Support for English Language Learners
A working group of teachers in Unite Summit is researching how we can better advocate for stronger English Language Learner supports. As you may remember, our Support Services contract proposal that we introduced back in March called for the creation of an ELL coordinator at each school site and English Language Development curriculum in the platform, among other asks. Summit’s recent counterproposal to our Support Services article did not include anything about serving EL students.
The EL working group needs your help! They are collecting information to get a better understanding of each school’s ELL program based off of each our our unique perspectives and roles within our schools. Please fill out this quick survey by November 23!
Town Hall
Last chance to register for our reopening town hall which will be tomorrow (Tuesday) at 5pm. Once registered, you will be emailed a zoom link to join!
We will be covering the physical reopening of schools in this town hall and will also have a brief update about virtual school negotiations. As we stated in our update about our last virtual school bargaining session on October 27, Summit has finally started to engage with the content of our virtual school proposal and seems to be working on collecting feedback about virtual school from various stakeholders. Unfortunately, Summit is refusing to meet about virtual school again until December. We are disappointed that they are continuing to drag out this process as we think the scope of the issues we need to negotiate is actually pretty limited.
We do want to make very clear that Summit must bargain any changes to virtual school that involve our working conditions (a term that includes hours, prep time, number of classes taught, etc.). However, if your site leader is telling you that an aspect of virtual school, such as HCD rosters, cannot be changed because of “the union,” please reach out to a bargaining team member or Unite Summit leadership to verify if this is a misconception.