Please Support Our Virtual Food Drive

When people think about how their lives are going to go, chances are they don’t envision themselves needing to visit a foodbank to provide basic meals for their families. But whether due to job loss, catastrophic illness, or other causes, that’s exactly the situation that thousands of Long Islanders found themselves in for the first time last year.

It’s a horrible thing to imagine, but the good news is that WE have the ability to help.

NYSUT is partnering with Long Island Cares to host a virtual food drive, and SWRTA is proud to be a part of it.  Please contribute to help make a difference in the lives of our neighbors. 39% of Long Islanders who receive emergency food are children under 18 years old, and they need our help.

Please click this link to donate, or click here for more information.

Fraud Alert

I am cautioning anyone that had their information compromised to be vigilant about your credit as clearly someone has your social security number and birthdate and may try another attempt in a different area. If you are concerned, there are preventative measures you can take to protect yourself from identity theft.

In the case of unemployment benefits fraud, report to the NY State Dept of Labor as it is the most efficient way to report ID theft. You can complete the online reporting form at on.ny.gov/uifraud.  No further action needs to be taken once the form is completed and submitted by the employee.  Employees might still receive correspondence which may even include a bank card.  Once reported those letters can be ignored, and the bank card can be shredded. If you have specific questions about your situation, please contact me and I will help guide you to the appropriate agencies.

For other types of identity fraud, there are more steps you can take. The Federal Trade Commission has set up a website for reporting and recovering from identity theft- https://www.identitytheft.gov/

Other suggestions include:

  • Consider freezing your credit.
    A credit freeze  is the best way you can protect against an identity thief opening new accounts in your name. We recommend setting up a free credit freeze if an identity thief has used your information to claim unemployment insurance benefits.
    A credit freeze:
    • Stops most access to your credit report unless you lift or remove it.
    • Is free to place and remove.
    • Lasts until you lift or remove it.
    • Will require you to take a few extra steps the next time you apply for credit.
  • Set a credit freeze by contacting each of the three credit bureaus
    Credit bureau contact information:
  • If you decide not to place a credit freeze, place a fraud alert on your credit reports.
    • Place a free, one-year fraud alert by contacting one of the three credit bureaus. That company must tell the other two.
    • A fraud alert is free. It will make it harder for someone to open new accounts in your name. When you have an alert on your report. a business must verify your identity before it issues a new credit in your name. You can renew the fraud alert after one year.
  • Get your free credit reports and review them for fraud.
    • Get your free credit reports from Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Go to AnnualCreditReport.com or call 1-877-322-8228.
    • Review your reports for fraud.

Grants and Scholarships

The L.I. Teachers’ Benevolent Fund is again offering a merit-based scholarship opportunity for children of current members.  If your child will graduate from high school this year and will attend a post-secondary institution on a full time basis, please click here to apply for this $500 scholarship.  Applications must be sent to Mary no later than March 5.

In addition, the LITBF is offering the following hardship grants.  Please click the links below for more information and to apply.

Welcome, New SWRTA Members!

Please join us in congratulating and welcoming the newest members of the Shoreham-Wading River Teachers Association!

 

 

Tune in Tonight…

There are two live stream events tonight (Tuesday, 7/28) that you may be interested in:

Special Board of Ed Meeting on Reopening Schools:   7PM
I believe you should be able to watch it at this link.

If that link doesn’t work, try the SWR homepage,  or the SWR Schools Facebook* page

Town Hall with  AFT President Randi Weingarten and Dr. Anthony Fauci: 6:45PM
I don’t have a direct link for this event, but it will probably be posted on the AFT Facebook* page

During the townhall Randi Weingarten will read some questions submitted by AFT members. If you’d like to submit a question, please click here.

*In case you didn’t know this, you don’t need to have a Facebook account to view the SWR or AFT Facebook pages.  If you see a banner that asks you to log in or sign in, you can ignore it.

NYS Reopening Guidelines

The New York State Education Department has issued guidelines for reopening schools. To learn more, please click the links below:

“Thomas Valva: Never Again” Resolution

SWRTA is a co-signer of the following resolution, which was written to help protect children from abuse and neglect. Our thanks to EMTA President Dan McGuire and the teachers in his unit for drafting this important document.

