Dear Colleagues,
This week has been full of challenges as we continue to navigate what has become the most challenging teaching year for all of us. All of you are working hard every day to overcome these challenges. We recognize your efforts and know that you are doing your very best for your students.
Virtual Happy Hour
Next Friday, October 22, we will have a virtual happy hour from 5-6 p.m. To add to the fun, we are going to hold drawings for prizes that will be awarded prior to the event. Your name is entered in the drawing just for being a Local 795 member. See below for other ways you may get additional entries into the drawings. There is a grand prize drawing for those members who attend the virtual happy hour.
There are several other ways to get drawing entries for happy hour prizes:
You made a Make a Wish Donation (we are still accepting donations (here)
You created a Make a Wish team
You attended the Make a Wish walk
You post a photo on our CHTU Facebook page or email a photo to tunderhile@chtu.org wearing your CHTU shirt or jacket.
You join your building PTA (please email tunderhile@chtu.org once you have joined).
We will hold the drawing for prizes. Prizes include gift cards to Stone Oven, Mac’s Backs Books, Tommy’s, and Mr. Brisket. We will also raffle off bottles of wine from the CLE Urban Winery and beer from Boss Dog. There is still time to earn your tickets for the raffle. We hope you will participate and join us for a fun hour on Friday.
Conferences
Unfortunately, the administration is not accepting our Union’s suggestion to have equity across buildings and levels in the district when it comes to parent conferences. We were hopeful that the district’s decision would be to have staff work from home and conduct virtual conferences. This is not the case as decisions by individual building principals are being made on how conferences will be held. In fact, at the high school, a decision on conferences was made, shared with families and staff, and then reversed. We expect families to be confused as conference dates draw near, especially, for families that have children in multiple buildings. Once again we know that our members will need to clarify for our families since the administration is creating so much confusion.
Public Service Loan Forgiveness
There is very exciting and helpful news for many people that have student loan debt. If you have followed the news on this topic, you are aware that 98% of those applying for student loan debt relief have been denied. However, last week the U.S. Department of Education announced major changes to the Loan Forgiveness Program that will forgive loans for over 500,000 teachers and others. This has been a struggle that AFT took on, led the fight, and ultimately won. We know this is such great news for so many of you. AFT is currently revising its script for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness workshops to include these new changes. Once the script is complete our local Union will conduct a workshop for you to attend. If you want to know more about this week’s announcement you can click here.
Heights Halloween Festival
October 22nd CHTU will participate in the Heights Halloween Festival formerly known as the Candy Crawl from 5-7. If you live in the community please come with your children to trick or treat with the merchants of Lee Rd. CHTU will have a table in front of Stone Oven. If you would like to help pass out candy please email Karen at krego@chtu.org.
In Union,
Karen Rego
CHTU President