Redwood City Teachers Association Rep. Council Minutes
Date: Monday February 3, 2020
Location: Red Morton CAB: 1400 Roosevelt, Redwood City
Food to be served at 3:30
Call to Order: At 3:54 p.m.
Previous business, things left undone (5-10 minutes) SIgnature campaign. A shout out to Angie from Henry Ford for gathering signatures for the Schools and Communities First Campaign. Carol mentioned that she heard at the State Council that we are behind in signature collection.
Motion to accept the minutes. Passed and accepted.
Site Collaboration, Reports (2 min. masterpiece): Clifford: Sandy thanked Kevin for collaborating twice last week with the staff regarding middle school behavior. New policies are being instituted for cell phones and dismissal. MIT: Have a 7 hour day all teaching day. Working every possible minute. Lunch is 33 minutes. North Star: New locks are installed. The keys are problematic. Not all buildings are keyed. Hoover: Still struggling with middle school behavior. Issues with the children being allowed to have their phones. Lots of midyear turnover has made the situation worse. Kennedy: The new office/staff room is open. The old office is being converted into classrooms. We will be able to keep our old staffroom. Still safety issues with blacktop. Taft: We have construction, too. Half the grass is torn up. Doesn’t seem to bother the children. There are still sub issues. Teachers were asked to keep their eye on a special preschool class while there was no teacher in the classroom. There are only three SLP teachers who are district teachers. All others are contract hired. The district is paying $30,000 to the agencies for the contracted SLP’s. Adelante Selby Lane: Being forced to departmentalize in third grade. It is very hard on the children. The children are not ready for this many transitions. Scheduling challenges. 4 and 5th graders eat before the younger children. Lunch is too late for the younger students. We only have 15 minute recess. The children forgo their snack because they want to play. Doing SEAL twice a day is very difficult. Not all the staff are receiving the bilingual stipend even though you have to have a BCLAD to work at the school. Roy Cloud: Concerns with middle school behaviors. A teacher is concerned that her aids are always being moved to other classrooms. Henry Ford: John Baker and Wendy Kelly visited after the last rep council meeting. Our steering committee has not met again to address the parking lot issues. We had a ‘kindness week’. The staff is doing NUA third party affirmations. We have a very friendly staff working well together. Equity: The Equity and Human Rights conference February 28 until March 1. If you are interested see Erin and you can sign up at the end of the meeting today. Orion: Some parents are struggling with the new demographics. The parents often go directly to the district office. Teachers are well funded. The school is now called Orion Alternative Elementary School. Nurses: Main issues with the special ed department. They keep saying that they are actively trying to hire a nurse. Meanwhile, the nursing team has to supply one to one support. Nurses are overworked. They are exhausted. Questions: 1. Taft is trying to departmentalize all the way down to first next year. Teachers were able to hold it off this year, but it is coming. The kindergarten students are now switching teachers once a day. This is hard for the children, but better than what the district wants to implement. Teacher asked, “What is the data and research regarding departmentalizing?” 2. Kids are not required to turn in cell phones. Kids are on social media and Hoover has had two fist fights in the past week. San Mateo High School has sealing envelope pouches where the kids are unable to use their phones for the day. Elections update: Steven: Next meeting the announcements for elections go out. Declaration of candidacy form will be given out. By March 23 the campaigning will start. There will be campaigning for three weeks. Elections are for the Exec Board, PAR Board, Representative Assembly (Conference is this summer), and the State Council (one position is open).
Schools and Communities First Signature Campaign
Reports. How is it going?
Negotiations update. Brian looked into the issue of taking pictures of students for discipline reasons. MIchelle Washington said absolutely not to do that. This Wednesday the Negotiations team has a release day to plan for the next negotiations. The next meeting with the district is the following week. The district has indicated that they accept our compensation proposal of 4% next year and the following year. The hourly rate is also proposed to be increased to $35/hour. They are seeking teachers with multiple masters received salary credit for each degree. The outdoor ed is proposed to be increased to $150. Article 5 was changed. Article 8 and 4: The district has put their foot down and they are being very disagreeable. Looking at Article 8.1. It is a total mess. We were unable to clarify what the article actually says. The District can’t agree on what class size means. Wendy Kelly, “Class size is not the actual number of students you physically have in your class.” The District is standing firm on not counting students in block classes twice. The District is claiming that counting students like that would bring the District down to their knees. The issue might be Kennedy where teachers teach six sessions and if students are counting for each subject then the contacts would be 180 per day. We proposed that meetings not be held on Thursday and that Thursday be an actual planning time each week. We talked about the workload. We said that there is no system to monitor our workload. Kevin: Comment - They keep adding on and adding on more and more work. Questions: Do we have a lawyer? The District has one. Brian: Michelle Washington is there as our rep from CTA. The District said that they are open to staff meetings being on a day other than Thursday.
Grievance Report:
Other: Kevin: Thursday, March 26 is the tentative date for a Benefits Fair. The head of the NUA will be the keynote speaker. It will be a sit down dinner.
President:School Visits: I would like to come and visit a school this each month. Perhaps Kevin will go to Henry Ford this month. Kevin will be at the board meeting on Wednesday.
Vice President
Treasurer
Secretary
Corresponding
Please make all attempts to have your 10 minute meeting this week.
Adjourned at:
Next meeting Monday March 2,, 2020