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Educators’ Vision Social Equality Educators SEE April 2012 Educators’ Vision Social Equality Educators SEE April 2012
Published By the Social Equality Educators (SEE)
Educators’ VisionVolume 2, Issue 8, April 2012
Teachers for Trayvon!
The murder of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old
African American boy, in a gated community in Sanford, Florida has dramatized the depths of racism in U.S. society. Trayvon was a young, Black and male--that was enough for neighbor-hood watch volunteer George Zimmerman to decide he was “suspicious,” to stalk him, and to pull the trigger. Trayvon Martin’s tragic killing has brought thousands into the street to demand justice for his family. Justice for Trayvon Martin means justice for all who are targeted because of the color of their skin. In the Seattle Public Schools, our students know racial profiling all too well. Many of our students, just for being Black or Latino, are treated like criminals every single day - in stores, on the street and too often in our own schools. We must stand up against racism before its too late for your students.
What you can do for Tryavon:
1. The Social Equality Educators are calling on teachers to stand in solidarity with calls from Seattle area Black Student Unions to wear hood-ies to work on Thursday or Friday,
2. Teach lessons about Trayvon Martin and racism in America. The African American History website has some important lesson plans and resources for teaching about the case and racism in America: http://africanamericanhistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/teaching-about-the-trayvon-martin-incident
3. Help organize a lunch-time speak-out about Trayvon Martin where students and staff can share their thoughts or poetry about the case.
Join The Social Equality Educators for a study group and organizing meeting on
Michelle Alexander’s book “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” to discuss the important issues it raises about the inequalities created by the “War on Drugs” and the “Criminal Justice System” in America.
In a country that boasts the highest incar-ceration rate in the world, including an astonishing percentage of racial or ethnic minorities, the beginnings of a conversation to discuss our criminal justice system within the current burgeoning social movement is a distinct opportunity.
As noted by Alexander, a key prerequisite to effective social action must begin with dialogue and a conversation that fosters a critical conscious-ness. We hope to apply the themes sketched here for further applications, critiques, and large scale organizing.
To set up a meeting in your neighborhood, please visit our new Facebook page at ‘No New Jim Crow in Seattle’, or call 425.213.8760.
Sunday, April 15, 3pm Douglas-Truth Library, 23rd and East Yesler Way
Sponsored by: No New Jim Crow in Seattle Campaign-Coalition
SEE endorsed candidates for SEA officers and SEA board during the March elections. SEE members, Marian Wagner and Susan Kingsbury,
both won seats on the board. Eric Muhs and Jennifer Hall running for president and vice president received roughly 40% of the vote. SEE would like to congratulate Jonathan Knapp and Phyllis Campano in win-ning those seats. While running against them we learned a few lessons during the campaign:
1. It will be important in the struggles to come in defending our union and public education to mobilize the membership. If interest in union elections amongst SEA members is any indication, with only 25% of the membership voting, this will be a difficult challenge and one that will require a wholly different approach. Busy, over-whelmed, educational employees need not only a union that will fight for them, but one that will mobilize them to reverse the tide of cuts and atmosphere that blames them for deficiencies in public education. SEE’s campaign clearly helped in this endeavor as the percentage of union members voting nearly doubled compared to previous local elections, paper ballot and online.
2. The attacks against public education will not abate for the duration of SEA elections. SEE members took fighting against the push for charters, attacks on our healthcare and the latest injection of testing into our evals as seriously as the campaign. We helped to organize a vibrant and spirited protest at the Gates Foundation HQ, the first of many to come hopefully. This kind of activism is what will be neces-sary to defend our union. Lobbying alone will not compete with the likes of the Gates and Stand on Children. SEE members showed while campaining after a day of teaching, that they have the strength to also continue fighting back against corporate ed reform.
3. SEE has lots of tireless, dedicated supporters who really want to make the SEA a better, more responsive union that vigorously fights attacks against its members – a union that forms strong alliances in the com-munity. While we made a strong effort in the local elections, there is no substitute for building up a rank-and-file that will advocate and fight for itself regardless of who is presiding over the union. SEE members are leading by example.