Whereas, the most recent study on child maltreatment from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services showed 678,000 victims of abuse in 2018 and 1,770 child deaths from abuse and neglect in 2018– a rate of nearly five child deaths from abuse every day; and

Whereas, NYSUT members are mandated child abuse reporters and have embraced this responsibility without hesitation in a continual effort to protect children from abuse and neglect; and

Whereas, educators in the East Moriches Union Free School District faithfully fulfilled their roles as mandated reporters in a sustained campaign to protect Thomas Valva, an 8-year-old autistic child, from abuse at the hands of his father, Michael Valva, and his father’s fiancee, Angelina Pollina; and

Whereas, media reports record “some 20 calls from the child’s teachers” to Child Protective Services documenting evidence of apparent physical abuse, malnourishment and neglect and that none of these calls were successful in convincing Child Protective Services (CPS) to remove Thomas Valva from his father’s custody; and

Whereas, Thomas Valva was pronounced dead on January 17, 2020 at Long Island Community Hospital, with investigators noting that his body temperature when he arrived at the hospital was just 76 degrees, after which Suffolk County Police Commissioner Geraldine Hart announced in a news conference that, “Thomas Valva was subjected to freezing temperatures in the home’s unheated garage overnight when the outside temperature was 19 degrees.”; and

Whereas, Michael Valva and Angelina Pollina have been charged with second-degree murder in the death of Thomas Valva; and

Whereas, Thomas Valva’s death has renewed scrutiny into the capacity, competency and willingness of courts and CPS to properly shield children from abuse, with critics charging such institutions with systemic and repeated failures; and

Whereas, the president of the Suffolk Association of Municipal Employees points to legal impediments that preclude workers from taking proper action and funding restrictions that limit CPS to fewer than 200 caseworkers who are charged with monitoring more than 1000 children and fielding more than 9000 reports annually in Suffolk County; therefore be it

RESOLVED, that NYSUT will advocate for essential and significant increases in funding and support for child welfare agencies; and be it further

RESOLVED, that NYSUT will strongly consider convening a task force comprised of mandated reporters and child welfare institutions, including such agencies as Child Protective Services and our sisters & brothers in the Association of Municipal Employees, to expeditiously recommend reforms that will enhance, expand and maximize child protection while minimizing bureaucratic obstruction; and be it further

RESOLVED that such a task force will consider, but not be limited to, such reforms as increased transparency, training, partnership and communication among schools and child welfare agencies; proper oversight and accountability for child welfare agencies and family courts; development of an appeals process for cases found unsubstantiated or unfounded; implementation of credible monitoring procedures for all reported cases of child endangerment; amendments to reporting procedures to allow duplicate reporting and legislative advocacy to create better legal protections for children vulnerable to abuse and neglect.

What Our Union Does

The prior post about the RA gives a good sense of what our union does in one sense, but there’s another way to look at “what our union does” that was also covered at the assembly. I’d like to share just a couple of those things with you.

“If she doesn’t feel well she wants mommy home with her to take care of her”
NY AFL-CIO President Mario Cilento is a regular speaker at the RA. Each year he talks about the educators in his family and expresses his great appreciation for teachers. He had something new to add this time, as this past September his wife became a dues-paying NYSUT member. He talked about going through all the aspects of her contract and noting the very tangible benefits that union membership provides and the impact it will have on their family. Not just wages and benefits, but also vacation, personal, and sick days.

“My youngest daughter Emma, she’s nine years old . . . she’s old enough but she’s still young enough that if she has a school play, if there’s something going on at school where you want your parent there, she still wants mommy there . . . if she doesn’t feel well she wants mommy home with her to take care of her, she doesn’t want us to get someone else. When we looked through that contract we realized that that particular contract, [like] every NYSUT contract for every local in the state, has a real tangible positive effect on the lives not only of those members but of their families. That’s why the members of NYSUT stayed with this Union, because of the real practical effect that those contracts and all of you have fighting for them every single day.”

“After all these years, I could actually feel the tears welling up in my eyes… but I still would do the same thing all over again today.”
At the RA, NYSUT paid tribute to Sylvia Matousek, a NYSUT pioneer who led her local – The North Syracuse Teachers Association – through an incredibly acrimonious strike in 1976. (You can watch the whole video here). The strike took place during a bitterly cold October, landed union leadership in jail, and resulted in the death of teacher Emilio Colabello, a 34 year old father of 3, and serious injuries to many others when a drunk driver fell asleep and plowed through the picket line.

What were they fighting for? Three years earlier they’d finally won class size limits, a 9% pay raise, and PLANNING PERIODS (think about that for a second). But now a new board was looking to gut their contract and undo everything. The strike lasted 10 days, but because public employee strikes are illegal, teachers were docked for 20 days pay.

The strike proved to be successful, as they got nearly everything they were fighting for, and it became a model for other locals throughout the state.

There are so many lessons we could pull from this story, and most of them come under the general heading of not taking anything for granted. For some of you this may seem like ancient history, but it really isn’t that long of a road that we’ve come, and we know there are those pushing to drive us backwards. On on that topic…

“A year ago we stood together, not just anticipating the Janus decision, but preparing for it”
The specter of Janus loomed large at the RA. It’s been almost a year since the decision came down, but the damage done to unions has been minimal – especially in New York. The vast majority of teacher locals have lost no members at all, and the ones that have have only been in single digits. We attribute this to the work we have all done together and to an overall recognition among our members that unions serve an absolutely critical function – protecting the rights, working conditions, incomes, and benefits of our members.

