Representing Teachers and School Employees in Northwest Louisiana
This business was founded by a former teacher and RRU member.
$100 off tours to Ireland for all Caddo and Bossier school employees.
Contact 318-658-3738 or brianonounain@hotmail.com for more information.
Weingarten rights guarantee an employee the right to Union representation during an investigatory interview. These rights, established by the Supreme Court, in 1975 in the case of J’. Weingarten Inc,, must be claimed by the employee. The supervisor has no obligation to inform an employee that s/he is entitled to Union representation.
If called to a meeting with a supervisor, repeat the following to administration when the meeting begins: “If this discussion could in any way lead to my being disciplined or terminated, or affect my personal working conditions, I respectfully request that my union representative or worksite leader be present at this meeting.
Without representation, I choose not to answer any questions.”
What is an Investigatory Interview?
An investigatory interview is one in which a Supervisor questions an employee to obtain information which could be used as a basis for discipline or asks an employee to defend his/her conduct. If an employee has a reasonable belief that discipline or discharge may result from what s/he says, the employee has the right to request Union representation.
Examples of such an interview are:
- The interview is part of the employer’s disciplinary procedure or is a component of the employer’s procedure for determining whether discipline will be imposed.
- The purpose of the interview is to investigate an employee’s performance where discipline, demotion or other adverse consequences to the employee’s job status or working conditions are a possible result.
- The purpose of the interview is to elicit facts from the employee to support disciplinary action that is probable or that is being considered, or to obtain admissions of misconduct or other evidence to support a disciplinary decision already made.
- The employee is required to explain his/her conduct, or defend it during the interview, or is compelled to answer questions or give evidence.
An employee must state to the employer that he/she wants a Union representative present; the employer has no obligation to ask the employee if she/he wants a representative.
Weingarten Rules
When an investigatory interview occurs, the following rules apply:
Rule 1 – The employee must make a clear request for Union representation before or during the interview. The employee can’t be punished for making this request.
Rule 2 – After the employee makes the request, the supervisor has 3 options. S/he must either:
Rule 3 – If the supervisor denies the request and continues to ask questions, this is an unfair labor practice and the employee has a right to refuse to answer. The employee cannot be disciplined for such refusal but is required to sit there until the supervisor terminates the interview. Leaving before this happens may constitute punishable insubordination.
An employee has NO right to the presence of a Union representative where:
Even in the above four (4) circumstances, the employee can still ask for representation. Most employers will permit a representative to attend even when not required to.
The October meeting of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education was an endurance trial. Ever since BESE reduced its monthly meetings from two days of committee hearings to one, the agenda has been very crowded. The board’s current practice is to hold committee meetings on a Tuesday, during which all testimony is heard on agenda items. A full board meeting is then held on a Wednesday, when the full board votes on recommendations made by committees. The full board meetings generally conclude within a couple of hours, while committee meetings have been stretching late into the night. The October committee meetings strained everyone’s patience. A meeting on the controversial Common Core State Standards that was supposed to begin at 2:30 P.M. was three hours late getting started. Citizens who came expecting to speak were not allowed to begin their testimony until about 6: 30 P.M., and were limited to two minutes apiece. Even so, the meeting did not end until nearly 11 P.M. Parents who had traveled from as far away as Shreveport and spent the night in Baton Rouge waiting to speak were disappointed to learn that they would only be allowed to make brief comments. BESE President Chas Roemer said that board members travel the state and hold public meetings on issues, and voiced no support for a meeting schedule that is more convenient for the public.
