NTU Updates

Colleagues,

1) Statement from President Abeigon regarding contract ratification - Recent headlines document that our struggle to continue to survive is real. Despite a major victory in its defense, our well-funded enemies will not stop their attacks on Seniority (LIFO: Last In First Out), nor will they stop attacking Tenure.  

On May 11th, from 7am-7pm, we can use this contract ratification vote to send a message that we believe in the importance of Collective Bargaining Agreements, that we care about students, that we care about our benefits, and that we care about Contracts and the promises

Colleagues,

1)     Contract Update: The NTU Negotiations Committee met several days over vacation to work around some roadblocks to the contract's progress. For the entire week this week, internal meetings amongst committee members, and negotiations meetings with NPS were held. As of now, we can only firmly state that we have reached tentative agreements on the following:

1. We have reviewed and cleaned up language that was conflicting in the previous CBA.

2. We have a tentative agreement language and terms for the new CBA.

The last component we are negotiating is the actual salary guides.  

Over

Colleagues,

1. Contract Update – We are hoping to finalize all contract documents in the next few days.  Our goal is to have everything out to the membership by the end of the week, including a specific calendar of events, and the terms of the tentative agreement for your review. 

IF everything is finalized, the negotiations team will be available to answer questions at the NTU a couple days over break and a special email will be set up for more questions.  Oonce we are back from Spring Break, we will hold a membership meeting to formally present the tentative contract agreement, and several

Colleagues,

1. Contract Update – A few weeks ago, the Newark Teachers Union and the Newark Public Schools announced that we had reached a tentative contract agreement. Since then, the NTU and NPS negotiations teams have been finalizing the language and salary guides in preparation for informational sessions with the Executive Board, Building Reps, membership and then a ratification vote. This is a tremendous amount of work, and we hope that we will be able to share more specific details of the agreement over the next few weeks. There will be plenty of time and opportunity to ask questions

​Colleagues,

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

Colleagues,

1. Day Of Action: Thursday’s Day Of Action was a great success.  We had actions all around the city, and you can find pictures on our Facebook and website.  If you have any pictures from your school, send them along to mmaillaro@newarkteachersunion.com. Actions like this are vital to build up solidarity and show that we will fight back!  This is also why it’s so important to be engaged in our Respect The Contract campaign and letter writing campaigns.  Thank you!

2. Stipend Payment: At the Superintendent’s meeting three weeks ago, we were told the stipend payment would be coming

Colleagues,

1)      Important message from NTU President John M. Abeigon: In this War on Teachers, we can’t afford to not check our emails, NTU Website, and NTU Facebook posts daily.  In my visits to schools, I came across more than one teacher who did not know who Betsy DeVos was and the danger her appointment as Trump’s Secretary of Education could cause to all public school employees.  One was also unaware of NTU’s recent court victories.  She admitted to me that she was not “as caught up on things” as she should be. 

I get it.  I’m a teacher on leave of absence for Union service. I raised

Colleagues,

1)      NTU Ed Resource Center – Please be advised that the NTU Ed Resource Center will be closed for the rest of December.  They will reopen on January 3, 2017.

2)      Phase 2 Respect the Contract – So far, Phase 2 has been successful, but we know there are literally hundreds of health and safety, evaluation, Head Start, and Special Ed violations that the district continues to commit.  THEY MUST BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE! Please follow this link to get started: http://newark.nj.aft.org/respect-contract/phase-ii-toolkit

If you have any questions or suggestions on how to improve this

Colleagues,

1)      Phase 2 Respect the Contract - Each day, numerous violations occur in our schools negatively impacting staff and students. These include fire code violations, violations in Special Education requirements and Early Childhood regulations, violations of the Teach NJ Act, and health and safety issues.  

The thrust of Phase II will be to hold the district accountable for every single one of these violations.  On our website, we have form letters that can be used to report the district’s numerous violations anonymously.  These responses will be sent directly to the state and/or