WEA Mediation Meeting

The Weber Education Association negotiation team met with the District team and mediator, Lynn Trenbeath, last evening and finished up talks and agreements on all non-money items. We are still waiting for the legislature to meet (probably in November) to discuss how much and when we will receive the "federal jobs bill" money that can be used for salary. We were happy to hear that P.E. specialists will be hired for each elementary school starting in January to give teachers another 30 minutes of prep time. Elementary prep time has been a priority of our WEA negotiations for four years.

Rick

Salt Lake Tribune Editorial: School Like Ours

Read in today's Salt Lake Tribune at www.sltib.com (under opinion) about Utah's test scores lagging behind other similar states. Utah's students lag far behind in reading, math and science test scores, according to a new local study that compares Utah students with those in states that similar demographics.

rick

Ogden/Weber Candidate Recommendations

Here are the PAC recommended candidates:

• House 6 No recommendation
• House 7 Ryan Wilcox
• House 8 Gage Froerer
• House 9 Neil Hansen
• House 10 Randy Rounds
• House 11 Brad Dee
• House 12 Richard Greenwood
• Senate 18 No recommendation

Rick

Waiting for Superman

Gail Collins has a great column in the NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/)
today talking about the movie "Waiting for Superman" that follows five urban students in their quest to find a better education. NBC and MSNBC have been discussing education all week and there has been a lot of "union bashing". The column is worth reading.


Rick

Jordan School Board ratifies agreement with teachers for lanes and steps

The Jordan School District has ratified the agreement with the Jordan Education Association that resulted from negotiations, mediation and finally a fact-finding hearing. Jordan teachers will receive their lanes and steps for this year, but will not receive them next year unless funding increases to pay for them. JEA went to impasse early in the process and mediation did not solve anything. A fact-finder was hired by the district and JEA (final cost to JEA was several thousand dollars). The JEA leadership and staff prepared extensive material that was presented to the fact-finder in a hearing. The fact-finder recommended that the school district pay the lanes and steps. Jordan did not receive steps last year, but took a one-time 1% bonus instead.

Weber resumes their mediation meetings with the district and our mediator, Lynn Trenbeath, next Monday, Oct. 4.

Ogden has not scheduled any further mediation meetings until we have more information about the federal money coming to our state. Our best information (from legislators) is that we probably will be able to use half of the federal money for salaries and benefits, because the legislature will cut the districts funding for this fiscal year because of the lack of tax revenues. The new tax revenue numbers will be here in November and the legislators tell us that they will meet in special session in November to discuss the money.

Rick

President Obama wants longer school year, fewer bad teachers

Erica Werner writes in an AP story found in the Standard-Examiner today: "Barely into the new school year, President Barack Obama issued a tough-love message to students and teachers on Monday: Their year in the classroom should be longer, and poorly performing teachers should get out."

Read the entire article at www.standard.net

rick

Herbert, Corroon agree education is priority

We can all sleep better tonight knowing that both candidates for Governor "understand educaton is a top priority for voters". Now if our schools had a $1000 for each time a politician had made that statement. I was glad that in their first televised debate that they were both asked the question about education being held "harmless" in the last legislature. What a joke... Corroon said "We have almost 24,00 new students coming into our education system, whether it's public or higher education, yet our budget was cut again. That's not holding education harmless, that's hurting our education system." The truth hurts doesn't it....

The Governor countered by pointing out huge funding increases to education over the past five years. He said, "Public education was facing a $400 million cut. They took a $10 million knick is all"...What BS.. Weber lost that much alone...Davis and Jordan lost twice that much...what is he talking about???

Again, our politicians speak "with forked tongue" when it comes to funding. The Utah Foundation shows that our effort to fund education has declined not increased. Anyone who has seen their pay cut and their class sizes increase realizes this.

Rick