Topic: Education Issues

Classified Conference highlights staff as partners in student success
Attendees hear how co-workers educate, mentor kids

For Esmeralda Grubbs, success starts when a Local 1475 member takes a preschool boy or girl by the hand and begins to build a foundation for lifelong learning.

Grubbs works with the Early Childhood Federation, a Los Angeles County local representing preschool workers, from faculty and teaching assistants to custodians and kitchen staff. Challenges can be daunting, especially in low-income communities. In October, a drive-by shooting threatened a Head Start program in a Watts housing project.

Article international

How and why Mexico’s City University came to be
Q&A with Manuel Perez Rocha, founding president of the university

Q&A by David Bacon, Labor Journalist

Manuel Perez Rocha was the founding president of the first major university established in Mexico City in decades, the Autonomous University of Mexico City. Mexico doesn’t have the equivalent of two-year community colleges, but the UACM is very close to the ideas on which our community college system is based.

California Teacher ACCJC accreditation

Community stands with beloved City College of San Francisco
Report faults school for having too little money and doing too much for students

In early July, more than 300 people packed a San Francisco meeting hall to express their outrage over a letter from the Accrediting Commission for Community & Junior Colleges saying City College of San Francisco must prove its fiscal stability by March 15 to remain accredited.

Article racial justice

“No Time to Quit”
A look at school desegregation by former CFT President

By Miles Myers, Former CFT President

In the nation’s first school desegregation case, on February 13, 1931, in Lemon Grove, California, the Mexican parents of Roberto Alvarez went to court to stop the Lemon Grove Grammar School from denying access to Mexican children. A victory for Roberto in the local court stopped the case from reaching the U.S. Supreme Court. But the same issue did reach the U.S. Supreme Court almost twenty-two years later (1953) when the Black parents of ten-year-old Linda Brown sued the Topeka (Kansas) School Board, demanding that skin color (and race) not be used to deny her access to her neighborhood public school. Unlike the Lemon Grove court, Topeka courts did rule that skin color could be used to deny Linda’s entrance to the nearby public school and, thus, the case was appealed to the Supreme Court. Her local public school, she said, was her gateway to opportunity, and thus, that gateway should not be blocked by segregationist policies. She won.

Article

Member Speak Out: Classified work makes a difference every day
Paraprofessionals matter more now than ever

FIRST PERSON |  Arti O’Connor

I know my workas a special education para makes a difference when I look into the faces of the children I teach. I know I matter when an excited child says, “Now I get it! I understand it now!” I know I touched a child’s heart when he or she tells me, “You’re a very nice person.” And when a child talks about something sad that has happened in their lives, it means he or she trusts me enough to share something meaningful.

California Teacher lecturers librarians

Classics lecturer maintains classic ideas about unions
New local president Rundin says union makes lecturer job worth having

Classics lecturer John Rundin feels privileged to pass on to another generation the cultural treasures that were given to him by the previous generation. The teacher of Latin and ancient Greek is one of two recipients of this year’s Award for Excellence in Teaching from the UC Davis Academic Federation.

“I live my job, love what I do, and I love my students,” says Rundin. “It is a great honor.”

Article

Ravani comments on new “parent trigger” regs
In San Jose Mercury News op-ed

Last week the state Board of Education issued new regulations governing the “parent trigger” law for struggling schools. The CFT views the new regulations as an improvement over the original poorly-crafted law, but finds the very concept of the “parent trigger” to be a distraction from the central issues facing public schools. 

CFT’s EC/K-12 Council President Gary Ravani comments in today’s San Jose Mercury News in an op-ed piece.