NTU Legal Victories – These cases matter. If the Governor and Cerf had prevailed at the Supreme Court there wouldn’t be a worry over contract negotiations—there’d be not contract. If Cerf and his friends in the corporate charter school industry had prevailed at the State Board of Education in seeking to devalue certifications for charter school teachers, how long do you think they would take to come after yours?
The NJ Supreme Court has denied the state’s latest petition to freeze education funding and to grant the Commissioner of Education authority to override teachers’ contracts. Summarily, the bogus lawsuit claiming tenure and Newark teachers are an impediment to student learning has been dismissed and declared moot.
On a 6-2 vote, the State Board of Education rejected Governor Christie's proposal to reduce qualifications for charter school teachers. In a stinging rebuke, State Board of Ed members said the plan was poorly designed, had no valid evaluation component, was not necessary, and would hurt education in New Jersey.
Negotiations Update – We continue to schedule regular negotiation sessions with Newark Public Schools in an effort to reach an agreement that respects the hard work and sacrifice of all NTU Members. This week, we have negotiation sessions scheduled for two days. Hopefully we will have some news to report coming out of these sessions. Interviews with both Cerf and President Abeigon are available online at NJTV.
RESPECT THE CONTRACT As part of our Respect the Contract initiative, we had asked members to go to our website and petition their legislators to join in our cause! THIS ACTION IS WORKING! In the attached letter, 20th District Assemblyman Holley reached out to NPS on our behalf! Other legislators have responded as well.
Kudos! Every day teachers throughout Newark perform acts of heroism to make the lives of their students better. PIX 11 decided to honor Shylene Camacho of 13th Avenue School for her work with special needs students. Check out the story and video here!
John M Abeigon
President & Director of Organization
Newark Teachers Union, Local 481, AFT, AFL-CIO