While elections are now over SEE will continue building an activist, fight-ing union. We have a lot of people to thank for their support, including the many working teachers and paraprofessionals who leafleted buildings and set up meetings for us, the people who attended meetings and made suggestions for our platform, and the members of the SEA Elections Committee, who had a harder job to do during this election, than in years past. We stand with you all in solidarity. Thank you so much!
SEA Local Elections — SEE Gains Two Seats on Board of Directors — Lessons Learned
SEE has received news that an SEA member’s age discrimination complaint against the Seattle
School District has recently been referred by the Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to the Washington State Human Rights Commission (HRC) for investigation. The member has communicated with an HRC investigator.
The HRC investigator asked the member to let others in similar circumstances (SSD employees over the age of forty, and/or in other groups considered `protected’ under the law, who are being put on `Plans of Improvement’ and probation, and treated with harassment-style management by supervisory staff) know that an investigation is taking place, and that information that they can provide to the investigation would be helpful.
The member who spurred the HRC investigation is also exploring the possibility of putting together a class action lawsuit on the behalf of SPS employees over the age of forty who have been, and who are currently being harassed and forced out of their jobs.
A Seattle parent activist who supports teachers has made a Freedom of Information Act request that the Seattle School District release all records regarding Performance Improvement Plans in terms of how they are developed, rules regarding them, ages and demographics of employees placed about PIPS, and resolutions of them.
A motion by Jennifer Hall, calling on SEA officers and staff to cooperate with the current HRC investigation, was ruled out of order for the Representative Assembly. SEE will be considering placing related motions at the upcoming Washington Education Association (WEA) and National Education Association (NEA) Representative Assemblies.
Please e-mail Jennifer for more information on ongoing efforts to support targeted teachers ([email protected]).
New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness”
March and rally for Trayvon Martin, MLK Memorial Park, Seattle Washington, March 25, 2012.
Washington State Human Rights Commission to Investigate Age Discrimination in the Seattle School District
Educators’ Vision Social Equality Educators SEE April 2012 Educators’ Vision Social Equality Educators SEE April 2012
Educators’ Vision
Published By the Social Equality Educators (SEE)
Volume 2, Issue 8,
April 2012
SEE steering commit-tee: Eric Muhs, India Carlson, Dan Trocolli, Marian Wagner, Matt Carter, Jesse Hagopian.
Educators’ Vision is a monthly newsletter of the Social Equality Educators
www.seattlesee.org
Mission
Social Equality Educators (SEE) is a new rank-and-
file organization of educators inside the Seattle Education Association that seeks to transform education in terms that empower students, teachers, and the communi-ties that our public schools serve. As members of the SEA we understand that the educator’s union has a vital role to play in creating an equitable education system. As educators we understand the importance of using culturally relevant and holistic curriculum to empower our students. We have come together to fight against the corporate reform of our schools and to organize for a socially just education system.
Student Needs First — The Case for a Late Start TimeBy Cindy Jatul
Ed Reform is supposed to be aimed at making changes to improve student learning. An obvious way to help middle and high school students is to
improve their daily sleep time and their sleep quality. This could be achieved by shifting the schedule to a later start time.
All of us who have taught early morning classes can attest to the fact that many pre-teen and teen-age students are not fully awake and are therefore not able to do their best. Go into any 1st period class and you are more likely to encounter high rates of lateness, absenteeism, and lower performance.
There is substantial scientific evidence which shows that the adolescent body clock is affected by puberty making it very difficult for adolescents to fall asleep early and to wake up early the next moring. As a result, most teenage students with early morning school start times are sleep deprived. Research has shown that delaying the school start time in middle and high-school results in students having longer hours of sleep, as well as improved attendance and performance (Figure 1).
