COMMITTEE REPORTS
ARC (Appraisal Review Committee): Met December 18 to update on SLO and intervention support. Next meeting March 19.
COMMUNITY IN SCHOOLS TASK FORCE: Met January 10. We received an update concerning the interviews, focus groups, and surveys that have been going on. Next meeting February 14.
CUYAHOGA COUNTY EDUCATORS SUMMIT: Met January 25. We could not attend.
DISCIPLINE: Discipline data from around the district was analyzed at the December 7 meeting. Next meeting February 27 and 28 got delayed until March 15 and 16.
DLT (District Leadership Team): Met December 20. January 31 was cancelled.
ER&D: Managing Anti-Social Behavior class will start in March.
GRADING TASK FORCE: A meeting was held January 17 where the team reworked the board policy statement to include things they thought should be emphasized based on reading that were given. Inner ring policies were compared. The next meeting is in March which will be last for now giving proposed policy statement to policy committee. Ms. Gould is thinking we’d reconvene next school year with more elementary representation and parents to work in administrative guidelines for implementation of the policy which don’t currently exist. He group will eventually survey teachers on current practices and figure out best way to roll it out and get standardization within same subjects grade levels among other things.
INSURANCE: The insurance renewal rates are up 3.5% since last year. Single coverage is worth $10,411 per year/ Family coverage is at $27,592 per year. Next meeting March 13.
MASTER TEACHER: The MTC met on February 8. Our scoring day is scheduled for May 11.
MOBILIZATION: #PublicSchoolSchoutOut will occur the week of February 12-16. Members are encouraged to participate.
OFT: Officers will be joined by Tiffiny Underhile, Marty Javorek, and TeKara Ray at the OFT convention February 22-24.
PTA: The January 22 meeting at the Board office was very informative. PTA has a speaker at the high school on February 26 at the same time as the Heights Coalition forum. PTA and the Coalition will be sharing babysitting services.
RETIREMENT: Vote for Dale Price and Ben Pfeiffer in the upcoming STRS election for active seats. There is a possibility that the STRS will scale back the number of meetings per year they have so they don’t have to listen to as much public comment and so they can be less transparent. Dan MacDonald would like active members to consider showing up enmasse for the June 21 STRS meeting in Columbus as show of unity and to show dissatisfaction with the elimination of the cost of living increases.
SOCIAL: Save the date of March 23 for our Spring Social at Nighttown. Food to be determined. Not too early to start planning your building’s basket for our scholarship raffle.
SUMMIT: met January 27. Bob Swaggard updated us on the Naviance program and the interest of administration to expand the usage to middle school. He also discussed the “Strive for Reading” federal grant. Ed Services is trying to determine if it is better to write our own grant or to be part of a group. CHTU surveyed staff about general literacy concerns to help guide Ed Services. The results from our survey on workplace satisfaction led us to focus on Expectations for students and student discipline (part of which may be helped by the new discipline task force), internal communications plan (Dixon and Klein to write a joint memo about our next steps), and administration support (looking at the data for more clarity). We discussed elementary dismissal as far as teacher liability and safety concerns. Elementary principals are getting together to discuss and we put it on our February 7 agenda. Dr. Lombardo presented phase 2 of staff recognition. MS and HS schedules were brought up. Rego and Womack spoke about the MS schedule for next year.
Summit met February 7 for an abbreviated meeting. We looked in more depth at the elementary dismissal concerns and pinpointed the information we need to have the administrative legal team look at. We also discussed elementary conferences at length. There is need for more time, placement at the optimal times of year, and not attached to a regular work day. We will continue to look to see if there can be modifications made for next year.
1. Grievances:
Nothing current
2. Administration Union Concerns:
Elementary Testing and Pacing: President Klein is continuing to have discussions with Superintendent Dixon over concerns.
Elementary Dismissal: Will continue to report on this through our Summit report. We will report on liability issues related to dismissal at our Executive Board meeting.
Morale: This will be reported out as workplace satisfaction in the Summit report.
Middle School Referrals: Stewards and officers are continuing to have discussions with administration at the middle school around referrals not being processed. The group met to set expectations for staff and administration. Currently referrals are caught up.
3. Fact Findings
-a member was brought in for a fact-finding because the member had not completed Public Works training. The issue was resolved with non-disciplinary counseling.
-a member is being called to a fact-finding regarding concerns over job responsibilities; specifically grading procedures and documentation of student grades.
4. Heights Coalition for Public Education – February 12 was our 2nd forum where participants discussed several articles on Charter Schools, Eva Moskowitz, Betsy DeVos and John Dewey. The last meeting will be held February 26 where several elected officials will help our group learn how to lobby representatives. We also plan on forming our legislative agenda. Teachers should attend.
5. College Credit Plus – We have been trying to come to agreement about the work that High School Counselors are doing that is different this year since a position was eliminated. We agree with administration about compensation for College Credit Plus (CCP) work that is in the contract as PSEO. We sent administration a notice to negotiate CCP for students in the school, AP coordination, and testing coordination on December 5, 2017. Administration responded on January 16 that they do not believe they are required to negotiate the AP and testing coordination. We notified administration of our willingness to accept the CCP resolution they offered, but are willing to go to SERB to settle the other added duties.
6. Debt Clinic – VP Rego presented to members on January 25 about how to reduce their student loans.