That said, it’s also true that the big-money groups looking to break up unions have not yet hit us with their full weight. That may be about to change.

Groups like New Choice NY have been running ads, putting up billboards, and sending canvassers door-to-door in Albany over the last few months, and the prediction is that this was a test for a state-wide roll-out this summer. This means there’s a good chance that we will start seeing messages (and maybe having people knocking on our doors) trying to convince us to abandon our union.

Are we ready? I think we are. Since you’re still reading this email, I probably don’t need to convince you of the importance of sticking together. But all of us have a roll to play in preserving our union, which sometimes includes talking to colleagues, friends, or acquaintances who may be questioning their need to stay as part of the union. In the coming weeks we’ll share some more thoughts on this, but for now the main message is all that’s above.

Go back and skim this email and notice all the things we take for granted – sick days, personal days, planning time, raises, contract negotiations that may get bad, but not brutal. These are all things that our union protects and that groups like New Choice NY want to take away from you. And even though that’s not why I put them there, the first two things mentioned above – your retirement and contractual holidays are protected by your union.

That’s why we’ll continue to work, and it’s why we’ll win.

2019 RA Summary

Last week NYSUT held it’s annual Representative Assembly, in which almost 2,000 delegates from locals across the state gather to elect officers and set our union’s agenda for the coming year.

This was an off-year election-wise (the President and other officers are up next year), so there isn’t much to report in that area.

NYSUT Delegates considered 49 resolutions, which are proposals for what actions the union will take or policies/legislation we will advocate for. Here are summaries of just a few:

 Librarians

Delegates overwhelmingly supported a resolution in support of advocating for “the creating of regulations to mandate full-time certified school librarians at every school library.” It also called for school librarians being “included in the Curriculum and Instruction” section in State Ed regulations, for the establishment of a Regents tasks force on librarians and school libraries, and the adoption of the Empire State Information Fluency Continuum as the statewide school library standards.

This is long overdue, and something that we support fully. It is critical that everyone involved in education policy recognize that digital technology can never replace librarians; that librarians are absolutely essential to ensuring that students become informed and users of these resources.

Testing
NYSUT Execute VP Jolene DiBrango put forth a special order of business to reinforce NYSUT’s commitment to advocating against the flawed 3-8 state tests. There was a bit of debate about the some of the specific language, but the overall message was universally accepted.

 Temperature
Another resolution that passed easily was calling for enforceable standards for room temperature, with a mandate that classes be cancelled or relocated if room temperature exceeds 90 degrees or goes below 60 degrees. (there is currently no regulation for maximum temperature)

 Gun Violence / Active Shooter Drills
Delegates approved a resolution that opposes any state, federal, or local laws mandating or permitting arming of public school teachers, and advocates for rules that active shooter drills only be conducted without students present and that “no weapons and/or projectiles of any kind be utilized in the training with school staff”

A couple of notes on this…

1) As with many other issues at the RA, there was a good deal of debate about this. I mention this because we have members in our unit with political beliefs across the spectrum, and some have expressed a feeling that they don’t feel their voices are heard. I want to assure you that on any issue that could be considered even remotely political, there is opportunity for all sides have their say (in fact, there is a requirement that speakers on both sides be given the chance to speak before any vote), and rest assured, this does happen.

2)  The language about “active shooter drills” does not refer to lockdown drills, but to drills with simulated shooting.

3) It seems insane that we would actually have to advocate that consultants/law enforcement officials not be allowed to shoot projectiles at teachers during drills, but this is a real thing that happens.

 Various Funding Issues
School funding is always something that we have to fight for, and there we a number of resolutions related to this. A few examples are:

*Expediting approval and disbursement of Smart Schools Bond Funds (there are currently big delays in getting these funds to schools)

*Protecting schools from TAN costs (I’d actually never heard of this before – there is a lag between the time that districts need to pay their bills and when local towns collect taxes and pay them to districts, so districts have to borrow money every year from banks, costing them a total of $13 million in interest.)  This resolution passed easily, but is unlikely to ever turn into actual legislation as banks make a lot of easy money on this.

*Payment of Foundation aid (schools in NY are currently owed $4.2 billion in aid per prior court rulings but has consistently failed to comply). This resolution called not just for lobbying but for a education program to inform NYSUT members and legislators about this issue. It’s also past easily, and is something we will continue to fight for.

*Changes to the tax cap. Without going into all the details, there was a resolution that proposed changes to how the tax cap is calculated. It did not pass, as the debate about it effectively highlighted how the unfairness of the tax cap impacts different districts differently. A change that might make it more fair for some districts would then become a huge financial burden on others, depending on how much state aid they get.

 

Again, this is just a sample of the issues that were debated.  For anyone who really wants to really dig into this, I will try to get a full summary from NYSUT and make it available.