Several hours of sometimes heated discussion, the board decided to seek a new opinion on the validity of the Value Added Model formula and to increase training offered to educators about the model, but took no action on a request to investigate changes apparently made to some teachers’ value added scores. On the agenda was a request from BESE Member Lottie Beebe to create a panel of statisticians and mathematicians to determine if Louisiana’s Value Added formula is reliable and credible. LFT President Steve Monaghan asked, “Is the Value Added Model a valid instrument for measuring teacher effectiveness? Some respected mathematicians believe that Value Added formulae have margins of error better than 30 percent. If that is true, then it is simply wrong to judge our teachers, our schools and our students by such a shaky instrument.” The formula has been frequently criticized, and there have apparently been several behind the scenes adjustments made to the formula and to individual teacher’s scores. While Dr. Beebe recommended three qualified individuals to look into the formula, the board approved Roemer‘s substitute motion to instead seek a “third party” review of the formula. Dr. Beebe’s motion would have incurred no additional expense by BESE; it is unclear whether Roemer’s substitute will require a contract, or how much the review will cost. The board declined to act on Dr. Beebe’s request for a look into waivers of VAM scores that may have been granted to some teachers. Monaghan said that no written policies have been developed by the Department of Education to guide the issuance of waivers by anyone on either the state or local level. “Teachers evaluated under VAM have no way to legally challenge the scores imposed on them, and yet an unknown number of scores have apparently been either waived or otherwise adjusted,” Monaghan said. Even after LFT Legislative Director Mary-Patricia Wray pointed out that alterations to Teacher Effectiveness Ratings made by the state superintendent of education may violate the law, the board took no further action on the matter. On the agenda’s final Value Added item, Superintendent of Education John White conceded that more stakeholder training is needed. The board unanimously approved a motion to conduct more training in the future.
Turning a deaf ear to complaints that controversial Common Core State Standards are not being properly implemented in Louisiana, the state education board tried to deflect criticism by shifting responsibility for the standards to local school systems. The BESE action was contained in a hastily contrived agenda item that was not properly advertised, and will probably have to be reconsidered in order to be legally adopted. The board’s tweaks to Common Core rules were aimed at angry parents who fear that a national curriculum is being imposed. BESE members reaffirmed their commitment to Common Core, but did nothing to satisfy educators who said the state has been derelict in its duty to prepare teachers and students for more demanding curricula. “We believe that the ideas behind Common Core have merit,” LFT President Steve Monaghan said, “but like so many other education reforms that have been imposed recently, there has been a failure to prepare and provision our teachers, our children, and communities for the changes.” At a committee meeting Tuesday, BESE members listened to hours of testimony. Much of it came from parents who fear federal intrusion into schools. Comments favoring Common Core were given by corporate sponsors and some teachers who were asked leading questions by pro-CCSS board members. At Wednesday’s meeting of the full board, a new agenda item was introduced in response to the parental concerns. Part of that resolution says no curriculum can be forced on a local school system, “including any that may be recommended, endorsed or supported by any federal or state program or agency.” Instead, BESE intends to give local districts and teachers more autonomy in choosing textbooks and learning materials. That did not sit well with educators like Monaghan, who said from the start that BESE and the department of education have shirked their duty to prepare for more demanding course work. The LFT president pointed out that the state had promised to provide curriculum information as part of an agreement to waive some sections of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. BESE, he said, is “passing the burden on to teachers and schools.” The motion also guaranteed the public the right to review textbooks and other materials, and promised that student social security numbers won’t be used as test identification numbers. When audience members objected to a new agenda item being adopted without proper notification or a committee hearing, BESE President Chas Roemer said he believed the item was “germane” to the issues under discussion.
Two charter school organizations that currently operate in Louisiana were given permission to open schools in Lafayette, East Jefferson and East Baton Rouge Parishes, despite parental and school board opposition. Lafayette parents and concerned citizens voiced opposition to decision, after the parish school board voted 8-2 to reject the charter applications at the local level. Lafayette Superintendent of Schools Pat Cooper spoke against his board’s decision. Cooper said the need for new facilities in Lafayette convinced him to support the charter expansion. Some Lafayette parents, however, said that voters are ready to pass a tax to cover the cost of new construction. The charter schools, they argued, will exclude the most needy children because of their geographic location and their “first come, first serve” enrollment style.
A new rule approved by BESE will allow non-public tuition organizations to advertise in ways that promote particular private schools. If the change goes into effect, it will overturn a current regulation prohibiting the promotion of a particular school over other qualified schools. The tuition organizations allow Louisiana taxpayers to get a 95% rebate on donations, which are sent to non-public schools on behalf of parents and students. The rebate has been controversial because of its cost to the state, and because the governor vetoed a similar measure that would have allowed rebates for donations to public schools. The new rule must still be published in the Louisiana Register and opened for public comment before it can go into effect.
