Reauthorization OF NCLB
California Teachers are encouraging congress to vote NO on the Reauthorization of NCLB proposal by Representative George Miller and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. This reauthorization continues to punish lower-performing schools, rather than providing assistance and resources to help all students and schools in need. In addition, it mandates merit pay and teacher evaluations based on student test scores, and it attacks our rights to bargaining issues around salary, evaluation, and transfers. These new mandates would not only make it hard to attract educators into our classrooms, but also undermine the whole concept of collective bargaining. Miller and Pelosi have placed this bill on a “fast track” with a vote possibly as early as October. For more information, go to the CTA website, www.cta.org .
ESTA Relief Fund
This Committee was approved in May of this year and now has a Committee Chair, Nilda Calvo, and three committee members. We would like one more member, so if you are interested, please contact me. The Relief Fund was created to assist ESTA members in the event of a loss of personal properties on their campus. We want to make sure this committee is in place in the event of an applicant. Applications will be availably on the ESTA website soon. Until then, you can email me for an application.
New Disability Insurance/ Life Insurance
Company: The Standard
Open enrollment continues for new teachers to the district for 120 days from their date of hire. During this time, new teachers can enroll without a doctor’s note for disability insurance and/or up to $25,000 coverage for life insurance.
For those of you who currently have disability insurance, you are eligible for open enrollment for up to $25,000 of life insurance. If you currently have life insurance, you are eligible for open enrollment for disability insurance. All existing members were mailed this information to their home address.
If you are not new to the district, but would like to enroll in either program, please contact me for an application. At any time, any CTA member can enroll in disability or life insurance through The Standard, but health questions will be asked and you will be accepted pending your answers.
Enrollment
This year East Side Union High School District met projected enrollment. At this time, there are nearly 200 additional students than projected. This is good news since many districts throughout California are losing ADA due to declining enrollment. We are continuing to be a growing district.
Bargaining Team to Visit Site
Starting at the end of October, the Bargaining Team will be making site visits. The list will be finished after the Executive Board meeting on October 3, and will be advertised at each site.
We recognize that some
ESTA members are widely scattered in their specialized fields of interest
around the District, and may benefit more with meeting with the Negotiators in
groups of similar people, rather than with entire school faculties. To meet with these members, we have
established the following schedule, all to take place at Mt Hamilton CTA:
·
Student
Advisors, Counselors, Librarians:
Oct. 15, 4:00 P. M.
·
Child
Development: Oct. 22, 6:00 P. M.
·
Special
Education, School Psychologists and Program Specialists, Oct. 25, 4:00 P. M.
·
Foothill,
SBNs and other Alternative Education,
Oct. 16, 4:00 P. M.
·
Activities
Directors – to be announced
·
Athletic
Directors and coaches: to be
announced
·
Other
specialized groups? Call or email me.
If you miss your
specialized meeting, your site meeting will follow later in the month, so you
will still have a chance to submit your suggestions.
SALARY
SCHEDULE PLACEMENT
Continuing employees
should be automatically moved to the proper step on the salary schedule to
reflect the time on the job last year.
New employees can generally assume that the District will accurately
place them on the schedule once all supporting documentation has been
processed, so hopefully new employees turned in those official
transcripts.
As this Update is
being written, the amounts on this year’s certificated salary schedule have
still not been announced by the DO, nor has the number of current members of
ESTA.
Remember: If you earned approved post-baccalaureate
college units prior to August 31, you have until October 31 to have your
official transcripts delivered to the DO.
If you miss either deadline, you’ll have to wait a year to have the
units counted towards sideways movement on the salary schedule. Also, if you earned the units in conjunction
with earning a credential, don’t assume that registering the credential
will automatically register the units; these are usually two separate
actions.
CTA Conferences
On October 5-7, 2007, the following ESTA members will be attending the CTA Region 1 Leadership Conference at Asilomar Conference center with me: Allan Roberts, Jane Voss, Jenny Ludwig, Neal Wilson, Shelley Moneymaker, Hernan Diaz, Rob Suhr, Hyon Kim, and Jon Alota. Also, the following five ESTA members were selected by CTA to receive Minority Leadership Incentive Grants to attend the conference; Gil Agoylo, Nilda Calvo, Paul Romero, Edward Youngblood, and Kim Kang. This conference will be a working weekend, but it will certainly be worthwhile for all 15 of us. By the way, if you haven’t had a chance to check out a CTA conference, I highly recommend it.
