President's Pen
by John Nichols

We are at the halfway point, so you might say it is all downhill to the finish line from here.  It will go fast!  However, January has brought a lot of political strife to education this year.  Our governor is set on balancing his budget by making cuts to education.  Our president believes in Charter schools and wants to reward schools with Race To The Top money that is predicated on tying teacher compensation to student performance.  It looks like we will all have to pull together this year to pass our school budget.  We are up to it!

On a positive note, we are signed on for Race To The Top money here at ESM.  Wait, what?!  I have been practicing doing Geometry proofs by helping my daughters with their homework… Follow my logic here:  The ESM plan for Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR) requires that we set goals each year.  Those goals are SMART goals, which are all tied to student performance.  Therefore ESM is already in compliance with that part of the RTTT.  In addition, once a teacher here has proven their worth, they are rewarded with a level of due process we call Tenure.  Tenure comes with a modest stipend.  Therefore ESM is already paying teachers for performance.   In my opinion we don’t need to do anything more than that to qualify for this funding.

If NY gets $750 million, and if they send half of that out to schools, maybe ESM will get a share.   It is my hope that the share would be large enough to offset some of the losses the state is imposing on us.  Stay tuned.

Continuing on a positive note, a significant number of faculty were trained in Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People this past week.  I stopped in to visit several times and everyone was engaged and participating.  The feedback has been positive.  Incidentally, on Friday over 30 students were trained in a one-day workshop.  ESM is committed to training even more of us in the future.  Ask someone who has been through it and see if it is right for you.  I recommend it.

In the second half of the year I get all new students.  So while many of you are reaching a midway point with your classes, I am starting over from scratch.  Today we talked about class expectations, appropriate behavior, and what it means to be a good citizen in class.  The Covey training was right there!  

But this time of year is also when issues that have been bubbling up finally boil over enough to require help from your union representatives.   Let me be a little proactive here.  If you are non-tenured, do some checking with your mentor and your building reps and make sure you have had your observations and your APPR is on track.  If you are a mentor or a rep, check the status of all your new people.  If there is any kind of a problem in your building, bring it to your building rep.  When you have an issue that needs to be documented, make sure you write it out in timeline order with just the facts.  It is hard to leave emotion out of the equation, so tell that all to your representative separately. 

If you find yourself having to meet with your administrator about a problem that might be disciplinary, you always have the right to a union rep.  We are not your lawyers though.  Our role will be to record what happens at the meeting, possibly ask clarifying questions, and in some instances to ask for a postponement of a meeting in order to seek guidance. 

When your building reps come to the building chair with a problem, we always try to take the high road and attempt to solve it at the building level.  The fact that we do not run to the DO for every little thing gives us credibility with the administration.  Then, when we do bring something to the District Office, we are taken seriously. 

If a building problem is kicked to me as bargaining unit president, I try to get as much of the information as I can written down.  Email works, but I often call people and talk to them on the phone.  Sometimes the problem is not a union or contract issue.  That doesn’t mean we don’t advocate for a solution, it just puts it at a different level.  When I don’t know what to say or do, I call our local New York State United Teachers Labor Relations Specialist.  Our LRS is Dave Monaco.  When Dave doesn’t know the answer, he consults with other people in his office and then with Albany.  We always try to get back to you as best we can.

As I said before, it is that time of year when things bubble up.  We will work with you to resolve problems before they get too big.  Win-Win!

John