PUSD BOARD OF EDUCATION MEETING

8 February 2017

President’s Message

Good evening, President Rothman, Board Members, Superintendent Martinez, Cabinet Members, APT and CSEA sisters and brothers and all those present this evening.

Since our Presidential Inauguration, with the executive orders and cabinet appointments, there has been a great deal of unease and uncertainty, not only throughout the nation and the world, but here at the local level as well. With yesterday’s confirmation of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, our education community is bracing itself for changes that could only come from someone that has had absolutely no experience in public education. I guessing that the best that we can hope for is that Ms. DeVos works toward decentralizing education and setting policy which will give California and Pomona Unified more local control over our decisions for our schools. And what feels like a war on immigrants is having a significant impact on our students, parents and families throughout this community.  As I have heard stories of fear and anxiety from my students, so too are my colleagues throughout the District hearing similar concerns from their students. Now, more than ever, do our educators that have chosen Pomona, need to be empathetic and supportive to our students and the new circumstances that they face until this new federal regime. I remember the words of assurance from Superintendent Martinez after the presidential election, that within the boundaries of PUSD, we will care for our own. We will take care of our own. We have our students’ backs. I have heard similar comments from other Cabinet members and I trust that our school board feels the same. This is something that the Associated Pomona Teachers can and will stand behind. We are committed to providing sanctuary for our students and we are willing to take a stand on behalf of our students, ensuring that they are safe, while they are under our care.

On a different note, we understand that some of our colleagues have found the salary schedule under the new contract to be confusing. The IBB Team, whether on the union side or administrative side is learning from this experience. We are assessing where we could have done a better job of explaining to our members the changes to the contract. We need to better help our members understand that they are not losing any years under this restructure. The agreement reached with the PUSD bargaining team was to eliminate longevity. That will result in unfreezing those that were stuck on various longevity barriers. This agreement does not take anything from anyone. The years one brought to Pomona counted in helping one reach the 15^th step under the old salary schedule and would never have counted toward reaching any of the future longevity increments. This restructured salary schedule in fact provides more increases to members who brought years to Pomona sooner than they would have received under the old salary schedule. Under the old salary schedule, one would have had to wait additional years to move because of the longevity requirement at each increment, and now one will begin to move down the scale, year for year, starting next year.

We appreciate the work that Mr. Knowles and Mr. Brown have done over the past two weeks helping individual members, providing clarification about members’ individual placement on the salary schedule. Both Mr. Knowles and Mr. Brown are committed to continue providing individual assistance as long as needed.

Good evening.

PUSD BOARD OF EDUCATION MEETING

11 January 2017

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

Good evening, President Rothman, Board members, Superintendent Martinez, Cabinet members, CSEA and APT sisters and brothers and all those present this evening.

On behalf of APT, I’d like to wish all of you a Happy New Year! Given all the rain that we have received in California since the New Year, perhaps, that is a sign that 2017 will be a good year for California, Pomona and our community.

Later this month, APT is sending a team to a Learning Lab, entitled: Collaboration – a Path to Whole Child & Whole School Success. The team consists of a school board member, director from Educational Services, the teachers leading the Community School effort at Garey and Fremont and myself. The learning lab topics include initiatives that APT and PUSD are already working on together: Frameworks and models for collaboration; School climate; Social-emotional learning; Community school strategies; Teacher leadership in the classroom and school site; LCAP implementation; and Labor management relations.

In terms of our collaboration efforts, we are continuing to make positive strides. Together, PUSD and APT have identified a second cohort of collaboration schools. They include: Harrison, Roosevelt, Madison, Palomares, Park West and possibly Barfield. We are supporting principals and site reps by providing a series of trainings sponsored by the California Labor-Management Initiative and the Consortium for Educational Change. Just this week, we did listening visits to Madison and Roosevelt. We shared our finding of these visits with both our site reps as well as the principals. Madison and Roosevelt, just as our other Phase 1 and Phase 2 Collaboration Schools, have shown a high interest in doing this work for the sake of improving teaching and learning for our students.

