Three years of hard advocacy work have begun to make a difference. New TEA leadership

A Specialist on the Bargaining Team, and

Your Efforts

to elevate the role of specialists, repair relationships, educate administrators, and help to advocate for honoring the intent of the CBA are all things that have, and will continue to keep us moving toward our goals of improving the levels of Equity, Safety, and Quality Instruction for specialists and our students. They may be baby steps, but they are steps forward.

An advocacy meeting was held at the TEA building last week, and all were invited. Thank you to all who attended and gave your important input. We discussed changes in the CBA, and the importance of making sure those changes are adhered to. This will make all of us a stronger team in standing up for our hard-earned rights.

Here are some of your rights to consider as you look at your schedule for this year:

Equitable Access

The New CBA: What's in it for me?

Claim your contractual rights. They are hard-won, and if you waive them, it makes it harder for someone else to claim them. "It's the only way", is not a reason to allow an uncomfortable, inequitable, or non-contractual situation. This just means that administration must go back and rethink things.

Are you passionate about improving the culture and attitudes around the role of specialists in education? Join the team! Our work works! But it is work and to represent Specialists effectively, we need team members in PE, Library and Music. Email if you'd like to help.

The Advocacy team was born out of frustrations in feeling as if TEA was not representing specialists fairly. For about 3 years, music and PE teachers have been working on various items, and getting better schedules was a priority. They have worked with TEA and the district making their points via hard work, publicity, and tenacity.  Their message of “one educator, one school” was heard and now most PE and Music teachers are assigned to one school.

We have three years to work on changes. Let’s do this!

If you would like more information about the Advocacy Team, feel free to contact me or reach out to anyone on the team. We need a few more librarians to join and have input. The team meets every couple of weeks via Zoom.

Rhonda Steinman

253-632-3007

email Penny Cramer for more information.

Help our voice be heard and recorded as part of the public record. Speak to the instructional inequities across the district. Raise awareness of the integral part we play in every child's education.

For example, referring to non-specialists as "Homeroom Teachers" instead of "Grade-level Teachers" or "Classroom Teachers". Specialists are both Grade-level and Classroom teachers. This simply looks different because of the number of students we serve and the nature of our work.

A homeroom teacher's work day is a mixture of Instructional Time --actively instructing--and Contact Time--supervising work and play, housekeeping, traveling, etc., while the Specialist day is almost entirely Instructional Time. This means Specialists have different needs to provide quality instruction for our students and to keep ourselves safe and healthy in mind and body than those of homeroom teachers.