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Teaching is the one career that makes all other careers, we help to make the changes from the ground up and we do that 180 days a year, often at the expense of our own family or personal lives and without much thought from society or those who do not teach. I see you, I feel you, this year especially getting to get out and meet members 1:1. I see the exhaustion, I feel the frustration that enough may not be getting done for behaviors, I see the difference you make and the love you have for your students. I see the money you have spent on your own, and I feel the joy when you interact with your students. It is always such an amazing experience and getting to be in so many of your classrooms this year…has just made it so much better.
Thank you for all that you do daily, thank you for the difference you make. You matter, you are the reason that TUSD succeeds, you are the change and the goodness. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of this journey with you.
Here’s the latest from TEA:
- TEA 1:1 Conversations -
- We (TEA Exec. Board) have been trying to get to 100% of our membership to have a quick one-to-one conversation and to ask the same questions of all members. We DO still want to hear from EVERY member, but it’s proving to be a bit harder than when it started. We currently are at 90.5% of membership (954 members) who we have been lucky enough to speak with. That means we are still 9.05% (or about 100 members) below the target of 100%. If we have not spoken with you yet - we still very much want to hear your opinion. Please expect over the last days of the school year (and even into the first few weeks of summer if needed) that you will be seeing one of us, hearing from us by email to set up a meeting or phone call, or just having us call you up and ask for five minutes of your time and if that is too much we will send the link so that we do not miss you sharing what you think. When we say EVERY member, we mean EVERY member (yes, even those of you retiring or not returning to TUSD) - your voices make us stronger. This is OUR Union, together.
- Retirement -
- If you are lucky enough to be retiring this year (YEAH FOR YOU!!!) Please make sure to communicate that to the district, meet with CalSTRS and make sure that our office knows as well - 714.505.6365 - As part of your retirement TEA will be paying for your first year in CTA Retired. If you would like to join with a lifetime membership or extend that please check out the information HERE
- Please Remember -
- If you are not returning to TUSD, make sure that anything that is of importance you take off of the TUSD email (you will lose access quickly) or off of your Google drive. That means if you are using TUSD Google to store your lesson plans, or anything else, it belongs to the district. Once you lose access to email, you also lose access to their Google storage. Make that you have cleared and saved anything that you plan to use again.
- If you are leaving - this is a pretty awful video for the person's tone but he seemed to have a faster way to download most, if not all of your Google files more quickly.VIDEO HERE - if any of you know of a faster way, or a better video please let us know.
- Administration Survey -
- Thank you to everyone who filled out and responded to the Administrator Survey. All administrators have received a copy of the survey from their sites. They were also sent by level, elementary/ secondary to the Assistant Superintendents of Educational Services, Dr. Villegas and Dr. Matos. Dr. Johnson and Dr. De La Torre in Personnel were sent all levels as well. I know that at least some admin. Are reading them as I have already had one meeting with an admin. Who wanted to discuss the results of their survey. It was great to have a few sites that received over 70% of member participation.
- Special Education -
- The special education survey was also sent out and is in the process of running. Once it is complete, just like the other admin. Survey, each individual will receive their own results. Dr. De La Torre, Dr. Christmas and Dr. Johnson will also have access to all as the head of HR, head of Special Education and the Superintendent of TUSD respectively.
- Late last month we had almost 50 special education specialists join us at the TEA office in order to make sure that their input was heard. From that we were able to have dialogue with what members who teach each specialty are looking for in their working conditions. All of those ideas will be used to both drive TEA goals forward and the information provided will be provided to our bargaining team. This also will be used as we go forward and hope to continue to work on best practices in TUSD.
- District Updates
- General/ ALL
- Staffing - As of this email all teachers who were being placed back into the classroom should have a position, those that requested transfers should be getting notified as the openings are there, and even some temporary teachers are starting to hear back with offers of contracts. This is faster in some areas than we had even known, but we know it will not be fast enough for all. We are trying to stay up to date on who is being asked back and at what speed. If you have been asked back and have a set date to sign your contract please fill out this quick form to let TEA know. It helps us to keep track as we progress and plan for next year during the summer.
- Driving/ Transporting Students - This conversation came up as we have had some sites that have taken to having teachers create events off site so that they can help to raise money for sites, or help to support sites. In that discussion it came about that teachers were using their own cars to transport students. Even with field trip forms please DO NOT transport students. Once you leave the site with a student in your car you are on your own for insurance, additional coverage and are no longer protected by the district (even if it is a school sponsored event), or by the union protections.
- Elementary -
- TK - The DRDP has dropped one of the reporting times that are going to be needed. Instead of three it will now be two for the next year.
- Middle School -
- Minutes - TEA and TUSD have worked together to make it where no minutes will be added onto the instructional day next year, giving us the time to negotiate and work on how best to prepare for the additional time needed, as we can no longer count nutrition towards instructional time.
