[Editor’s Note: Mr. Mielke is President of the Teachers Union.]
Friends –
I attended the California Federation of Teachers convention in Sacramento this past weekend. Some highlights:
One of the speakers, David Berliner, shared data showing that middle and high wealth districts in the U.S. perform as well as schools around the world. It is our high poverty schools where we see poor student achievement. As a union, we reaffirmed our goal of addressing poverty as one of the most important things we can do to improve our schools.
Jesse Sharkey, vice president of the Chicago teachers union, spoke about the Chicago strike and the importance of forging community alliances. After all, he said, teachers and parents have the same concerns: How can we attract and keep the best teachers, and what learning conditions can we create that increase student achievement?
Finally, AFT President Randi Weingarten spoke about the ongoing attacks from the right on public education and on our unions. Again, the message was: Partner with parents. They understand and they support what we're trying to do each and every day for their kids.
And as always, union leaders from around the state shared what they are doing in their local unions. I was able to share the new, collaborative partnership we're forging here in CCUSD. New Supe Dave LaRose has embraced this partnership. I am certain that this new way of doing business will pay dividends as we learn to work together more collaboratively.
After all, we're all here for the kids.
On a personal note, I was re-elected to a second two-year term as a state vice president. Also, the Culver City Federation of Teachers was recognized with three Communication Awards for editorials that appeared in the Los Angeles Times and thefrontpageonline.com. One pointed out that the focus on “firing all those bad teachers” obscures the more important statistic, that 50 percent of new teachers leave the profession within their first five years. The other two pieces shared data on charter schools. Despite the “charters are better” song that we keep hearing, Stanford's classic study found that 46 percent of charters are doing about the same as traditional public schools, 17 percent performed higher, while 37 percent did worse.
For every charter that is doing a better job than we are, two are doing worse. Clearly, private management and non-union teachers are not the keys to “educational reform.”
Finally, our conversations locally with CCUSD have convinced us that they are serious about addressing our sub-standard salary schedule. As you know, our bargaining goal is to bargain increases, which will bring us from the bottom to the median in Los Angeles County within a five-year period. Currently, we're about 10 percent below the median. What this means is that for each of the next five years, CCUSD will need to “beat” the county-wide average raise by 2 percent.
To succeed, CCUSD will need to make a real commitment to investing in its teachers.
The teams are back at the table after the break.
And finally, finally, we bargained a $10,000 retirement incentive for teachers retiring this year. We need to hit the magic number of 12 for this incentive to be triggered. Interested teachers, contact Leslie Lockhart at the District.
Mr. Mielke may be contacted at davidmielke@ccusd.org
