President's Newsletter, October 10th

If I type really fast I can post this at 10:10:10 on 10-10-10. The math major in me would find that delightful! :-)

What we've been working on this week:

New Uniserv Council Rep: Over the years I know that many of you had the chance to meet and work with Mike Boyer, one of the staff members at the WEA-Eastern office in Spokane. He's moved up to work more directly with grievances and bargaining, and last week we hired a new staff member. Our field reps are some of the hardest working people in the union--Lord knows that I keep ours, Sally McNair, hopping--and they're our first contact when things go off kilter. I think we hired a good one; I'll let you know when things are official!

Evaluation Survey: Next week the Teacher/Principal Evaluation Pilot team is having another series of meetings to work on the new evaluation system. Going into that meeting I'm putting together a survey to help guide me in what you as members want out of a new evaluation tool; look for a link to that to be coming out this week. If you could give it 5 minutes of your time, it would be greatly appreciated!

Homecoming Game: It was great to go out to the High School on Friday night and see such a dominating performance by the Cardinal Football team. The band looked and sounded great, the team played lights out, and the excitement from all the students was a neat thing to see. Thank you to all the High School staff for making this such a great week for the kids!

Politics: Remember that you can always find the official WEA recommendations on the Our Voice WEA website. If you want to dig deeper into the initiatives I'd highly recommend the Inside Olympia program on TVW. Ballots should be mailed out this week.

The Spokane Children's Fund: For those of you who live within the boundries of Spokane District 81, you'll also be voting on the Spokane Children's Fund Initiative. This video from KSPS gives a good look at what fund would mean for the kids in Spokane, as well as the taxpayers who would need to fund it. If you need more info, it's a good piece to check out.

Have a great week!

--Ryan--