This is the tale of two visions.
Join us in Reclaiming the Promise.
Proponents of one vision, disguised as reform, hold closed-door meetings to design a plan to shut the public out of public schools by fixating on testing, cutting investments in education, promoting austerity, and using the remaining funds to turn a profit—not to help kids.
Believers in the other vision want parents, educators, school staff, students and community partners to unite to ensure great neighborhood public schools that help each and every child succeed, no matter his or her ZIP code.
Support our vision to Reclaim the Promise of public education for all children.
Reclaiming the promise of public education is about:
* Fighting for neighborhood public schools that are safe, welcoming places for teaching and learning;
* Ensuring teachers and school staff are well-prepared, are supported, have manageable class sizes and have time to collaborate so they can meet the individual needs of every child;
* Making sure our children have an engaging curriculum that focuses on teaching, not testing, and includes art, music and the sciences; and
* Ensuring children, their families and the community have access to wraparound services to meet their social, emotional and health needs.
This is a vision that works. It’s a vision of what parents want for their kids and what communities want for their future. It’s a movement that can stop the privatizers, profiteers and austerity hawks in their tracks. It will help our public schools become centers of communities, give voice to those closest to the classroom, and fulfill public education’s purpose as an anchor of democracy; a gateway to racial, social and economic justice; and a propeller of our economy.
Reclaiming the Promise is not a top-down edict; it’s solution-driven unionism and community-driven reform. And speaking of that, today, we proudly announced the winners of the 2013 AFT Prize for Solution-Driven Unionism. This prize recognizes groups that collaborated to develop programs with concrete results. One winner developed a successful student-learning alternative to high-stakes testing assessments, while another reduced its state’s healthcare costs by $1.6 billion. They are proof that when the community joins forces with those who serve our children and the public every day, we can reclaim the promise.
This is why we are asking you to stand with us and push back on privatization, austerity, mass schools closures, and test fixation, which have not moved the needle in the right direction. It is time we reclaim the promise of public education—not as it is today or as it was in the past, but as it can be—to fulfill our collective obligation to help all children succeed. This will be central to our work in the coming years, and the AFT executive council passed a resolution this week formalizing this as AFT policy.
Stand with us to Reclaim the Promise of public education.
We are at a pivotal moment—a moment we must seize without further detours, distractions and delays.
In unity,
Randi Weingarten
AFT President
P.S. Find out more about Reclaiming the Promise by visiting aft.org/promise. To read more about the AFT Prize for Solution-Driven Unionism, go to aft.org/about/sdu/
Affiliated with the AFL-CIO, CLC, AFT, and LFT
We pride ourselves on being local and vocal. This means that there is always someone to answer the phone if you have a question or concern. We are focused on solutions. If you have a problem we are happy to discuss it with you at the school site or at our office in Shreveport. More than anything we consider ourselves family. Our members are at the heart and soul of everything we do, from policy/law proposals, to professional development. You are RRU!
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The 2010 Legislative Luncheon had an excellent turnout. Shreveport Times reporter Nicole Blake Johnson wrote a very nice article detailing the event. Shreveport Times photographer Henrietta Wildsmith was on hand to capture a few snapshots of the discussion. Attendees included area legislators, Walter Lee of the Louisiana Board of Elementary & Secondary Education, Caddo Parish School Board members, the Superintendent and other school administrators, PTA leaders, CFT/SP Executive Board members, and members of the Committee on Political Education (C.O.P.E.).
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Picture 1: Caddo Parish School Board Member Steve Riall (District 1), CPSB Assistant Superintendent of Academic Affairs Wanda Gunn, and CPSB Director of Communications & Marketing Tricia Grayson
Picture 2: CFT/SP President Jackie Lansdale
Picture 3: Seated are Louisiana State Representative Richard Burford, House District 7 (R); 4th BESE District/Vice President Walter Lee; La. State Senator Lydia Jackson, Senate District 39 (D); La. State Senator Sherri Smith Cheek, Senate District 38 (R); and standing is CPSB Attorney Reginald Abrams
Picture 4: CPSB Member Barry F. Rachal and CPSB Superintendent Dr. Gerald Dawkins
Picture 5: La. State Senator Lydia Jackson
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