Election information!

Hi EU members,

As you know a very important election is coming up this Tuesday, March 3. I very strongly encourage all of you to vote. You each know what's best for our communities, our students and our environment, so please go have your say.

This post is not to endorse individual candidates, but to lead you to resources about issues that affect us as teachers so you can make informed decisions about the election. Here are some notes and resources that you might find useful:

Presidential Primary Elections: Unfortunately if you are not registered with political party you cannot vote for a presidential candidate, but you CAN vote on the other items on the ballot.

Alameda County Board of Education Elections: In Alameda Country, there are 2 highly contested seats in this election, mostly because of charter rights issues. Alameda Country voters will vote for a candidate for the 2nd Trustee Area and the 5th Trustee area. The full list of candidates is here.

• Note: CTA is endorsing Angela Norman for 2nd Trustee Area (Oakland), you can learn more about her here and here. In terms of supporting charters, she is part of United Oakland Educators, a group of unionized charter leaders and other ally educators which I as EU president am also a part. She is also part of a state level advocacy and has been inviting and encouraging local union charter leaders to become more involved at the state level. 

Prop 13: This proposition is a school modernization bond to repair old and unsafe school buildings across California. It is not a tax increase, and it has nothing to do with property taxes. Here is a recent New York Times article about the proposition.

CTA Endorsements: Each election the CTA produces a comprehensive list of candidate recommendations based on what the organization believes will benefit teachers and students. You can find their recommendations here.

By no means is Envision United saying that you need to align yourself with any notes here or the California Teachers Association, please make your own evidence-based decisions.

Go Vote!

Katherine

2/11- Bargaining Update

Hi EU members and Envision teachers,

We have now met twice with Envision Education to make changes to the contract.  The Articles of the contract we are working on adding or changing are:

Special Education: Working on compliance and other support & sustainability issues.

Evaluation: Working on the piloted evaluation system that was created by the evaluation task force from the prior contract.

Grievance: Ensuring our ability to grieve all articles of the contract (the current language excludes some articles from the grievance process).

Academic Freedom: Proposal of EU members as part of a committee making network decisions on common curricula. Also proposed that all teachers have access to a curriculum.

Assignments and Vacancies: Making the process for assignments and transfers more transparent.

Safety: Ensuring compliance with safety standards and clarifying the language in the contract around reasonable physical control during student fights etc..

Class Size:  Ensuring every student has a class size that maximizes their learning opportunities, ELL support services, and notification of new students when they are assigned to a class. 

Compensation: As we get further into the process and other financial implications are settled we will be better able to discuss the financial piece of the contract.

Catastrophic Leave Bank: The ability to donate sick days to catastrophically ill colleagues.  This may be a separate proposal or some of our concerns may be folded into the existing LEAVES article. 

Leaves: Ensuring your ability to use personal necessity when you need it.

Retirement: We are proposing the inclusion of  a Pre-retirement reduced service option with STRS.

Hours, Duties and Work Year: Further clarifying and codifying what is required and what is not under the contract with relation to our work day.

Discipline and Discharge: We will make decisions on what to bring up in this article based on further discussion regarding the evaluations article.

Duration: Updates to contract years.

Dues: Removed obsolete language and dates.

At each bargaining session, we propose changes and Envision Education also proposes changes to each of these articles.  We continue to meet until we reach agreement on all articles.  As you can see we have a lot of work to do!  Please reach out to any bargaining team member, site rep, or officer if you have any questions or concerns.

@ EA contact John Kittredge john@envisionacademy.org
@ IAHS contact Katherine Lambert katherine@es-impact.org
@ IAMG contact Court Shuller cshuller@es-impact.org
@ CAT contact Michelle Torres mtorres@es-cat.org

Hi EU members and Envision teachers,

Our contract with Envision Education is ending this year, and your union reps have been working to prepare to bargain a new contract. We had our first bargaining preparation meeting yesterday, and will be meeting with Envision Education management next Monday for our first bargaining session. The EU team that will be attending bargaining meetings will be Michelle Torres, Katherine Lambert, John Kittredge and Court Shuller (with Denise Huey as alternate for Court).

Yesterday the Envision United bargaining team, plus 2 additional reps and our CTA Staff, Gray, met to discuss what EU will be asking for in our new contract. We then took articles directly from the contract and drafted new versions that include new or different language. These drafts will be presented to Envision Education on Monday. We prepared drafts of Article 11: Hours, Duties and Work Year, Article 12: Employee Leave, and Article 16: Class Size and Workload.

If you’d like more details about the article drafts please talk to your school reps. Those present at the meeting yesterday were John Kittredge, Jessi Stein, Michelle Torres, Denise Huey, Taryn Elliot and Katherine Lambert.

Also, you can expect a more detailed update about bargaining after each session starting next week.