[Editor’s Note: The president of the Teachers Union dispatched the following message to his members.]
Friends,
One benefit of having developed a trusting partnership relationship with School District management and its School Board is that bargaining has gone from an annual adversarial battle to a collaborative process. Both teams work to achieve fair compensation as quickly as possible so that we can spend most of our time working together on student achievement.
For example, our talks this year were completed in late October, freeing up all of us to work on developing effective PLC's.
Supt. Dave LaRose contacted me (yesterday) and shared that the School Board Tuesday night authorized him to contact me regarding getting next year's negotiations started now. His team, unlike previous administrations, has a clear sense of how much money they have. They are anxious to get bargaining underway and completed so that we can focus all our energy on making sure all of our students succeed.
So…we need to hear from you what your concerns are. In putting together our bargaining proposal, we generally start with the items that we were unable to achieve in the previous year. But we also need to hear from you. Without delay, pass on your bargaining concerns to your site rep or to any member of our bargaining team: Casey Chabola, Natalie Gualtieri, Carmen Campos or me.
P.S. Just a short personal note: I am part of the CCHS team that has been getting PLC training from Mike Mattos and Anthony Muhammad. I am excited about the process, especially the focus on early identification and intervention for students who are falling behind. As a teacher and as a parent, I am keenly aware of how easily it is to fall behind, and how few opportunities kids have during the regular school day to catch up.
The union will make sure that however we structure intervention time, that your workload or work hours are not increased. I am confident we can protect the integrity of your contractual work day while providing much needed assistance to kids needing help.
Mr. Mielke may be contacted at davidmielke@ccusd.org
