Newsroom
Your local union values your work all year long
By Paula A. Phillips, President, Council of Classified Employees
Every May, districts from San Diego to Susanville take time to recognize the contributions of their staffs. Classified School Employees Week is the third week of the month and pays tribute to staff members who play key roles in creating environments that promote student achievement, safety and health.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson described classified employees as “hard-working and devoted school employees who exemplify what commitment to school and student really is,” and as workers “who make the extra effort to support their students, schools and communities.” Torlakson is right. Annual recognitions are wonderful.
Legislation would bring reporting of pesticide use
Staff to receive training, schools to develop pest management plans
Legislators are debating measures to ensure that pesticides at California schools don’t become a bigger concern than the pests they are meant to exterminate.
Under Senate Bill 1405, schools that use pesticides must designate someone to maintain a complete record of all pesticide use at the site, and submit it to the Department of Pesticide Regulation at the end of each calendar year. Current law requires only professional exterminators to report their use.
Small AFT locals get big attention from new task force
By the Numbers | AFT local unions
3,370 Number of locals chartered by the AFT
3,019: Locals with fewer than 600 members
(90 percent)
1,819: Locals with fewer than 100 members
(54 percent)
One in four of AFT’s 1.56 million members belong to a small local, and 90 percent of AFT local unions are considered small, defined as having fewer than 600 members.
While belonging to a small local can foster a sense of teamwork, small locals often come up short of the resources, training and volunteers to effectively represent members, according to a new AFT task force.
Staff seek fair unemployment compensation
Bill to bring equity stalled in Legislature
Linnette Robinson has worked with special needs students at Berkeley High School for four years, after two years in the district’s elementary and junior high schools.
Yet every winter and summer, Robinson and tens of thousands of other classified employees across California scrape by during involuntary “vacations” the best they can. Because while other workers receive unemployment benefits during seasonal breaks, school staff do not.
CFT President to Reps. Pelosi, Speier, and Eschoo
"Thank you for critique of ACCJC"
Editor’s note: The following is a letter written to Congressional Representatives Nancy Pelosi, Jackie Speier and Anna Eshoo
Accrediting commission sticks foot in mouth, then jams it in farther
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is furious with the ACCJC
May 29, 2014—In recent weeks the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior College (ACCJC) leadership has claimed in a number of public settings that City College of San Francisco can withdraw its own accreditation and reapply for “candidacy status” and keep its federal and state funding, including student financial aid. It has also claimed repeatedly that it has no authority to give the college more time to address accreditation issues, and the commission’s July 2014 closure order for the college will stand.
Neither claim is true.
Los Angeles mayor allies with CFT and educators
In some cities, the education unions and the mayor engage in battle. But that’s not the case in Los Angeles where Eric Garcetti was elected mayor in May 2013 with early support from the CFT. He welcomed Convention delegates Friday morning by saying he always keeps his education background in mind.
Leader of Moral Mondays Movement brings delegates to their feet
North Carolina’s Reverend Barber says it’s time for some righteous indignation.
“These are serious times,” Reverend William Barber II told the CFT Convention delegates on Sunday morning. Barber is president of the NAACP in North Carolina and the leader of the fast-growing Moral Mondays Movement, which protests cuts to education, healthcare and food stamps. He worked delegates into a fervor telling them that sometimes they needed to get out of their conference seats and go into the streets to fight back against things they think are wrong, and that it’s time for some righteous indignation.
UCLA professor leads mobilization of lecturers and librarians
Statewide campaign builds on established strength in campus locals
Goetz Wolff has taught at UCLA for more than 20 years, but was generally more involved with Southern California’s vibrant labor movement than with the union on his job. Wolff, for example, earned high praise for his six years as research director at the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, but barely knew the ins and outs of the University Council-AFT.
CFT boycotts Staples to save postal worker jobs
Union asks members not to purchase supplies at low-wage retailer
The CFT is boycotting office supply retailer Staples at the request of the American Postal Workers Union, which is opposing a no-bid sweetheart deal between the U.S. Postal Service and the giant office supply retailer to operate postal counters in Staples stores. An estimated one-third of Staples’ revenues come from the sale of school supplies, many purchased by teachers and other school employees for classrooms.
San Diego education advocate named Legislator of the Year
CFT’s Community College Council President Jim Mahler called state Senator Marty Block, who represents the cities of San Diego, Coronado, Del Mar and Solana Beach, the union’s “go-to guy on every issue for decades,” when awarding Block the CFT’s Legislator of the Year Award.
Course repeatability rules restrict student access, learning
Cabrillo College faculty lead effort to expose failings in new regulations
The new course repeatability regulations, passed by the Community College Board of Governors in July 2012, mean, in most cases, that if students pass a class with a ‘C’ or higher, they can’t take the class again. Many community college teachers see this negatively impacting students who want to study, for example, journalism, creative writing, foreign languages or visual arts.