[Editor’s Note: The following letter, originating on the parentshaverights.org site, is believed to have numerous authors and wide backing, sources say. It has gone Culver City viral. The issue of replacing parent volunteers with paid union members – under reported threat of a lawsuit – has been circulating through the School District since at least last summer. It is due to arise at Tuesday night’s 7 o’clock School Board meeting in the District Office with a Board vote expected in two weeks, Tuesday, Feb. 28, at a televised meeting in Council Chambers.]
Dear Friends,
We are about to lose one of the best parts of our children's education: The ALLEM [Advocates for Language Learning, El Marino] Adjuncts – those hard workers who help your children in the classroom learn Spanish or Japanese.
Parents at other schools could also be at risk of losing similar enhancements to their children's education. Worse, parents' ability to “volunteer” may be reduced or eliminated.
Origin of the Crisis
According to the District, the origin of this “crisis” is the threat of a lawsuit against the District issued by the leader of the Association of Classified Employees, Debbi Hamme.
The District has told parents that all parent-funded positions and other volunteer work by parents that could be seen as taking away work from members of Ms. Hamme's association may have to stop. The parents would then be responsible to give enough funds to the District so that it could hire members of Ms. Hamme’s association for those positions.
Under this system, none of our current adjuncts would be guaranteed a position and ALLEM would have no control over the adjunct program. Linwood E. Howe had created and fundraised for four in-class instructional assistants for the 2010-11 year and had fundraised enough for six this year.
Under threat of legal action from ACE, the Linwood E. Howe Boosters agreed to a compromise, which reduced the scale of the program significantly. Instead of six instructional assistants, the parents had to scale back and have gone most of the year with three part-time positions.
Based on that experience, the head of the booster club at Lin Howe is not confident the program will be able to continue without a clear policy from the School Board.
The leaders of ALLEM at El Marino were also told that they could no longer run the adjunct program. They would have to turn over all the money they privately fundraised to the District and the District would hire the union members.
According to the heads of ALLEM, this would end the adjunct program completely. It would become too expensive, services would be drastically cut back and major donors would stop their support.
Restriction of Parents’ Rights
The problem is that it is so difficult for parents to fundraise, that we could never afford to maintain the positions we currently fund if they had the extra expenses associated with being a District employee and member of the Association.
Requiring state or federally funded positions to be union members should be applauded – such union membership helps their unions protect school funding at the state and federal level. But no such rationale is true for parent-funded positions – or positions in which parents volunteer. Our District has a strong, rich history of parent-funded and created positions in this District at almost all of the schools.
We also have a culture here where some of our parents volunteer hours and hours every day in the classroom or at the school site. Such efforts should be applauded, not threatened by a lawsuit. This is especially true considering the constant cutbacks forced by the state budget mess.
What Parents Need to Know
It is your duty as a parent to make sure the School Board makes the correct decision on this.
1. The first step is to pass this message on to your email lists, Facebook friends, etc.
2. The second step is to support the parents at the various schools who will be speaking at the next three School Board meetings on Feb. 14, Feb. 28 and March 13.
Please sign up at http://goo.gl/QEi2T or ParentsHaveRights.org to let us know which meeting you will attend. Stay tuned for updates at ParentsHaveRights.org.
