DRAFT

Meeting of the East Aurora Council of the AFT

October 27, 2020

Call to Order 4:00 PM

Secretary’s Report: (5 minutes)

Action:  

Motion to approve 10/1/20 union meeting minutes (J. Fischer/M. Taylor) 

Passed unanimously.

Treasurer’s Report: (5 minutes)

Monthly Treasurer report

Masks were members’ appreciation gift.  

Technology purchases for leadership office.

Action:

Motion to approve Treasurer report (M.Thomas, M.Taylor)  

Passed unanimously.

President Report: (60 minutes) (J. Mleczko)

  • Stipends were approved at the October 5th board meeting. Should be on Oct 30 check or the next.  50% of the hours: virtual check-ins; work maintaining the hours.  Need to do stuff to prove you are working.  Asst or head coaches? Clarification of who to ask question to.
  • Member contact information – Stacy has created a Google Form for collecting personal contact information.  We are behind in gathering this information.  She will send it out again.
  • Membership update – 30 % enrolled; should be down to only 12%. Dark red means don’t want to enroll; ask them each year; it is good to ask, even if they say no. Hopefully, by December it will be completed.  
  • Negotiations – Some preliminary work has been done on the contract negotiation language, schedules. There will be a meeting in November to review this draft work.  It is planned to be set to go before Bloch gets involved.  
    • All members are encouraged to provide input into the contract. The language suggestion form is located on the Council web, under “Contract Docs”.  Direct members to the website. That form will be what is used by staff for input. Members need to be as precise as possible. However, if it is just an idea it can still be worked on.  It was suggested that a survey be run after the meeting in November.  This will provide us with a starting point. Deadline for the form?  Need before we start negotiations.  December 1.  
  • $200 reimbursement: talk to principal first; if the order was placed before March 1st, it should be ordered.  There might be a couple reasons:  vendors went on lock down; or, orders were not placed before lockdown.  Money does not carry over from one year to the next.  Is it true if it is a district level hold up? No roll over from one fiscal year to the next.  The $200 goes back into general fund.  We could ask how many submitted it last year.  It would be a hard fight to get or we could use it on negotiating next year. J. Waldo is on the grievance committee.  She explained that the  ultimate decision for a grievance to be taken on is if it will pass arbitration.  Covid might make it unlikely to pass.  
  • If everyone got their $200 from last year, it would cost an estimate of $198,000.  If the fair tax doesn’t pass we are looking at 20% cut if it doesn’t pass.  (According to Pritzker)  

Building Representative  Concerns: (20 minutes)

  • There are several concerns related to subbing at various levels.
  • MS/Elementary subbing:  At the middle school and elementary levels they are not paying people.  Middle school has it the worst – we all teach at the same time.  Instructional coaches are being pulled and not paid.  District:  If you do not have a full schedule, you can be called in for subbing.  They have been redirected to research for remote learning and subbing.  
  • J. Waldo also received complaints about not being paid for subbing.  She was able to validate concerns from her people.  Most people are understanding.  Counsellors and tech specialists run a full load; could /should be paid. Counsellors are still counseling.  Subs that can validate being paid.  
  • Should we be working during our plan and lunch?  Should we need to reschedule around subbing? (Brady)  
  • Some instructional coaches have been directed to substitute.  However, some coaches did not get those instructions and it is not equitable throughout the district.  It is not equitable across coaches.  Some are refusing to sub.  
  • Aviva – Pollack-Paradise :  interventionist time:  More intervention time.  Concern that interventionists have more time than they spend with students. JM : administrators call.

INCOMPLETE FORM

  • The “Incomplete form” – The principal of East High is trying to make it better for next time.  Status unknown.  He asked in-coaches if it could be better. L. Pauli:  the form is redundant.  Teachers are logging outreach in PLP, so  information is available.  Many teachers log the same student in the PLP almost daily.    
  • It was suggested that the Incomplete form is a cynical way of pressuring teachers not to use the grade of “Incomplete”.  L. Pauli stated that of the 7 incompletes she gave, 6 were overturned.
  •  J. Mleczko explained that the form is there so there is documentation as to how the incomplete will be removed.  The forms support the use of I’s.  
  • It was stated that several questions can’t be answer on the Incomplete form.  They are ambiguous questions. 
  • M. Thomas believes the district is trying for consistency.  However, the same Incomplete form should not be used by elementary schools and secondary schools.

She also discussed the students who had not been at all for all classes.  The form had to be filled out by each class, or 4 times.  The “Pass” was a big relief. Students don’t have the grit, sustainability.  Testing and grades are not valid.  She repeated that the district administration is concerned about the social emotional learning. 

  • J. Durham: Disdussed other options that were brought up.  Also, we thought there would be a survey sent out about the Pass grade.   J. Mleczko believes that Dr. Norrell needs to present a  clear discussion of what the Pass grade means in the covid state.  

Union / Superintendent Meeting Agenda

  • J. Mleczko:   What do you want to bring up at the next Union/Supt meeting?  

COMMUNICATION

  • L. Pauli described a number of extra hours being worked due to remote learning.   Support staff being used for translation.  MS and HS are supposed to be using Google Translation. Google will make them feel less important than other.  Very impersonal.  Pauli:  translation should not be an after- thought. In these times of inequity and sel…   JM has a big concern with the accuracy of the translation quality.
  • L. Pauli:  We have contractual hours to use.  We know that teachers work past hours as a rule.  But we are doing a lot of work with the impact of the covid pandemic.  There is a concern that we need to ask ourselves if our hours take us out of contractual hours.  This is an abuse of the contract.  The precedence has been set.
  • Steph & Kristi – conference schedule and booking parents: get paid for working extra hours.  Wants to make it an overwhelming list.  Melinda: will make a table 
  • JM:  or the dates, sending out the google stuff 2 days before it happens.  

Adjourn  PASSED.