THE SPECIAL ED PLAN
By PCT
President Morty Rosenfeld
The release of
central administration’s plan to reorganize the Pupil Personnel Department
has been met with predictable anxiety and confusion.
Hardly any institution recoils from change more than school
districts, which too often prefer the illusion of change rather than basic,
structural shifts in their operations.
The irony is that in their hunkering down to avoid change,
they fail to adapt to altered circumstances and thus cannot achieve
their goals as they once did. They
are overtaken by change.
Anyone who cares to
look will agree that our Pupil Personnel Department, like too many in our
area and beyond, is fundamentally broken.
Just listen with a detached ear to the conversations of those who
work in it or the parents of the children it serves, and you know there is
something bizarrely wrong. It’s
hard to know sometimes whether one is listening to a conversation about the
education of children or a legal symposium on protecting one’s clients
from the egregiously litigious who are waiting to pounce at the slightest
mistake. The budget of the
department grows without check, services are often handed out unnecessarily
and too many students who need our help to live independent and successful
lives are wrongfully taught that they will always require assistance to
learn rather than strategies to free them from the dependency on what is
essentially a medical treatment model of education.
This is the context in
which I believe the proposal to reorganize the management of the Pupil
Personnel Department must be critiqued.
When it is, it seems to me we must recognize it as the first serious
attempt to rationally organize the work of the department.
Dividing the responsibilities of the three assistant directors by
instructional level is not only a more equitable distribution of the work
load but a logical way to develop managers with more expertise at each level
who will have as a major goal getting costs under control.
Leaving the day to day running of the Guidance Department to a
teacher coordinator with the supervision of an assistant director is a small
but meaningful step in the professionalization of the counselors' work.
Finally, while as a unionist I regret the layoff of the aides in our
elementary and middle school collaborative classes,
replacing them with special ed teachers is very big improvement.
EXEC.
BD. ADOPTS DEMANDS
At their meeting of
February 8, the PCT Executive Board adopted negotiating demands and
recommended them to the membership of the Teacher and Clerical Units.
Demands for our Substitute Unit will be developed at a membership
meeting of the unit on Thursday, February 10.
The demands were put
together from several sources. Demands
from our last negotiations were examined to determine if unachieved ones are
still pertinent. Member demand
questionnaires were carefully screened for ideas by a group of officers and
SRC Reps. Then the officers of
the PCT added their ideas. Finally
the Executive Board discussed, debated and amended the package of demands
into the final form to be presented to the membership at the Teacher meeting
on March 2 and the Clerical meeting on March 3.
GENERAL
MEMBERSHIP MEETINGS SET
Mark
these dates on your calendar! Meeting
to discuss and debate our negotiating demands is an important initial step
in the process of gaining a new and improved contract.
Members need to understand the issues from the beginning of the
process to feel that they are part of it.
Don’t be left out. Make
your voice be heard.
TEACHER GENERAL MEMBERSHIP
MEETING
WEDNESDAY,
MARCH 2
4:00 P.M.
STRATFORD ROAD AUDITORIUM
CLERICAL
GENERAL MEMBERSHIP MEETING
THURSDAY,
MARCH 3
4:00 P.M.
LIBRARY,
POB MIDDLE
SCHOOL
LIBRARY
UNIT APPROVES DEMANDS
NEGOTIATIONS
SET
The
Plainview-Old Bethpage Library Association (POBLA), an affiliate of the
PCT, held a general membership meeting on Wednesday, January 26 for the
purpose of ratifying its demands for a round of negotiations for a successor
contract with the POB Public Library. Key
to POBLA’s proposals is a series of demands to raise their salaries
from their current embarrassingly low range of $32,000 to a high after many
years of service of $74,000. Members
of the unit are determined to gain salaries appropriate to their education and
experience.
KEEP AN EYE ON
ALBANY A NEW WRINKLE IN YEARLY BUDGET
BATTLE
New
Yorkers are accustomed to the yearly ritual of the Governor proposing a
budget, the Speaker of the Assembly and Senate Majority Leader announcing it
dead on arrival, and the three political titans then struggling throughout the
spring, sometimes into early summer, to hammer out a budget for the state.
For school districts, this has often meant preparing their own budgets
without firm state aide numbers. Sometimes,
local budgets get voted on before the state budget is passed.
Things are bound to be
different this year because of a recent New York State Court of Appeals
decision that established that the Legislature does not have the right to
increase the Governor’s budget, only the power to reject or reduce it. If
they reject it, the state is without a budget.
If the state is without a budget after April 1, state law mandates that
the legislators cannot be paid.
Where is all this going?
No one knows for sure. Don’t
skip over the news from
Albany
columns in the newspaper, however.
This may prove the most difficult year ever.
MERGER
NEWS
April
14 is approaching fast. On that
day, 15 PCT delegates along with
10 members of the Retiree Chapter of the PCT who have been elected Region
Retired NEA/
New York
delegates
will travel to
Albany
for what will be the most historic convention
since the founding of our state union. On
Saturday of that weekend, delegates will vote on the Principles of Merger
negotiated between NEA/
New York
and NYSUT to create one great education union
in the state. If they approve the
Principles, the agreement calls for the creation of a constitutional committee
to draft a constitution and by-laws for the merged organization which would
open for business in September 2006.
That is unless the merger
plan gets undone by the National Education Association (NEA), the national
union with which the PCT is affiliated. The
officers of the NEA have raised an objection to the merger agreement,
maintaining that it violates its by-law that mandates that officer elections
in any affiliate union must be conducted by secret ballot.
Our agreement with NYSUT calls for local unions to decide whether they
want to vote by secret ballot for officers or vote openly as is the NYSUT
practice. To resolve this problem,
an amendment will be offered to the NEA by-laws that would permit the merger
to go forward.
Asked what will happen if the NEA does not pass the by-law amendment,
PCT President Morty Rosenfeld said,”The merger will take place anyway.
Either NEA/
New York
will disaffiliate with NEA and complete its
merger with NYSUT, or many locals unions like the PCT will simply join NYSUT,
go independent or join some other state union.
This is one of those times when the NEA’s preoccupation with rigid
interpretation of their rules leaves them poised to hang themselves.”
REGENTS CHANGE REGS BACK TO 5 YEAR MA
At the January 11 meeting
of the New York State Regents, a decision was taken for newer teachers working
on an Initial Certificate to have up to five (5) years to complete the
Master’s degree to qualify for Professional certification.
This move by the Regents
was prompted by growing concern in
the education community that the recently enacted 3 year period to obtain a
Master’s was unrealistic for people having to adjust to the demands of a new
teaching assignment. The Regents
also heard from the higher ed community that their graduate programs often
made more sense to teachers who had some experience before completing their
graduate study.
INTERVIEW
COMMITTEES FORMED
The
PCT has formed a number of interview committees to interview candidates for
several administrative openings in our District.
Within the next few weeks, candidates will be interviewed
for the principalship of the
Stratford
Road
School
where principal Gail Weinstein has announced
her retirement at the conclusion of this school year.
The committee is composed of
Stratford
volunteers recruited by the building SRC and
PCT Elementary Vice -President Robin Glick.
Interviews for the high school principalship will also be conducted by
an SRC recruited team and PCT High School Vice-President Cindy Feldman.
The PCT Special Education Committee will conduct the interviews for the
position of Director of Pupil Personnel.