The fact that Voting for the New Contract runs only from 7 a.m. until 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 17 -- without early release or any sort of time consideration -- is a complete disregard for the actual schedule that (good) teachers keep.
Seriously.
I will do my best to re-arrange my schedule and vote, but it will be difficult. My school is holding Take-Your-Parent-to-School Day, plus a PTSA meeting. That's been long scheduled. I'm sure parents will understand if we have to go vote, but still... it shouldn't be a choice.
If my planning period was longer than 50 minutes, I would chance leaving the building to wait in line to vote. But the voting site is a 10-minute drive away, and finding parking (it will be busy) and getting in line to vote within 25 minutes or so is too risky.
I hope I'm wrong. But this has made me and a lot of teachers at my school pretty annoyed (I heard, with my own ears, that Alonso said he would support an early-release date, so I'm blaming the BTU for this one), If the contract doesn't pass this time (I'm voting for it), we have a reason -- I really doubt there will close to the turnout as there was at the first vote, and only the people who hate the contract (they are vocal and their word is spreading) will be turning out in droves, not the ones who sorta like it like me. And I don't know any teachers jumping up and down about it, just ateachers (like me) who see a lot of good in it but have our reservations still.
Writing Across The Ages
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Craig Morgan Teicher finds the reasons for his devotion to poetry in the
following passage from Walt Whitman: And that my soul embraces you this
hour, and ...
14 minutes ago
2 comments:
I am truly on the line. I was at a public meeting with less than ten people and the union president. I felt the answers were canned and as incomplete as ever. I am dismayed that the union has brought in reps from other cities to haunt the schools and sell the contract. These are not local folks with an understanding of North Avenue practices or BTU practices. I feel we are being asked to decide between two not so great contracts.The reps feel like used car sales people to me. I am not going to feel good however the vote goes. I have no faith that HR is up to the task of tracking AUs or any other aspect of the new system. They do not know who is highly qualified, information in employee self-serve is incorect, and many of us wait many months up to a year to get our certification updated. Our technology can not handle what we do now on a daily basis. How will it handle the increased demands? So many issues unresolved.
Anonymous -
If we ratify the contract, and HR can't deliver, we get to keep our raises and salary increases. We don't have anything to lose (financially) by voting yes. We may have something to lose emotionally, as I've often felt like I'm in an abusive relationship with OHC, but that's maybe more of a personal issue :-)
I'm going to try to get people to carpool over to the sites during the day. I think that if creating a sign up sheet in the teacher's lounge may help.
I too am worried that this won't pass because of voting issues AGAIN. Jeeze - you'd think they would have learned the first time that execution is key!
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