PAJARO VALLEY FEDERATION OF TEACHERS
GENERAL MEMBERSHIP & Building Rep MINUTES
February 7, 2005

Facilitated by Linda Espejo.

Donna Blase moved to approve, Judy Ashton seconded, all approved amended minutes of February General Membership Meeting.

OLD BUSINESS

RSRA training in New York. This model feeds into NCLB support. Principal and union rep from all 4-year schools (RHMS took two teachers:not principal at the time), also principal and rep from E.A. Hall. Trustee Sandra Nichols also went (AFT member and teacher in Santa Cruz). PVUSD cabinet did not go due to interference by one of the Trustees. The whole team met with the Cabinet last week to fill them in on the RSRA model. The model is based on four components: communication; team building; data driven decision making; and staff development. Coaching model encourages coaches to work in classrooms. The staff of every school decides on the scope of staff development and limits it to two areas. The district agrees to not impose more areas, or at least agree on any at the beginning of the school year. The team is meeting on April 8 to develop an action plan to present to UFT and AFT.

Negotiations update
PVFT sunshine proposal is posted on PVFT.net. Carolyn Savino handed out the district's responses to the PVFT proposal and the district proposal to PVFT

Election of Executive Council officers
As there were no opposition candidates, we will do a ballot by acclamation. Claudia Ayres moved to unanimously approve all candidates, Fred Mindlin seconded, all approved. We do need a K-8 V. P. North Zone.

NEW BUSINESS

Proposition 98 suspension/autopilot budgeting —Governor is “taking this to the people” forgetting that the people brought this into law. Prop 98 brings in a floor of funding for schools. The Ed Coalition agreed to take a one-time cut of $2 billion and the Governor promised not to suspend Prop. 98. Now he says he will give back the $2 billion over 15 years. The Rand report says that California is 44 th in the country in funding. Autopilot can bring mid-year cuts each year if state revenue drops.

Merit Pay/tenure changes —The governor seems to be backing away from merit pay, but has reduced his tenure proposal from 10 years to five.

Contracting out services – the governor has not been successful in repealing AB1419 so he is pushing an initiative to allow the contracting out of any non-instructional services such as nurses or psychologists and most CSEA positions .

Redistricting —hiring retired judges to redraw district boundaries hoping that they might carve out more Republican districts. Move-On is backing this one. This should be done after the next census, not mid-decade.

Paycheck protection initiative necessitates a check-off process for taking union dues. This would knock labor out of any political involvement. “Starve the public sector to feed the private sector,” Schwarzenegger quote.

This coalition includes CTA, CFT, ACSA, School Board Association, SEIU, PTA and fire fighters, prison guards, peace officers.

We need to raise $100 per member to fight these initiatives. We will send the money to CFT to help finance the campaign. They have commitment for several million dollars to fight the governor's attack. The PVFT Executive Council Officers have written $100 checks for the cause.

We have an easier way to break this down into increments through monthly contributions to C.O.P.E. PVFT will do some fundraisers: maybe an end-of-the year party. If building reps want to return their stipends, they must cash them and write a check. There are as many as 80 initiatives floating around.

We must fight this battle of our lives as teachers and union supporters.

President Savino presented us with written materials for writing letters, postcards, news releases, and opinion letters. We have postcards and address labels available for sending to our representatives and the governor.

Don't sign any petitions or engage signature gatherers.

Bill Callahan suggested that the union post position papers on the website to counter negative publicity in the newspapers and take out an ad in the Sunday education section to tell people where to find the website article.

Bill Callahan suggests placing ads in Spanish-language newspapers and on Spanish-language radio.

Sandra Nichols has formed a mini-coalition in the County to fight the good fight. John Laird met with them and said that the State Budget Committee is traveling the state to tell what the impact would be. As they do polls, Schwarzenegger's popularity is dropping, now around 55% down from 65-70%. Laird calls his proposals to balance the state budget through these initiatives the “Trojan Humvee”!

Scholarships for children of affiliated union members available through the Central Labor Council due May 2 (3.0 GPA, high school or college).

Current PVFT/PVUSD contract is now online. Hard copies will be delivered soon.