A one-time believer in market forces to achieve reform, the former education official from the first Bush administration now sees that it hasn’t worked.
She is “the conscience of America,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten in introducing Ravitch to a rapt audience of 250 gathered at AFT headquarters on Feb. 4 for a continuing conversation about reclaiming the promise of public education. “Diane Ravitch talks the talk and walks the walk on behalf of kids.”
“The destruction of public education is not progress,” Ravitch warned. “It’s regress.”
She sees the evidence when she looks around the country, she noted—and she’s been looking plenty, both as a researcher and in her travels on a book tour to promote Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools.
For example, in Philadelphia, they are cutting budgets, closing schools, firing teachers and increasing class size while the governor gives corporations big tax cuts. “I think it’s a disgrace when we can afford so much as a society but can’t afford to give the children of Detroit, Philadelphia, St. Louis or Indianapolis the schools they deserve,” she declared.
The other disgrace, she said, is the myth that we are a nation of failing schools. She cited National Assessment of Educational Progress scores that refute the myth, as well as the highest high school graduation rates and the lowest dropout rates. Yet in the past 20 years, we’ve labored under a “test-test-test” obsession that has used billions of federal dollars in competitive, punitive ways that have harmed schools and children. She wrote Reign of Error to deconstruct that narrative of “reform,” she said, adding that none of our high-performing competitor nations are privatizing or embracing charter schools or vouchers, as the United States is. The current push for breaking up school systems and relying on testing and data is not working. Her book features facts, data and charts—evidence, not ideology.
The good news is that parents are rising up in rebellion against closing schools in Newark, Chicago and Philadelphia. They are opposing a culture of testing that pushes out the arts, science—even recess—and snuffs out children’s natural joy of learning.
Ravitch advocated a “life-care” approach to education to replace the “madness, greed and insanity” of current ideology. This means investments in prenatal care, early childhood education—birth through pre-K—and wraparound services in schools, including healthcare to address poverty, the biggest obstacle to student success.
There are two different paradigms out there, she said. One, the status quo, says measure and rank everyone, and parcel out opportunity. But she and those who would reclaim the promise of education embrace another. “I dream of a world where the purpose of education is human development, where everyone has a pedagogy of kindness, where we respect people who help children.”
We want for all children what parents want for their own, noted Weingarten in closing: “to develop trusting relationships with adults, to learn to solve problems, to develop character, to acquire the persistence—the grit—needed to confront adversity.” That is what reclaiming the promise of public education is all about.
[Barbara McKenna, Jessica Smith/photos by John Harrington]
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Bossier Votes for Pay Raise – Sonja Varnell (Apollo) Represents RRU at Meeting
On February 6, 2014, the Bossier Parish School Board approved across-the-board pay raises for all Bossier Parish teachers and support personnel.
1) Performance Evaluation Stipends for Teachers (Highly Effective $1000; Effective Proficient $400; Effective Emerging $100) and Educational Leaders (Highly Effective $100; Effective Proficient $100), as well as TAP Stipends (as identified by the TAP process at each school for our TAP schools) based on the employee’s 2012-13 Performance Rating will be issued on February 28, 2014.
2) The Board approved an across the board 1.5% pay raise for all employees starting with the 2014-15 School Year and an additional across the board 3.5% pay raise for all employees with the 2016-17 School year.
3) The Board approved changes in the job status of AFJROTC Instructors from 12 month employees to 11 month employees starting with the 2014-15 school year.
Red River United Packs the Room for the Legislative Dinner
Mission statement for the event: “We gather here today, as educational professionals and elected leaders, to break bread while discussing the working, teaching, and learning realities of our public school system. We hope to find common ground and a shared purpose of reclaiming the promise of public education in the upcoming legislative session.”
Over 60 members and potential members from Caddo, Bossier, Red River, and Webster Parishes were in attendance.
MP Wray, Legislative Director of the Louisiana Federation of Teachers led the discussion of solution-driven initiatives and legislation that the union is pursuing this year. Members gave moving testimony and shared personal stories, at times challenging the legislators in attendance to understand the reality of teaching and working in the public school system. The discussion centered around eight policy areas: “standards” and the overuse of standardized test scores (testimony on the importance of planning time); lack of stakeholder inclusion in policy making; compensation and leave policy improvements (testimony on maternity leave, extended sick leave, evaluations, and tenure); student nutrition as a foundation for learning (spirited testimony and debate arose on the importance of seated lunch time for students); local autonomy for local dollars; prioritizing spending in our state budget (testimony on the importance of increasing MFP dollars and making sure our support personnel are not left out!); pensions (testimony on the PBI); and paycheck choice (testimony on the importance of leaving our right to payroll deduction alone).
Red River United urges all members to get involved in our legislative initiatives. Our COPE Committee (Committee on Political Education) is centered around member’s advocating for policy that will preserve public education and advance the health and welfare of our members. Legislators need to hear from you, so get involved with the RRU COPE Committee: https://redriverunited.org/category/ace-legs-cope/
PARCC Taskforce – Red River United Members Are At The Table
Red River United is At the Table! Princess Hill and Nikki Doughty represent RRU at PARCC.
The American Federation of Teachers, in conjunction with Red River President Jackie Lansdale and Caddo Parish School Board Chief Academic Officer Keith Burton, have nominated Princess Hill (Summer Grove Elementary) and Nikki Doughty (Keithville Elementary) for a rare opportunity to work with the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC).
This opportunity will allow access for Princess and Nikki to the work of the assessment consortia developing Common Core-aligned assessments. Finally educators are at the table! We believe this work will be a tremendous benefit to our union and to all of our local educators in Caddo and Bossier Parishes. The project is being supported by a grant from the Helmsley Charitable Trust, a New York City-based foundation, to PARCC to work with members of both the AFT and the NEA.
PARCC Project Information: Recruiting a total of 36 teachers for the project-18 English Language Arts and 18 mathematics teachers (NATION WIDE).
Patrick Woolbert joins RRU as the In-House Attorney!
Red River United Adds an In-House Attorney!
A Shreveport native, Patrick Woolbert, Esq. is the newest addition to the Red River United business attorneys. Mr. Woolbert earned his J.D. from the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at LSU, and his B.A. in Psychology from Centenary College of Louisiana.
While representing members of Red River United in grievance proceedings, Mr. Woolbert is able to analyze issues not only under school policy, but also according to Louisiana and Federal law. Mr. Woolbert is available to meet with you concerning your work-related issues, as well as other legal issues that you may have.
Outside of his duties at Red River United, Mr. Woolbert operates a client-focused law practice, specializing in personal injury, criminal defense, estate planning, and divorce.
Red River United Demands a #StrongStart for ALL Children!
Let’s continue to push for more access to early childhood education!
Last week, Red River United asked you to join a national effort to ask President Barack Obama to prioritize early childhood education in his State of the Union address by tweeting your support of a #StrongStart for every boy and girl.