In an aggressive effort to clarify a heavily muddied School District controversy that exploded and became airborne in the last 24 hours, Supt. Patti Jaffe invited about 30 school officials and community members to a one-hour meeting this afternoon in the Board Room.
At the heart of the instant firestorm is a bold but quiet six-month attempt by the Assn. of Classified Employees to unionize certain classroom help not under their umbrella.
In advance of tonight’s guaranteed volatile 7 o’clock School Board meeting, Ms. Jaffe, flanked by deputies, opened by stating and repeating that “parent volunteers are not included in any of this.”
Never lurking far from the minds of Ms. Jaffe’s audience was the stance of ACE, the non-teachers union, and its leader, Debbie Hamme. It still was lurking at 3 o’clock. Ms. Hamme had been informed of the meeting but was not invited, Ms. Jaffe said.
Since September, ACE has been seeking to unionize certain parent-funded instructional assistants at Linwood Howe School.
But Ms. Jaffe was tight-lipped about the union’s efforts to successfully organize specific staffers at Lin Howe.
Similar parent-funded aides at El Marino Language School are expected to be the next target of the union. However, a noisy, gritty wall of resistance has been put up because this program has been in place for 26 years, and El Marino’s response to ACE is, “Where have you been?”
El Marino and other District parents are expected to protest in droves at tonight’s meeting and insist that the union is coming too late to the party. El Marino’s unique program has been in place for 26 years, and has been untouched all of that time by union organizers.
The widest concern in the room and in the community is a fear that El Marino’s aides will be ACE’s plump ace target.
Ms. Jaffe said she could not venture into those murky areas because she works for the School Board, and Board members have not yet publicly discussed the subject or chosen a course.
“I felt, I should say we all felt, it was important to straighten out some of the misinformation that has been flying around,” Ms. Jaffe said at the outset. “The most important message from us is that parent volunteers are not included in any of this. We love parent volunteers. We want parent volunteers. They are not going to be replaced by District employees.
“What ever comes out of all of this, I want you to know parent volunteers have nothing, nothing, nothing to do with any of this.”
But others at El Marino, who instruct but who are outside the purview of the Teachers Union are virtually certain to be the unionizing targets of ACE.
However, this afternoon little light was shined on their immediate future status.