Another area of progress is the collaboration around professional growth for our practitioners. I especially want to thank APT 2^nd Vice President Erin Jackson, Assistant Superintendent Darren Knowles with the support of Deputy Superintendent Stephanie Baker for the progress that we are making in setting up a new system of professional learning and growth for all stages of a teacher’s career, from induction through end of career. This includes a new induction program, a new system of evaluation and peer assistance and review. Three years ago, these ideas were shared with the Board as conceptual, vision in nature. I am pleased to report that now we are acting on that vision and developing the system. We look forward to sharing our work with the PUSD/APT Interest-based Bargaining Team and ultimately providing a detailed plan for the Board’s consideration.

As you know, PUSD has been awarded a substantial School Improvement Grant. We appreciate how closely Cabinet members have worked with APT leadership to create a grant proposal that we can all support. We now have a Memorandum of Understanding between APT and PUSD that is in a final draft for your consideration.

While there is still a great deal of work to do collaboratively, especially at the school sites, clearly on many levels, collaboration is working well between APT and PUSD. We will continue to strive to improve systems, so that our teachers and all our practitioner’s voices are heard, at the PLC level, the Site Leadership Team level and at the joint APT/PUSD District Learning Team level. As both PUSD and APT leadership have invested in a significant amount of adult learning together, it has made a positive difference in Pomona. We are committed to continue to learn together and partner in ways that improves our profession.

We know that tonight you are considering the tentative agreement between PUSD and APT. The IBB team went through painstaking efforts to find ways to attract and retain our teachers and other practitioners that are in hard to fill positions. We believe that the tentative agreement will have a positive impact in attracting and retaining educators. This is what our students deserve. We urge you to vote YES, approving the tentative agreement before you this evening.

On behalf of all of our members, I want to thank the administrators that participated as members of the IBB team, Superintendent Martinez and the Board members for your continued support for the members of our association.

Once again, Happy New Year and good evening.

PUSD BOARD OF EDUCATION MEETING

12 December 2016

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

Good evening, President Konigar-Macklin, Board members, Superintendent

Martinez, Cabinet members, CSEA and APT sisters and brothers and all those

present this evening.

Last night was my first opportunity to attend the Pomona Christmas Parade. It

was very impressive and successful. I was pleased to see how many parade

entries were from various groups from PUSD. The community was able to

witness that indeed we are Proud to be PUSD. Seeing this made me think about

how great it would be for our youth and the community to see the Associated

Pomona Teachers participating in the parade as well. I will definitely

recommend that for next year to our APT leadership.

Last week, our Service Center One, the regional branch of CTA held our annual

School Board dinner. Thank you President Konigar-Macklin, Dr. Perlman and Mr.

Guzman for attending.

As you know, our Interest Based bargaining team, comprised of both PUSD

administration and APT members concluded bargaining and reached a tentative

agreement after months of long, hard work. We are very proud of the

innovative approach that we came up with to address challenges that we are

facing with attracting and retaining quality educators to this district. We believe

that this tentative agreement will have a positive impact in attracting and

retaining quality educators. Our APT election results had the highest

participation rate in years. Nearly 1,100 of our members voted, with a large

majority voting YES on the tentative agreement. It is our hope that this Board

will approve the tentative agreement.

There is so much work to be done in our collaboration efforts, but the work that

we have done thus far has proven to be beneficial to PUSD. We continue to

deepen our labor-management work through additional training. This week,

APT officers and PUSD district administration is being trained together using the

trainer of trainer model, which will enable us to lead this transformative work,

independent of outside consultants. Additionally, we have several school teams

of principals and site reps from our Phase 1 and Phase 2 Collaboration Schools

that are being trained later this week as well as over the next couple of months.

As you may know, the visionary who inspired both PUSD administration and

APT leadership to consider this work was Dr. Pat Dolan, from the Teacher Union

Reform Network. He passed away a few weeks ago. It is my belief that as an

external partner, Dr. Dolan has had the greatest impact on APT, of any single

individual in decades. What he has challenges both the District administration

and APT leadership to do is to change our thinking. Change our thinking, from

the role of the union to be much more than an industrial union, but rather to

function, and be regarded as a professional association. This is what our

members have wanted all along. For their voices to be heard…to be listened to.

