NTU Update - October 23, 2015

Colleagues,

1)      Advisory Board Meeting - With the community, we are asking for a massive “WALK IN” at Monday night’s Advisory Board meeting.  It is vital that we come out in force!  The meeting starts at 6 PM.  We want everyone there by 5:30 PM so we can walk in as one large body.

Newark Advisory Board Meeting

Monday, October 26, 2015 - 6:00 PM

University High School

55 Clinton Place

Newark, NJ 07108

2)      Charter Schools on Trial - Let's get to the Facts on Charter Schools. Tell your state legislator we need to revisit the Moratorium on Charter School Bill before we're faced with more devastating budget cuts to public education. Help us stop them by clicking on this link... http://aftnj.org/topics/news/k-12/2015/take-action-lets-get-the-facts-on-charter-schools/

3)       NJEA Convention – We are working with NPS on finalizing the procedures for attending this year’s NJEA Convention.  If you are attending the conference, you will just have to submit a simple one page form with your name, ID #, etc to your principal notifying them.   Also, for the first time, NPS is allowing staff who goes to the NJEA convention to use Professional Improvement Funds in order to pay for any workshops they attend while there.  Again, hopefully that packet will be out later today.

4)Good News!

a.       40+ Aides and Clerks are being moved from "temporary" back to "Permanent" Civil Service positions and retain their accumulated days. We know that the waiting was long, but thanks for believing in us when we told you we were right--the district can't run without you. Welcome, back.

b.      The AFTNJ voted unanimously to provide us with full funding for all the grant applications we submitted to assist us with our legal fees coming from the district’s tenure charges.

c.       The NTU won three major victories before the New Jersey Public Employment Relations Commission this week, regarding the NJEA convention, the district blocking our emails, and the district’s refusal to release the names of staff who get ineffective evaluations.

5)      Class size and Supply Survey - In order to collect the many class size and supply violations we have been receiving already this year, we have created a survey on Google Docs.   We will be using this information to report out to the Newark Board of Education and the NJDOE.   Please fill out the survey: http://goo.gl/forms/gvhWBpIafp

6)      Involuntary Transfer Survey (LAST CALL):  It has been brought to our attention that many school staff have been moved from their schools and placed in Turnaround Schools because they decided not to sign Election to Work Agreements. We believe that these transfers could have violated our contract and state law. Our lawyers are gathering this information in order to assess if we have a case here.  PLEASE ONLY FILL OUT THIS SURVEY IF YOU CHOSE NOT TO SIGN AN ELECTION TO WORK AGREEMENT AND WERE TRANSFERRED TO ANOTHER TURNAROUND SCHOOL! http://goo.gl/forms/MN6W0dNnPr

In Solidarity,