- Tier 1 planning first week of school - TEA was made aware of the Tier 1 planning scheduled for the first week of school. We have brought that information and concern back to the district. That said, TUSD has already made this plan and scheduled it on their master calendar these days. They have promised to take another look at it, knowing that it will interfere with your start of the school year, but they cannot promise a change at this time. We will let you know should anything change.
- Tier 1 general -
- The question was asked in our rep council meeting about the years for Tier 1 - it is 8 years total for TUSD and NOT 8 years for each breakout. The intention is that it’s a year of development and then one (to two) years of refinement for most subjects. Some subjects may have more refinement years. 15 Itinerant substitutes will be needed to run Tier 1 next year.
- High School -
- Schedules will stay the same for next year and there should be zero changes to the schedule over the summer, no additional minutes or changes beyond the usual master schedule changes, class assignments and lists. Next year the committee that began this year, should continue to further discuss the scheduling for the 2025-2026 school year.
- Having zero periods or not will be a site based decision, but due to the late start law sites are trying to maintain and not increase on what they currently have.
- Sites are being asked to carefully consider sixth fifths next year - in order to save jobs there may be less offerings at all sites for sixth fifths.
- Other TUSD / TEA topics that will be worked on over the Summer:
- TEA will continue to be working with the district over the Summer. Some of the items that will be focused on are continued on are items mentioned before. We have also added some:
- Special Ed. Best Practices renewal, MOU for SDC Preschool
- Transfers and reassignments
- School Safety and how it pertains to the new laws from SB553
- Staffing concerns, temps into positions, movement overall, new hires.
- Other Topics:
- Dues Increase - for the first time since I became president four years ago, TEA is having to increase dues for the coming year. I will be honest, I read this standing rule before entering office, but due to the pandemic I didn't think to trigger at any time because of the situation four years ago. Now that I was reminded, and have other locals looking at our standing rules - it’s imperative that we follow our documents.
- TEA Standing Rule 9.0 states - that the TEA dues to be maintained at 30% of CTA dues. In the event that CTA dues are decreased, TEA dues will remain at the current level until such time as TEA dues must be increased to maintain the 30% level.
- CTA Dues are decided on by a formula and dues for next year will be voted on at our next State Council meeting May 31-June 2. Because of the formula (which has spiked due to the pay increases around the state over the last two years) CTA dues are projected to increase by $3 a month.
- With the increase above that means that TEA dues need to increase by $1.68 a month.
- Dues will increase by a total of $4.68 a month next year to a total of $126.88 a month in total which includes NEA/ CTA and TEA dues.
- Legislation:
- Recess - Senate Bill 291, defines what “recess” really means: free, unstructured time to play and socialize. It also requires that elementary students receive at least 30 minutes every day and makes it illegal for educators to take that time away as punishment. That means that gone are the days of having a student stay inside for recess, sit out of recess, or anything else that takes away that 30 minutes of unstructured time to play and socialize. This presents many issues and may take a longer time to work around as we enter into next year.
- Safety - Beginning July 1st there is a new law in effect that will go a long way in helping educators Senate Bill (SB) 553, The School Safety, Workplace Violence law. It is meant to provide more robust protections against workplace violence. Under this law:
- Employers must -
- Record and maintain a workplace violence incident log, the details of which are listed in the law, as well as in the California Labor Code Section 6401.9(d)(1)(A).
- Provide initial training to employees on the workplace voice prevention plan when first established, and annually thereafter, modifying the training when new or hazards are identified.
- Evaluate its workplace voice plan, making corrections and changes as needed and highlight these in the ongoing training.
- The law defines workplace violence as “any act of violence or threat of violence that occurs in a place of employment,” and includes a “ threat or use of physical force against an employee that results in, or has the high likelihood of resulting in, injury, psychological trauma, or stress, regardless of whether the employee sustains an injury.”
- Recently, Cal/OSHA published a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page to assist with compliance.
- One item is whether the workplace prevention covered special education issues from the FAQs this is what was said:
- regardless of whether the act was intentional or not, this would be categorized as a "Type 2 Violence" workplace violence incident and the employer is required to record it in the violent incident log.
- Cal/OSHA home page which will continue to be updated.
- Compliance Tool for a Comprehensive School Safety Plan California Education Code Sections 32280–32289.5: School Safety Plan Compliance Checklist - Violence Prevention (CA Dept of Education)
- Additional resources regarding the Comprehensive School Safety Plans:Comprehensive School Safety Plans - Violence Prevention (CA Dept of Education)
- CAL/OSHA Fact Sheet for Employees: Workplace Violence Prevention in General Industry (Non-Health Care Settings) - Information for Employees
- Part of this plan pertains and works with the current safety plans for each site. Those plans should be accessible through your front office for you to see copies yourself. As we move to open the next school year, TEA will be asking for updates from each site and what safety plans are in place to start the 2024-2025 school year.
