August, 2011
Volume 19, Issue 12
EYES ON THE BOARD
THE LATEST
Laura Torres and Erica Rodriguez were approved as Asst. Principals at Lincoln.
Pedro Garcia was approved as an Asst. Principal at Jackson.
Kevin O’Hanlon, attorney from Austin, discussed the Disaster Tax Rate Option—allowing districts to use Maintenance and Operations monies for other purposes. This will allow McAllen ISD to get extra money without raising taxes—approximately $15 million. Mr. O’Hanlon said he would send McAllen AFT a copy of the letter he shared with McAllen ISD. We are waiting for his information.
The Self-Insured and Fully Insured Health Plan and Related Services are under discussion. Nothing is secure (including the PCI Clinic and Deer Oakes). Some board members feel the costs for prescription drugs and wellness are too high. We are carrying a petition when we visit schools to support the clinic. Please ask to sign this clinic petition.
The beauty of the PCI Clinic is the $5 Co-Pay that includes $5 for MRI’s, CAT Scans, Nuclear Medicine, and OBGYN and Cardiac Ultrasound.
Your family members are included if they are on your health plan. Access to health insurance is one of the most important benefits. Preventative Care Institute (PCI Clinic) was started when McAllen AFT lobbied the McAllen Board of Education for 2 1/2 years for its creation.
The PCI Clinic’s number is 971-0077. The hours of operation are Monday-Friday 8 a.m.-6 p.m. Walk-ins are accepted daily from 8 a.m-11a.m. and 2 p.m.-5:30 p.m. Use the clinic and save money. Retirees can use the Clinic, but must pay regular price.
YOUR LIFE IN TEXAS EDUCATION
If you need assistance, you may call your President, Ruth Skow, from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. The cell number for Ruth is 607-0193 and the office number is 682-1143.
If you are written up by your principal, you have ten (10) working days to respond. Call right away to that we can help you write your response. If you go over the ten (10) days, everything that is written in the memo is true—that is—will affect your PDAS.
Special Note—from Martha Owen our McAllen AFT Attorney—school emails can be requested through open records. You need to be sure when emailing your school friends that you use home emails only.
HOME VISITS
We visited more than 235 of our members this summer. We had a few interesting pieces of information to share.
Members had a cat or a dog or both. Many families had grandparents living with the family. Many members shared their homes and projects they had been working on. One family with husband and wife—our members— showed us their new baby’s room. One grandmother—our member—showed off the new quilt she was making for her granddaughter—shades of green—wow!
Ballot Box
Because elected officials have a direct effect on your job, your rights and your family’s and community’s well-being, it is critical that you get involved in the 2012 elections.
As we look at what is happening across the country, that election takes on even greater significance. Every day, in state after state, public employees and the services our communities depend upon are under assault. And while we continue to push back against those assaults, the surest recourse is the ballot box. Information will be coming soon.
Save Public Schools
We're not big fans of the state's current system of school accountability, based as it is on standardized test scores that give a frequently false appearance of precise measurement of student achievement. But we cannot forbear to point out that state and federal ratings derived from the testing data consistently show charter schools performing less well, on the whole, than traditional public schools.
The 2010 state accountability ratings released last month illustrate the point. While 1.2 percent of traditional campuses received an "academically unacceptable" rating, the percentage of charter campuses at that lowest rating level was more than five times as high--6.4 percent.
(This disparity likely would have been considerably greater if nearly 40 percent of charter campuses had not chosen to be measured by the state's more lenient "alternative" accountability standard. Meanwhile, fewer than 4 percent of traditional public schools benefited from the "alternative" rating scheme.)
Assessing Charter Schools
Adequate Yearly Progress" accountability ratings for 2010 published this month show the same pattern. This second, federally prescribed yardstick for school performance, also based largely on standardized test scores, shows that 13.6 percent of charter campuses "Missed AYP"--more than triple the "Missed AYP" percentage for regular public schools. Charter boosters have a well-rehearsed response to such recurring disparities. They say that they are dealing with disproportionately large numbers of at-risk pupils.
But even when you control for students' socioeconomic characteristics, these privately managed schools on the whole show no performance advantage over traditional public schools--particularly in states like Texas where oversight of charter schools has been weak.
Think carefully about charter schools.