For those of us that had the privilege to listen to and learn from Patrick Dolan,

he will continue to live in our hearts and our minds. While he left his work as a

Jesuit theologian decades ago, he continued to minister, converting

management and labor in how we engage with one another.

Lastly, on behalf of all my sisters and brothers in APT, we wish you Happy

Holidays and a very Happy New Year. Good evening.

PUSD BOARD OF EDUCATION MEETNG
9 November 2016
PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

Good evening, President Konigar-Macklin, Board Members, Superintendent Martinez, Cabinet Members, CSEA and APT sisters and brothers and all those present this evening.

First of all, APT wishes to congratulate Dr. Roberta Perlman and Mr. Frank Guzman for their recent recognition as honorees by the Los Angeles County Democratic Party. The civic involvement, engagement with our community and dedication to our students, parents and families warrants the honor that the Los Angeles County Democratic Party has bestowed upon both of you.

As we ended our evenings and shortly thereafter began our days this morning, many of us share bittersweet sentiments regarding the election results. As members of the California Teachers Association, APT leaders continued their efforts through phone banking at our union hall until the eve of the election. Just as our members led the effort to pass Proposition 30 in 2012, so too did APT do our part to pass its replacement, Proposition 55. The California Teachers Association supported Prop 52, extending Medicaid support for our most needy families, Prop 55, and Prop 58, supporting multilingual education. With the support of CTA, all three of these progressive propositions passed. APT leaders also contributed to the passage of Measure P through the postcard campaign, writing personal messages to residents in Pomona and Diamond Bar and through our phone banking efforts. We are pleased that Measure P passed and we were

pleased to have helped in this effort. Now, we look forward to the benefits that this will bring to our classrooms.

As far as the bitter part of the election results, I will not use this forum to lament.

Both APT and PUSD knew that it would be wise to postpone our negotiations until after the election and we look forward to resume bargaining. Tonight, we have invited members to come to this meeting and address you directly. As we have discussed on many occasions, our school district is facing a problem with teacher recruitment and retention as our salary schedule has fallen behind. While CTA has provided comparable salary schedules for our region, our members have done their own research on comparing salary schedules for the greater Los Angeles Metropolis. They not only have shared these schedules with our office, they also share these schedules, or more specifically the end of career annual salary with one another. When we compare the final annual salary with other districts in our region, this is where PUSD fall drastically behind. APT has offered a reasonable and respectable solution that deserves serious consideration.

Our solution is one that offers not only a respectable salary at the beginning of our careers, but also continues to provide a competitive salary at all stages of our career. We have heard from a few of our members, particularly from one of our schools that does not agree with our approach. They may be here this evening to express their opposition. As I stated at last month’s board meeting, there are always some of our members that oppose the efforts of our bargaining team. We expect that to happen.

Our members understand what it means to be professionals. That is why they choose to do far more than all of the demands placed on

them: to provide a 21st Century classroom in teaching Common Core curriculum, providing the best possible first teaching instructional practices, providing ongoing formative assessments, and ultimately been held accountable for summative assessments.

Yet, as professionals they do more. As we have asked our members to provide examples of the extra services that they provide to our students, we listed many of them to share with you this evening. The list that we have to share with you is only a portion of the services that our members provide without extra compensation. That is because they are professionals that care deeply about their clients, our students. While we understand that we provide all of these extra services without additional compensation, we do expect that our district knows the value of these services, knows the uniqueness of what is required of our teachers, counselors, nurses, teacher specialists, teachers on assignment and education specialists, and therefore understand your responsibility to provide a competitive salary schedule at ALL stages of our career. That is the good faith understanding that we are requesting from this board.

We continue to be committed to the Interest Based Bargaining process. We clearly know that a competitive salary schedule at all stages of our career is a common interest to recruit and maintain the best educators that are students deserve.

We have been bargaining for a long time. The election has ended in our favor. We need to settle soon and direct our efforts to the important work that we have started.

Good evening.

PUSD BOARD OF EDUCATION MEETNG
17 October 2016
PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE