Comments (0) On March 5, 2012, Blue Ridge UniServ launched the Public Education Pride Facebook page to celebrate our public educators and successes of public education. Please visit the Page and share your stories with us.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Public-Education-Pride/258691494212484?notif_t=page_new_likes
VEA President, Dr. Kitty Boitnott Adresses the Wake for Education
On Saturday members of the Blue Ridge UniServ hosted a Wake for Education in Charlottesville, Virginia at the Free Speech Monument. We were joined by VEA members from throughout the Commonwealth, including VEA President, Dr. Kitty Boinott. Also in attendance were parents, students and community members. House Minority Leader David Toscano also addressed the event. We received great media coverage for the event. On Saturday there were articles discussing the event in the Richmond, Fairfax, Virginia Beach, and Staunton, as well as an article in the Washington Post and an online article on the Huffington Post. Following the event there was great coverage on NBC 29, Fox 27, CBS 19, and the Daily Progress. As plans began to develop for our Wake, leaders from other parts of the Commonwealth joined our efforts by holding similar rallies in Virginia Beach and in Roanoke. Great Work Blue Ridge! Once again, we made a difference.
Educators Mourn State of Virginia Education (NBC 29)
Waking up Viriginia about Education
On March 3, 2012, more than a hundred teachers, support personnel, parents, students, and friends gathered at the Free Speech Monument in Charlottesville Virginia to hold a Wake for Public Education. Complete with a coffin, the Wake was intended to wake Virginia up to the threats to public education. Blue Ridge UniServ sponsored the event, which included an obituary from OCEA President, Kyle Wormuth, and speeches from VEA President, Dr. Kitty Boitnott, House Minority Leader David Toscano, and Jane Kulow, the President of the Albemarle County Parent Council. Organizers emphasized that the event is only the first step, in what will be a long fight to combat attacks on public education. Despite the fact that Virginia ranks as the fourth best school system in the country, the General Assembly is passing bills which underfund and undercut our public schools. Those attacks include unfair high stakes testing, unfunded mandates, and an attempt to eliminate due process.”Once we get organized, we need to take action! In recent weeks, we have successfully challenged bills that most thought would pass easily. You have come here today because you care. Today is not an end, but rather a beginning. Today is not the death of public education, but rather an alarm to wake it back up” admonished Wormuth. ”When we get involved and they ask us who we think we are. We need to tell them loudly, ‘We are public education!’”
PRESS RELEASE
After 216 years, Public Education is being destroyed by lack of funding, unfunded mandates, high stakes testing, an underfunded retirement system, and loss of continuing contracts. Left to mourn will be over-crowded classrooms, forgotten students, demoralized educators, and undervalued support personnel.
On March 3, 2012, parents, students and educators from around the Commonwealth of Virginia will gather at the Freedom of Speech Monument in Charlottesville, Virginia, on the Downtown Mall at noon, to hold a public Wake for Education, both to celebrate the successes of the Virginia Public Schools, and to mourn the continuing attacks on public education. A short funeral procession will precede the event.
We invite all persons who value public education to attend. Blue Ridge UniServ is sponsoring this event. Additional information can be obtained at our website (bruniserv.org), our Facebook Page (Wake for Education) or by contacting our Director, David Oberg at (434) 823-4470.
On March 3, 2012, Blue Ridge UniServ will host a Wake for Public Education at the Free Speech Monument in Downtown Charlottesville. People from around the Commonwealth are prepared to stand with us to celebrate public educators, and mourne the attacks against them. Please join us! We will begin the event at noon. Please bring a sign showing where you are from, and listing an educator who has positively impacted your life.Blue Ridge UniServ is encouraging our members, colleagues, students, families and friends to join us in stating publicly our commitment to support public education by signing the Pledge to Support Public Education. You can access the Pledge online at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/pledge-to-support-public-education/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=system&utm_campaign=Send%2Bto%2BFriend
Please consider signing the Pledge, and spreading the word!
Quality Public Education in Virginia passed away quietly this week at the age of 216, after a brief and painful illness caused by lack of funding, unfunded mandates, high stakes testing, an underfunded retirement system, and loss of continuing contracts. Public Education in Virginia was born in Richmond, Virginia in 1796, the offspring of Presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. In its youth, Public Education was limited to college level instruction, but by 1870 Public Education was providing a free education in every County in Virginia to more than 130,000 students, ages 5 to 21. In 2010 despite suffering serious attacks from its opponents, Quality Public Education provided education to more than 1.2 million students in Virginia, and it was ranked the fourth best educational system in the country. A cornerstone of our democracy, Public Education along with its siblings in other states, was responsible for bringing forth such great American leaders, entrepreneurs and minds as: Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Mark Zuckerberg, Generals Robert E. Lee, Douglas MacArthur, and Colin Powell, Justices Thurgood Marshall, Antonin Scalia, and Sandra Day O’Connor, Presidents Bill Clinton, Gerald Ford, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Harry S. Truman, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ernest Hemmingway, Stephen King, Amelia Earhart, Charles Lindbergh, Neil Armstrong, Georgia O’Keefe, Oprah Winfrey, Rush Limbaugh, Walter Cronkite, Governor Sarah Palin, Governor Tim Kaine, and Senators Mark Warner and Jim Webb. Quality Public Education was preceded in death by the loss of fully funded schools, instructional freedom, local governance, and due process. Left to mourn Quality Public Education are over-crowded classrooms, forgotten students, demoralized educators, and undervalued support personnel. A memorial service for Quality Public Education will be held at Noon on March 3, 2012 at the Free Speech Monument in Charlottesville, Virginia. All are welcome to attend. In lieu of flowers, friends of Public Education are asked to offer a kind word of respect and gratitude to their local educators.