As a Roosevelt teacher and SEE member I would like to see our district shift middle and high school start times to 8:30 or 9:00. I am joined by other teachers, parents, and University researcher in the field of sleep and biological clocks, Dr. Horacio de la Iglesia. We know that some of the school board members are with us but there are many in power that take the position that this is not a priority. Why shouldn’t improving the ability to learn be a priority?
We need to step up the pressure with more voices and more data. Come to our next SEE meeting in late April where we can talk about forming a working group around this demand. Together we can make education more humane and student focused. It’s time people listen to those of us who know how to help students.
Figure 1. Hours of sleep per grade year before (Year 1) and after (Year 2) a delay in the school start time 1 hour in a school district in Kentucky. Differences are statistically significant for all the years. From Danner and Phillips (2008) J Clin Sleep Med
I achieved the greatest moment in my teaching career this past winter.
Though billionaire education reformers may fall out of their brass-studded leather chairs to hear it, I did not attain this moment of euphoria from running bubble tests through a Scantron machine and reading the red-inked percentages it spit out. It occurred, in fact, as hundreds upon hundreds of students streamed past me in the hallways, leaving school in the middle of the day carrying hand-made signs that read, “Fund Our Future!” and “No More Cuts.” I was simply overwhelmed with emotion.
The journey to this pinnacle was a long one—and part of an ongoing struggle—but one worth recounting because I think it offers lessons to educators across the country who face child-abusing budget cuts and teacher-bashing corporate education reform.
I began teaching in an elementary school in Southeast Washington, D.C., in 2001. Directly across from the entrance of the school was a decrepit building with vegetation growing out the windows. The library’s book collection was more appropriate for an archeological study than a source for topical information. Police roamed the halls of our elementary school looking for mouthy kids to jack up against the wall. I had one hole in the middle of the chalkboard and another hole in the ceiling that often meant rain flooded my classroom.
One lasting memory of this experience came on my third day of teaching. I had asked my sixth graders to bring a meaningful object from home for a show-and-tell activity.
We gathered in a circle in the back of the room that Friday morning and the kids sat eagerly with paper bags on their laps that concealed their autobiographical mementos. One after another, each and every hand came out of those crumpled brown lunch sacks clutching a photo of a close family member—usually a dad or an uncle who was either dead or in jail. When it was my turn, all I could do was stare stupidly at the baseball I had pulled out, nervously picking at the red stitches as I mumbled something about how I had played in college.
Only a few days after this lesson, the attacks of 9/11 were carried out, closely followed by the government’s launching of the war on Afghanistan. I received a higher degree in education theory that year as I witnessed our nation spend money to bomb children halfway around the world while refusing to care for my students in the shadow of the White House. Soon, too, it became apparent in all of the No Child Left Behind rhetoric about accountability that I was being asked, from inside of the classroom, to correct all of the mistaken priorities of the politicians.
My start in education in Washington, D.C., Public Schools taught me that being a social justice educator has to mean two things: pro-vide an anti-racist curriculum in the classroom and be an activist in the community—that is, fight to restructure society so education is a priority over war spending and bank bailouts.
From this point of view, education reform should have nothing to do with free market “solutions”—schemes such as teacher merit pay, privatized charter schools, or increased worker and student effi-ciency through standardized tests. Instead, education reform based
My Greatest Teaching Momenton social justice should be aimed to provide a holistic education that teaches skills of leadership and social responsibility, and assess students’ abilities to collaborate with peers, reevaluate assumptions based on new evidence, and defend well-reasoned positions on cur-rent events—all things impossible to quantify on a standardized test.
My perspective of what it means to be a social justice educator has put me in face-to-face opposition against some of the most power-ful people in the education establishment. These people tend to believe that when it comes to assessing outcomes of student success, considering any factors outside of the school-building environment is tantamount to making excuses—perhaps even “socialistic.” To say the least, I make them uneasy.
When U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan came to a Seattle-area high school in July 2010, I had an opportunity to debate him on his advocacy for teacher “merit pay.” When filmmaker David Guggenheim held a special screening of Waiting for Superman in Seattle, I got on the invite list. When the film was over, I gave him “two thumbs down,” and rigorous debate about charter schools. Recently, I joined the Occupy Education “policy throwdown” with the Gates Foundation and confronted the Foundation’s PR spokes-person on its advocacy of using standardized testing in teacher evaluations.
