Volume 17, Issue 12
August, 2009
MCALLEN AFT NEWS
MAKING A DIFFERENCE
THANKS TO YOU IN THE LEGISLATIVE SESSION!
Once again we were able to accomplish much. Things were done by a combination of grass-roots lobbying and aggressive advocacy inside the Capitol.
Thanks to you a pay raise was adopted. During the Memorial Day weekend more than 4,700 email letters from you were sent in less than 48 hours. This helped build a bipartisan Senate majority that passed a real, across-the-board pay raise, worth at least $800 above the local step for 2009-2010, and averaging roughly $,1000 above step.
Thanks to you, you were not turned into a “guinea pig”. When there was an attempt by Senator Robert Duncan (Lubbock) to turn school employees into health insurance “guinea pigs” in a state cost cutting experiment with “alternative payment systems, “ your voice was heard. Legislators using your language killed the pilot projects.
Thanks to you charter school expansion without accountability was blocked. A bill to weaken pesticide-safety regulations was amended. Protection against improper disclosure of confidential background-check data concerning school employees was restored.
Thanks to you the paraprofessional tuition assistance program was saved and expanded. A bill pushed by higher-education officials to get rid of tuition scholarships for classroom paraprofessionals was turned inside out so completely that we ended up winning a 47-percent increase in funding for this program.
This program has awarded 58,000 scholarships since its inception in 1998 at Texas AFT’s initiative.
Thanks to you bills to weaken the Safe Schools Act fell by the wayside. Grading authority is greater—SB2003: Teachers can’t be required to assign a minimum grade. School employees get to decide which type of leave they will use (state or local).
Thanks to you our presence was felt. There is more work to be done on school finance, benefits for retirees, and Children’s Health Ins. Some changes were made in testing and accountability. At the third grade level, passing of the 3rd grade TAKS reading to be promoted to 4th grade—teacher judgment is now more of a factor. An extra year to turn around low TAKS ratings before closure.
A tighter limit has been passed on local test to prep students for TAKS. Stricter cap on locally required tests—not more than 10% of instructional days may be used.
Common sense has been allowed in place of arbitrary reassignments of faculty at a “repurposed” campus. There are to be new test-based standard of “college readiness” for school ratings and high school graduation.
Schools will soon face a whole additional set of ten to twenty accountability tripwires that could trigger a low-performance rating and punitive sanctions.
NEW FIGHTS
*To create a balanced accountability system.
*To foster an obligation of other stakeholders to support strong, effective public schools.
Thanks to you—we will be successful if you and your colleagues are involved.
We will create improvements in the conditions under which children come to schools and where the parents, the school district and the McAllen AFT are partners for strong community schools.
We will be able to involve others as follows:
*Advocates for students
*Active political players
*Educators ready to step up
*Educators ready to step up and engage the community in public schools.
HOW DO WE DO THIS?
*Elect strong, responsive school board members.
*Elect responsible state legislators
*Everybody must get involved in politics—we can no longer justify sitting on the sidelines.
*Build up financial resources to be major players in the political world.
To be major players in the political world
*The time is now—not next month or next year.
ARE YOU READY TO STEP FORWARD?
Call us at the McAllen AFT office at 1500 Dove. Our number is 682-1143.
INCLUDED IN THIS NEWSLETTER IS THE EXPLANATION OF THE PDAS TEACHER SELF-REPORT FORM DUE DURING THE FIRST THREE WEEKS OF SCHOOL—FOR
YOUR INFORMATION.