The week ahead will be most challenging. Both the VRS legislation and the teacher contract bills will be considered in committee.
If you haven’t sent the email letters on both the contract and pension issues, they are now up on our website please do so ASAP. You will see them in the top right portion if the web page at www.veanea.org. We’ll do an email letter on the contract issue to the Senate in the near future.
Our challenge is anticipating how Senate Bill 438 (Obenshain) will be altered in light of the problems encountered by this Governor’s initiative on the House side (see Thursday’s posting).
SB 438 will be taken up by the Public Education Subcommittee of the Senate Education and Health Committee one half hour after adjournment of the Senate on Monday afternoon.
We need calls and emails to members of this subcommittee urging them to vote against SB 438.
The subcommittee members are:
Blevins (Chairman), district14@senate.virginia.gov 804-698-7514
Howell, district32@senate.virginia.gov 804-698-7532
Locke, district02@senate.virginia.gov 804-698-7502
Black, district13@senate.virginia.gov 804-698-7513
Carrico, district40@senate.virginia.gov 804-698-7540
Below is VEA Senior Attorney Dena Rosenkrantz’s explanation of the most recent form of the bill:
As introduced, HB 576 eliminated job security for Virginia Teachers. It provides new teachers employment only on a probationary contract allowing “dismissal without cause” and puts experienced teachers on annual contracts. An amendment in the nature of a substitute was the subject of lengthy discussion at a February 2nd subcommittee hearing. No vote was taken and further amendments and substitutions are very likely. Still we can look at what the proposed substitute would do to teacher employment –
• How can a new teacher be dismissed during the school/contract year?
The substitute no longer includes the provision making teachers on probationary contract subject to “dismissal without cause.” So probationary teachers will have a contract for the school year and face annual decision on contract renewal.
• Who is a new probationary teacher?
The substitute bill requires new teachers to complete FIVE years of probationary service, an increase from current statute establishing three year probation. Currently, even an experienced teacher who moves from one Virginia school division to another can be required to complete one year of probationary service. The substitute bill allows but does not require the new school division to impose TWO years of probationary service when hiring a teacher with Virginia experience.
• How can experienced teachers lose teaching employment?
Currently state law provides teachers who successfully complete the three year probationary period with continuing contract. Continuing contract does not protect a teacher from losing employment due to decline in enrollment, abolition of subject or reduction in classes, or decrease in school budget. Statutory dismissal procedures govern termination of a continuing contract teacher for causes including: incompetency, immorality, noncompliance with school laws and regulations, disability as shown by competent medical evidence when in compliance with federal law, conviction of a felony or crime of moral turpitude or other good and just cause.
The substitute provides experienced teachers with a term contract for THREE years. A teacher could be laid off during the term in a reduction in force. A teacher could be dismissed during the term with notice, hearing and proof of good cause. And, most important, the teacher could be denied a new three year term contract. The failure to grant a new term contract is not a dismissal requiring hearing and proof of cause. The substitute requires the division superintendent to consider evaluations among other things in making recommendations not to renew the term contract of an experienced teacher. However, the substitute specifies “no reason is required to deny a new term contract.”
• Will teachers already on continuing contract be put on term contracts?
The Administration wants to eliminate continuing contract completely but faces constitutional difficulties. We could see a two tier system that “grandfathers” teachers already on continuing contract to preserve their constitutional property while giving newer teachers, and anyone who moves the lesser protection of term contracts. Even teachers already on continuing contract should be alarmed about this radical change in the security teachers enjoy.
Improving teacher evaluation and professionalism is a laudable goal. But putting teachers on term contracts subject to renewal without good cause does not improve the teaching profession or benefit Virginia students.
BRU Leaders from Albemarle, Buckingham, Fluvanna, Louisa, and Orange Attend the February 14, 2011 Rally for Educational Funding
On Monday February 14th, members and leaders from around Blue Ridge UniServ joined educational and political leaders from around the Commonwealth to urge the General Assembly and the Governor to restore funding for k-12 public education. Foregoing Valentine’s Day with their loved ones, our dedicated leaders listened and cheered as speakers representing the State PTA, the State School Boards Association, the NAACP, and the Virginia Association of School Superintendents joined VEA President Kitty Boitnott in detailing the damages done to public education in the past three years, and pleading with the General Assembly to make repairs. Statewide funding for education has decreased by approximately 15% per student in the past three years, and has led to many layoffs, cuts in programs and funding, cuts in salaries and benefits, and overcrowding in our classrooms. The speakers urged the public, and particularly the members of their organizations, to call their senators and delegates, and ask them to support the Senate budget proposal, which restores approximately $100 million to k-12 funding, as opposed to the House proposal which makes additional cuts. I am proud of our leaders for taking this stand for public education, and I urge our members to contact your elected officials, and plead with them to Repair the Damage.
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