These confrontations uncovered more awareness about corporate-driven education reform and helped win over more educators to the mission of the Social Equality Educators (SEE), an organization that I’m part of.
When Washington state announced that it would hold a special legislative session to decide how to further slash the education and healthcare budgets, SEE headed to Olympia to issue citizen’s arrest warrants to legislators for failing to adhere to the Washington State Constitution that declares education is the state’s “Paramount Duty.” In the course of delivering arrest warrants to the House Ways and Means Committee I was arrested.
While I was in jail, unbeknownst to me, my students at Garfield High School set up a Facebook page titled “Free Mr. Hagopian.” Hundreds of student Bulldogs joined the page in my support. When I was released that night and appeared for school the next day, the students changed the Facebook page to “Seattle Student Walkout for Education.” I have often hoped that my students would one day learn the lessons of history I had taught them—from the struggles of the abolitionists and women’s rights advocates in antebellum America, to student movements against the Vietnam War, to the Freedom Riders of the Civil Rights Movement—and use them to start their own revolution.
The moment my students lost their contentedness with studying history and started making their own – that was the most gratifying day of my career.
Epilogue: Only weeks after the student mass walkout, the Washington State Supreme Court ruled that the State Legislature was in violation of the Constitution and would need to increase funding to education.
As a teacher, you
never know when
your greatest teaching
moment will present
itself. For high school
history teacher Jesse
Hagopian that mo-
ment came after he
was arrested at the
state capitol and his
students made their
own history. This is
Jesse’s story.
posted Mar 14, 2012
Being a social justice educator has to mean two things: provide an anti-racist cur-riculum in the classroom and be an activist in the community.
Reprinted with permission by YES!
Powerful Ideas, Practical Actions.
www.yesmagazine.org/
Educators’ Vision Social Equality Educators SEE April 2012 Educators’ Vision Social Equality Educators SEE April 2012
Educators’ Vision
Published By the Social Equality Educators (SEE)
Volume 2, Issue 8,
April 2012
SEE steering commit-tee: Eric Muhs, India Carlson, Dan Trocolli, Marian Wagner, Matt Carter, Jesse Hagopian.
Educators’ Vision is a monthly newsletter of the Social Equality Educators
www.seattlesee.org
Mission
Social Equality Educators (SEE) is a new rank-and-
file organization of educators inside the Seattle Education Association that seeks to transform education in terms that empower students, teachers, and the communi-ties that our public schools serve. As members of the SEA we understand that the educator’s union has a vital role to play in creating an equitable education system. As educators we understand the importance of using culturally relevant and holistic curriculum to empower our students. We have come together to fight against the corporate reform of our schools and to organize for a socially just education system.
Student Needs First — The Case for a Late Start TimeBy Cindy Jatul
Ed Reform is supposed to be aimed at making changes to improve student learning. An obvious way to help middle and high school students is to
improve their daily sleep time and their sleep quality. This could be achieved by shifting the schedule to a later start time.
All of us who have taught early morning classes can attest to the fact that many pre-teen and teen-age students are not fully awake and are therefore not able to do their best. Go into any 1st period class and you are more likely to encounter high rates of lateness, absenteeism, and lower performance.
There is substantial scientific evidence which shows that the adolescent body clock is affected by puberty making it very difficult for adolescents to fall asleep early and to wake up early the next moring. As a result, most teenage students with early morning school start times are sleep deprived. Research has shown that delaying the school start time in middle and high-school results in students having longer hours of sleep, as well as improved attendance and performance (Figure 1).
As a Roosevelt teacher and SEE member I would like to see our district shift middle and high school start times to 8:30 or 9:00. I am joined by other teachers, parents, and University researcher in the field of sleep and biological clocks, Dr. Horacio de la Iglesia. We know that some of the school board members are with us but there are many in power that take the position that this is not a priority. Why shouldn’t improving the ability to learn be a priority?
