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  • Posted on:
    March 26th, 2012

    March President’s Message

    March President’s Message

    by Karen McCann

    March is shaping up to be a great month!  Victory is in the air with our FEA lawsuit moving directly to the Florida Supreme Court.  This will expedite the ruling.  We also fought back SB 1718, the Parent Empowerment bill, also known as the “parent trigger” bill.  On an early Saturday morning I went to Tallahassee with Mary Beriau, a GHS teacher, to testify at the senate committee meeting about this bill.  The parent trigger bill allowed recruiters, who work for corporations such as The Parent Revolution, to go door to door to signup parents of an F rated school to turn the school into a corporate owned charter school.  Charter schools, overall, are no more successful than traditional public schools.  It’s just another move toward the privatization of public education and the deterioration of unions. 

    We also finished collective bargaining, members voted an overwhelming yes and the school board approved our contract and salary negotiations at the March 20th school board meeting.  Special thanks to our collective bargaining team members who have volunteered their time since we began meeting last June.  They are: Jackie Michael (HSCS), Karen Rerra (Stephen Foster), Travis Walker (GHS), Robert Hessels (HBMS), Paula Anderson (A.Quinn) and Mary Beriau (GHS). When you get a chance, please say thank-you to these dedicated members. 

    Many of you have called to ask when you will receive your bonus, if eligible, and step increase (ESP’s).  Teachers already received their step increase in August.  ESP’s will see their step increase in the April 30th paycheck.  All ESP retroactive (back pay) increase and the bonus amount to make up the 3% will be in the May 31st pay period.  The reason this will take some time is that every step or cell on the pay schedule will be given a different amount of bonus pay.  Teachers deduct the step increase that you already received from the 3% that you contribute to FRS and the bonus check will be the remainder (up to a cap of $1200). I will send out a chart in April that will show the amount of bonus for each step.  Hopefully, this will help you over the summer. 

    Don’t forget to use your FEA Access card and our local member benefit discounts.  Again, I have saved my entire month’s dues by using these member discounts. 

    Look for our new web page to be up and running next month and have a great Spring Break!

  • Posted on:
    March 21st, 2012

    February President’s Message

    February President’s Message

    by Karen McCann

     

    I’d like to start this month’s ALERT by answering some questions that are frequently being called into the office. Here they are:

    What is happening with the F.E.A. 3% lawsuit?
         The case was heard in Circuit Court late October 2011 in Tallahassee. We have yet to get a ruling but hear that one should be coming soon. If the ruling goes in our favor, we will then see if the state of Florida appeals it. The longer this gets dragged out, the more money the state will need to pay back. This is an incentive for them not to appeal.

    When will we see our negotiated pay bonus?
         The offer of getting back the 3% being taken out, minus the step increase given to teachers in August, still stands. This is up to $1200. ESP’s will also get their year’s experience retroactive and the same bonus amount as teachers as soon as we complete bargaining. Good News: In our last bargaining session, we asked the board to compress the ESP salary schedule from 40 years to the top to only 35 years and they have agreed. This is a huge improvement for the salary schedule of ESP’s and we will continue to negotiate this compression.
    We are not finished negotiating teacher language. Senate Bill 736 has very negatively impacted teacher evaluation, job security and the overall love of teaching by making the teaching profession a test-and-punish profession. We have written language to ensure that annual contract teachers who have 3 years of effective and/or highly effective evaluations get their contract renewed the following school year. This is not a PSC contract. It merely images the “performance” aspect of SB736. So far, the board has not agreed to this saying that it conflicts with the law. We disagree. The other issue that we do not agree on is lesson plans. We say that teachers are spending too much time outside the contract day doing lesson plans. ACEA wants to limit the amount of time that teachers spend outside the contractual 7 1/2 hours. This is a major reason for the Lesson Plan Survey that was sent out. Teachers: Please fill it out and return it to us as soon as possible.

    What is the latest with our web page?
         I’m excited to say that we have hired a local professional company and they are working on a new and improved web page. It should be up and running by the time we return from spring break. We formed a web page committee that interviewed several people and decided on Creative Communications based on price and what they offered in a web page. This new web page will have the capability of a “password protected” members only page. We will be able to send out surveys to our members on this link and keep members informed of political action.
     

  • Posted on:
    March 9th, 2012

    The Parent Trigger was Defeated

    The Parent Trigger Bill (SB 1718) was defeated in the Florida Senate today (March 9th). The vote was 20-20 ( to pass, they needed 21 votes) and Senator Oelrich voted no.  Please call his office at (850) 487-5020 and thank him for his vote. Please also thank his staff for their incredible patience with all of our calls and emails.  They were troopers!

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