- If you really like new laws and legislation pertaining to what we do - check out more HERE.
- End of Year Celebration -
  
- We had over 90 members attend our End of the Year Social at BJ’s. There was pizza, pasta, pizookies and prizes. To see more photos from the event go to THIS LINK - TEA is looking forward to having more member engagement events once the school year is back in session next year.
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Ideas for Engagement - Do you have any ideas of something that you would love to see TEA do next year? Something that you would want to be a part of (and maybe you don’t like Pizza, but you like Painting, or pottery - or alliteration). Let us know - Go here and tell us what would make you want to come out and hang out with your Union friends.
- State Council
- School Board Elections in November - Next November we have three seats open for our school board - TEA has made a friendly endorsement of incumbents Jonathan Stone and Allyson Damikolas - more information will be coming as school starts, but if you would like to help out either candidate please feel free to reach out to us.
- Monthly Items:
- June Is: Even though we will not be in school, there are still several events that will be celebrated and will have resources to share.
- World Environment Day (June 5) The CDE encourages you to annually recognize June 5 as World Environment Day. This year’s World Environment Day campaign focuses on land restoration, desertification and drought resilience under the slogan “Our land. Our future. We are #GenerationRestoration.”
- National Flag Week (June 11-17) and National Flag Day June 14 - Both President Wilson, in 1916, and President Coolidge, in 1927, issued proclamations asking for June 14 to be observed as the National Flag Day. But it wasn't until August 3, 1949, that Congress approved the national observance, and President Harry Truman signed it into law. Lesson plans on Flag day from the Constitution Center.
- Father’s Day - June 16 - The nation’s first Father’s Day was celebrated on June 19, 1910, in the state of Washington. However, it was not until 1972—58 years after President Woodrow Wilson made Mother’s Day official—that the day honoring fathers became a nationwide holiday in the United States. Father’s Day 2024 will occur on Sunday, June 16. History of Father’s Day from The History Channel.
- Juneteenth - June 19 - June 19 as Juneteenth. Juneteenth is observed on June 19 each year, commemorating the emancipation of the enslaved African Americans back in 1865. NEA Resources on Teaching Juneteenth and the Meaning of Freedom - This article has links to more information and many resources.
- July Is:
- 4th of July - July 4, 2024 is a public school holiday per California Education Code Section 37220. July 4, 2024 is also a state holiday per California Government Code Section 6700.
- Member Benefits:
Click HERE or the picture above to watch the video
- NEA -
- Every member should do these three things immediately:
- Visit www.neamb.com/connect: This is the gateway to all your Association benefits.
- Click the BLUE “Register Now” link on the page so you’ll be recognized to receive special discounts and important benefits information. (If you’ve already registered, proceed to Step 3.)
- Name your beneficiary for your no-cost, Complimentary Life Insurance: Click the “Register Your Beneficiary” button. Don’t leave a benefit unclaimed!
- Additional programs and discounts
- Visit www.neamb.com/connect and scroll to , “Sign Up and Save On Your Vacation.” You will need to register and/or sign to the website using a non-school email address, and then you will be able to access the NEA Travel Program with its discounts on car rentals, airfare, hotels, cruises, and guided tours as well as great information on how to stretch your travel budget.
- In addition, check out the NEA Discount Tickets Program if you’re planning on visiting Disneyland, or attending a sporting event or show.
  I know we will not have all of you back next year and that makes my heart heavy and to be honest, I am not so happy. That said, I have also spoken to many of you who have gone out and found positions outside of this district. Each one of you who is in a permanent position, who is able to make their way forward is good for all of us as a profession. I wish everyone finds a home, and is able to be working with students next year. No matter where you are, I thank you for being a part of TEA during your time here, please join the local Union wherever you go - we are always stronger together and better as a profession when we work for the greater good.
Now, go and enjoy your summer. May you find the time to relax, rest and recharge. Remember that this is your time to rejuvenate from the year that we had. Any and all time you spend in your classrooms setting up is unpaid, while it is appreciated, it is not expected. This is definitely a do as I say and not do as I do, but when the district announces that you may begin entering your rooms and it's ahead of our contract, it is being acknowledged that you need additional time in order to prepare. Every day we are willingly working without compensation we are decreasing our daily rate of pay. TAKE YOUR VACATION, YOU HAVE MOST DEFINETLY EARNED IT! Your time and your labor are valuable, as is your state of mind and your personal happiness.
Take time for yourselves, your families and ENJOY! Have a wonderful Summer Break!
In Unity,
Lisa Hickman
President, Tustin Educators Association
State Council Representative
Teacher, Heideman Elementary
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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