We need to step up the pressure with more voices and more data. Come to our next SEE meeting in late April where we can talk about forming a working group around this demand. Together we can make education more humane and student focused. It’s time people listen to those of us who know how to help students.
Figure 1. Hours of sleep per grade year before (Year 1) and after (Year 2) a delay in the school start time 1 hour in a school district in Kentucky. Differences are statistically significant for all the years. From Danner and Phillips (2008) J Clin Sleep Med
I achieved the greatest moment in my teaching career this past winter.
Though billionaire education reformers may fall out of their brass-studded leather chairs to hear it, I did not attain this moment of euphoria from running bubble tests through a Scantron machine and reading the red-inked percentages it spit out. It occurred, in fact, as hundreds upon hundreds of students streamed past me in the hallways, leaving school in the middle of the day carrying hand-made signs that read, “Fund Our Future!” and “No More Cuts.” I was simply overwhelmed with emotion.
The journey to this pinnacle was a long one—and part of an ongoing struggle—but one worth recounting because I think it offers lessons to educators across the country who face child-abusing budget cuts and teacher-bashing corporate education reform.
I began teaching in an elementary school in Southeast Washington, D.C., in 2001. Directly across from the entrance of the school was a decrepit building with vegetation growing out the windows. The library’s book collection was more appropriate for an archeological study than a source for topical information. Police roamed the halls of our elementary school looking for mouthy kids to jack up against the wall. I had one hole in the middle of the chalkboard and another hole in the ceiling that often meant rain flooded my classroom.
One lasting memory of this experience came on my third day of teaching. I had asked my sixth graders to bring a meaningful object from home for a show-and-tell activity.
We gathered in a circle in the back of the room that Friday morning and the kids sat eagerly with paper bags on their laps that concealed their autobiographical mementos. One after another, each and every hand came out of those crumpled brown lunch sacks clutching a photo of a close family member—usually a dad or an uncle who was either dead or in jail. When it was my turn, all I could do was stare stupidly at the baseball I had pulled out, nervously picking at the red stitches as I mumbled something about how I had played in college.
Only a few days after this lesson, the attacks of 9/11 were carried out, closely followed by the government’s launching of the war on Afghanistan. I received a higher degree in education theory that year as I witnessed our nation spend money to bomb children halfway around the world while refusing to care for my students in the shadow of the White House. Soon, too, it became apparent in all of the No Child Left Behind rhetoric about accountability that I was being asked, from inside of the classroom, to correct all of the mistaken priorities of the politicians.
My start in education in Washington, D.C., Public Schools taught me that being a social justice educator has to mean two things: pro-vide an anti-racist curriculum in the classroom and be an activist in the community—that is, fight to restructure society so education is a priority over war spending and bank bailouts.
From this point of view, education reform should have nothing to do with free market “solutions”—schemes such as teacher merit pay, privatized charter schools, or increased worker and student effi-ciency through standardized tests. Instead, education reform based
My Greatest Teaching Momenton social justice should be aimed to provide a holistic education that teaches skills of leadership and social responsibility, and assess students’ abilities to collaborate with peers, reevaluate assumptions based on new evidence, and defend well-reasoned positions on cur-rent events—all things impossible to quantify on a standardized test.
My perspective of what it means to be a social justice educator has put me in face-to-face opposition against some of the most power-ful people in the education establishment. These people tend to believe that when it comes to assessing outcomes of student success, considering any factors outside of the school-building environment is tantamount to making excuses—perhaps even “socialistic.” To say the least, I make them uneasy.
When U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan came to a Seattle-area high school in July 2010, I had an opportunity to debate him on his advocacy for teacher “merit pay.” When filmmaker David Guggenheim held a special screening of Waiting for Superman in Seattle, I got on the invite list. When the film was over, I gave him “two thumbs down,” and rigorous debate about charter schools. Recently, I joined the Occupy Education “policy throwdown” with the Gates Foundation and confronted the Foundation’s PR spokes-person on its advocacy of using standardized testing in teacher evaluations.