The following conferences are going to take place this school year:
· Good Teaching Conference North
January 11 – 13, 2008
Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport
· CTA/NEA Urban Issues Conference
February 29, 2008 – Sunday March 2, 2008
Marriott Santa Clara
· NEA Equity and Human Rights Conference March 28 – 30, 2008 Marriott Irvine
All CTA conference attendees have the option to purchase 1 unit of credit from California State Chico for $55. Contact me if you are interested in attending a CTA conference. Although our funds are limited, we like to send a few members to each conference.
If you are interested in learning more about these conferences, you can go to www.cta.org and click on the conference link on the left side of the home page. You do not need to be logged in to view the conference information. By the way, to create a log-in ID, you will need your CTA number. This number was assigned to you when you became a member and can be found near your name on the CTA magazine you receive each month. Except for the new teachers to the district, ESTA members were given their 2007-2008 CTA card a few weeks ago. New ESTA members should receive their CTA cards later this month.
Ethnic Minority Reception
Each year the Santa Clara County Service Center Council hosts the Ethnic Minority Reception to outline the various opportunities open to ethnic minority members in their local chapters. The reception will also discuss how to run for CTA’s State Council and for National Education Association’s Representative Assembly (NEA RA). This year’s NEA RA will be in Washington, D. C. at the end of June, 2008. ESTA will again send 9 delegates.
The reception is on Oct. 18th, 4-6 P. M., at the Crowne Plaza, 282 Almaden Boulevard, San Jose, CA 95113. If you plan on attending, please RSVP to Andrea Anderson at aanderson@cta.org
CalSTRS Work Shop
I sent out an email for the CalSTRS workshops. Just in case you are not able to access your email, here are the dates to mark on your calendar:
CalSTRS Fundamentals, for members with more than 10 years:
· Thursday April 10, 2008
CalSTRS Retirement Checkup, for members who have 25 years or more or who are over 50 years of age:
· Thursday, February 14, 2008 or Thursday, March 13, 2008
Each Site President has flyers to give out to interested members who are not able to sign up by email or who prefer to fax their information. These workshops do fill up, so signing up now is a good idea. Everyone who signs up will be reminded by email the week before the workshop.
ESTA T-Shirt Contest
It is time once again to create a new ESTA logo. The current logo was created by a student several years ago during a contest. We would like to have another contest and are looking for members who would like to help. Contact the Organizing Committee Chair, Ralph Giannini at gianninir@esuhsd.org with your ideas. We hope to have the contest finished by the end of the year so we can purchase new t-shirts by January.
192-Day Salary Schedule
2007/2008
|
|
BA
|
BA + 30
|
BA + 45
|
BA+ 60 w/ MA +65 w/o MA
|
|
Step
|
A
|
B
|
C
|
D
|
|
1
|
$51,096
|
$51,822
|
$52,555
|
$54,014
|
|
2
|
$51,097
|
$52,555
|
$53,285
|
$54,744
|
|
3
|
$51,097
|
$53,285
|
$54,014
|
$61,055
|
|
4
|
$51,822
|
$58,027
|
$61,172
|
$64,318
|
|
5
|
$58,144
|
$61,290
|
$64,437
|
$67,583
|
|
6
|
$61,406
|
$64,553
|
$67,700
|
$70,846
|
|
7
|
$64,672
|
$67,816
|
$70,963
|
$74,109
|
|
8
|
$67,934
|
$71,080
|
$74,228
|
$77,372
|
|
9
|
$71,198
|
$74,342
|
$77,490
|
$80,635
|
|
10
|
$74,460
|
$77,608
|
$80,753
|
$83,897
|
|
11
|
$77,724
|
$80,871
|
$84,016
|
$87,162
|
|
12
|
$80,987
|
$84,134
|
$87,280
|
$90,424
|
|
16
|
|
|
$89,902
|
$93,048
|
|
20
|
|
|
$92,523
|
$95,669
|
|
24
|
|
|
$95,143
|
$98,288
|
|
28
|
|
|
$97,764
|
$100,910
|
|
32
|
|
|
$100,388
|
$100,533
|
Master’s Degree $1,662
Doctorate $2,214