We are issuing this special edition of the newsletter to provide updates on several key ongoing discussions. As always, please reach out to us if you have any questions! We can be reached at unitesummitteachers@gmail.com.
Town Hall invite:
As announced in our previous newsletter, you are invited to attend a virtual Town Hall to receive updates from Unite Summit and participate in a Q&A session. The town hall will held via Zoom at 7 p.m. tonight (Monday, June 3). Please email questions to unitesummitteachers@gmail.com beforehand if you are able! Please also RSVP via this link: tinyurl.com/UStownhallJune3. After you RSVP, you will receive an email with instructions on how to join the town hall. The RSVP is important to help us estimate attendance numbers and effectively balance our agenda to respect everyone’s time. The release of the Sunshine document (linked in the last section of this newsletter) is the only brand new information that we’ll be discussing; so if you can’t attend but want more info, be sure to read this entire newsletter and then contact us if you want to discuss more!
Updates on schedule discussions:
Summit organizational leadership has not yet fully released a new daily schedule for all campuses next school year, which does show they are listening to our requests to not change working conditions without talking to our union. However, we know it’s possible that situation will change at a moment’s notice, and there could soon be a formal schedule announcement.
We will continue to push to ensure that teachers and our union have a say in the daily schedule for next school year. We know it’s not ideal that the issue hasn’t been worked out yet; we took proactive steps to formally request discussions on this issue, and Summit organizational leadership has not yet agreed to hold those talks, despite repeated assurances that they would do so before making any changes to working conditions.
Summit’s organizational leadership has expressed a desire to set standardized schedules across all campuses, and we have worked hard to ensure that teachers are consulted and included in any final decisions. The daily schedule won’t actually go into effect until August; so while everyone would prefer to have a solution now, we do still have time to negotiate, and we will continue to push for a productive dialogue.
Updates on camping and senior trips:
The announcement made last week about the cancellation of both camping and senior trips has stirred debate among Summit educators. Some have expressed that supervising these trips is a challenging demand to place on teachers that could be replaced with better alternatives; others believe these trips are a unique part of Summit culture that help form community and should be preserved. Unite Summit wants to make clear that we did not request any changes to the camping or senior trips. It is very important for us to see teachers included in such organizational-wide decisions that affect our practice, and there was no opportunity for educators to give their direct input on the decision of canceling these trips. A large part of our organizing efforts have centered around involving teachers in crucial decisions, and this decision-making process is an example of what can happen when teachers continue to be excluded from such decisions.
If you have strong feelings about camping or senior trips, and you want to either articulate why and how you think such trips should be preserved or to propose alternatives, please contact us at unitesummitteachers@gmail.com or reach out to your site organizers, and we will do our best to amplify your voices.
Sunshine document (list of bargaining topics):
Our draft Sunshine document will be released at tonight’s Town Hall. Email unitesummitteachers@gmail.com if you could not attend the meeting but want a link to the document. A Sunshine document names all the topics that our union potentially wants to discuss during bargaining (aka, any topics we might want to include in our first negotiated contract). Legally, we must present this document at a Summit board meeting before bargaining begins. The elected Unite Summit bargaining team developed this document based on our site bargaining input meetings and the bargaining input survey responses and also aimed to include best practices from other unionized charter schools whose contract priorities aligned with the priorities our members listed. The best way to give feedback on this document is to contact a member of the bargaining team (listed below), but you can also send feedback to unitesummitteachers@gmail.com. We currently have a meeting scheduled with Summit leadership on June 20 to discuss the status of our bargaining unit (see our previous newsletter for more details). We are hopeful that we will reach an agreement about the status of our bargaining unit at that meeting; presenting the Sunshine document to the SPS would then be the next step on our way to getting contract negotiations started.
We are seeking volunteer Contract Action Team members at each site to assist Bargaining Team members in soliciting teacher input and keeping people informed about bargaining once contract negotiations begin. Please contact your site organizers if you’re interested in that role!
| Bargaining Team Representatives | |
| Summit Rainier:
Elected: Isela Mosqueira, Spanish | Summit Tahoma:
Will hold elections in the fall |
| Tam Middle School:
Elected: Fahima Zaman, Science | Tam High School:
Will hold elections in the fall |
| Denali Middle School:
Will hold elections in the fall | Denali High School:
Elected: Andrew Stevenson, Science |
| K2 Middle School:
Elected: Haley Ralph (Holt), History | K2 High School:
Elected: Brendan Boland, English |
| Expeditions:
Elected: Liz DeOrnellas, Journalism / Creative Writing | Shasta:
Sarah Day Dayon, History (interim – will hold elections in the fall) |
| Summit Prep:
Elected: Dan McClure, Science | Everest:
Elected: Evan Anderson, Science |
Please don’t hesitate to ask questions, voice concerns or send positive feedback from your school sites- you can email unitesummitteachers@gmail.com or visit our website at https://unitesummitteachers.wordpress.com!