These confrontations uncovered more awareness about corporate-driven education reform and helped win over more educators to the mission of the Social Equality Educators (SEE), an organization that I’m part of.
When Washington state announced that it would hold a special legislative session to decide how to further slash the education and healthcare budgets, SEE headed to Olympia to issue citizen’s arrest warrants to legislators for failing to adhere to the Washington State Constitution that declares education is the state’s “Paramount Duty.” In the course of delivering arrest warrants to the House Ways and Means Committee I was arrested.
While I was in jail, unbeknownst to me, my students at Garfield High School set up a Facebook page titled “Free Mr. Hagopian.” Hundreds of student Bulldogs joined the page in my support. When I was released that night and appeared for school the next day, the students changed the Facebook page to “Seattle Student Walkout for Education.” I have often hoped that my students would one day learn the lessons of history I had taught them—from the struggles of the abolitionists and women’s rights advocates in antebellum America, to student movements against the Vietnam War, to the Freedom Riders of the Civil Rights Movement—and use them to start their own revolution.
The moment my students lost their contentedness with studying history and started making their own – that was the most gratifying day of my career.
Epilogue: Only weeks after the student mass walkout, the Washington State Supreme Court ruled that the State Legislature was in violation of the Constitution and would need to increase funding to education.
As a teacher, you
never know when
your greatest teaching
moment will present
itself. For high school
history teacher Jesse
Hagopian that mo-
ment came after he
was arrested at the
state capitol and his
students made their
own history. This is
Jesse’s story.
posted Mar 14, 2012
Being a social justice educator has to mean two things: provide an anti-racist cur-riculum in the classroom and be an activist in the community.
Reprinted with permission by YES!
Powerful Ideas, Practical Actions.
www.yesmagazine.org/
Educators’ Vision Social Equality Educators SEE April 2012 Educators’ Vision Social Equality Educators SEE April 2012
Published By the Social Equality Educators (SEE)
Educators’ VisionVolume 2, Issue 8, April 2012
Teachers for Trayvon!
The murder of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old
African American boy, in a gated community in Sanford, Florida has dramatized the depths of racism in U.S. society. Trayvon was a young, Black and male--that was enough for neighbor-hood watch volunteer George Zimmerman to decide he was “suspicious,” to stalk him, and to pull the trigger. Trayvon Martin’s tragic killing has brought thousands into the street to demand justice for his family. Justice for Trayvon Martin means justice for all who are targeted because of the color of their skin. In the Seattle Public Schools, our students know racial profiling all too well. Many of our students, just for being Black or Latino, are treated like criminals every single day - in stores, on the street and too often in our own schools. We must stand up against racism before its too late for your students.
What you can do for Tryavon:
1. The Social Equality Educators are calling on teachers to stand in solidarity with calls from Seattle area Black Student Unions to wear hood-ies to work on Thursday or Friday,
2. Teach lessons about Trayvon Martin and racism in America. The African American History website has some important lesson plans and resources for teaching about the case and racism in America: http://africanamericanhistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/teaching-about-the-trayvon-martin-incident
3. Help organize a lunch-time speak-out about Trayvon Martin where students and staff can share their thoughts or poetry about the case.
Join The Social Equality Educators for a study group and organizing meeting on
Michelle Alexander’s book “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” to discuss the important issues it raises about the inequalities created by the “War on Drugs” and the “Criminal Justice System” in America.
In a country that boasts the highest incar-ceration rate in the world, including an astonishing percentage of racial or ethnic minorities, the beginnings of a conversation to discuss our criminal justice system within the current burgeoning social movement is a distinct opportunity.
As noted by Alexander, a key prerequisite to effective social action must begin with dialogue and a conversation that fosters a critical conscious-ness. We hope to apply the themes sketched here for further applications, critiques, and large scale organizing.
To set up a meeting in your neighborhood, please visit our new Facebook page at ‘No New Jim Crow in Seattle’, or call 425.213.8760.
Sunday, April 15, 3pm Douglas-Truth Library, 23rd and East Yesler Way
Sponsored by: No New Jim Crow in Seattle Campaign-Coalition
SEE endorsed candidates for SEA officers and SEA board during the March elections. SEE members, Marian Wagner and Susan Kingsbury,
both won seats on the board. Eric Muhs and Jennifer Hall running for president and vice president received roughly 40% of the vote. SEE would like to congratulate Jonathan Knapp and Phyllis Campano in win-ning those seats. While running against them we learned a few lessons during the campaign:
1. It will be important in the struggles to come in defending our union and public education to mobilize the membership. If interest in union elections amongst SEA members is any indication, with only 25% of the membership voting, this will be a difficult challenge and one that will require a wholly different approach. Busy, over-whelmed, educational employees need not only a union that will fight for them, but one that will mobilize them to reverse the tide of cuts and atmosphere that blames them for deficiencies in public education. SEE’s campaign clearly helped in this endeavor as the percentage of union members voting nearly doubled compared to previous local elections, paper ballot and online.
2. The attacks against public education will not abate for the duration of SEA elections. SEE members took fighting against the push for charters, attacks on our healthcare and the latest injection of testing into our evals as seriously as the campaign. We helped to organize a vibrant and spirited protest at the Gates Foundation HQ, the first of many to come hopefully. This kind of activism is what will be neces-sary to defend our union. Lobbying alone will not compete with the likes of the Gates and Stand on Children. SEE members showed while campaining after a day of teaching, that they have the strength to also continue fighting back against corporate ed reform.
3. SEE has lots of tireless, dedicated supporters who really want to make the SEA a better, more responsive union that vigorously fights attacks against its members – a union that forms strong alliances in the com-munity. While we made a strong effort in the local elections, there is no substitute for building up a rank-and-file that will advocate and fight for itself regardless of who is presiding over the union. SEE members are leading by example.
While elections are now over SEE will continue building an activist, fight-ing union. We have a lot of people to thank for their support, including the many working teachers and paraprofessionals who leafleted buildings and set up meetings for us, the people who attended meetings and made suggestions for our platform, and the members of the SEA Elections Committee, who had a harder job to do during this election, than in years past. We stand with you all in solidarity. Thank you so much!
SEA Local Elections — SEE Gains Two Seats on Board of Directors — Lessons Learned
SEE has received news that an SEA member’s age discrimination complaint against the Seattle
School District has recently been referred by the Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to the Washington State Human Rights Commission (HRC) for investigation. The member has communicated with an HRC investigator.
The HRC investigator asked the member to let others in similar circumstances (SSD employees over the age of forty, and/or in other groups considered `protected’ under the law, who are being put on `Plans of Improvement’ and probation, and treated with harassment-style management by supervisory staff) know that an investigation is taking place, and that information that they can provide to the investigation would be helpful.
The member who spurred the HRC investigation is also exploring the possibility of putting together a class action lawsuit on the behalf of SPS employees over the age of forty who have been, and who are currently being harassed and forced out of their jobs.
A Seattle parent activist who supports teachers has made a Freedom of Information Act request that the Seattle School District release all records regarding Performance Improvement Plans in terms of how they are developed, rules regarding them, ages and demographics of employees placed about PIPS, and resolutions of them.
A motion by Jennifer Hall, calling on SEA officers and staff to cooperate with the current HRC investigation, was ruled out of order for the Representative Assembly. SEE will be considering placing related motions at the upcoming Washington Education Association (WEA) and National Education Association (NEA) Representative Assemblies.
Please e-mail Jennifer for more information on ongoing efforts to support targeted teachers ([email protected]).
New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness”
March and rally for Trayvon Martin, MLK Memorial Park, Seattle Washington, March 25, 2012.
Washington State Human Rights Commission to Investigate Age Discrimination in the Seattle School District