This video gets to the heart of the WEA objection to charter school legislation here in Washington State; it's only a couple of minutes, and well worth your time.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Some Political Op-Eds for Your Reading Pleasure
The first was written by Represenative Susan Fagan of the 9th LD, regarding levy equalization; she's a great friend of the district and someone with a lot of passion about education issues. You can read it here.
Another good read comes from Rep. Joel Kretz of the 7th, which includes Fairchild and everything up to the Canadian border; you can find it here. Rep. Kretz was instrumental in beating back an attack on levy equalization a few years back, and that's meant millions of dollars for Medical Lake.
Another good read comes from Rep. Joel Kretz of the 7th, which includes Fairchild and everything up to the Canadian border; you can find it here. Rep. Kretz was instrumental in beating back an attack on levy equalization a few years back, and that's meant millions of dollars for Medical Lake.
ProTeach Seminar in Spokane, February 10th and 11th
Below is a cut-and-paste of an email that I received from the WEA regarding a ProTeach workshop being put on in Spokane next month. ProTeach is the process that new teachers have to go through in order to get their Professional Certificate; the feedback I've gotten from these WEA workshops in the past has been overwhelmingly positive. If you have any questions, please email!
Washington teachers certified after Aug. 31, 2000 are required to attain professional certification. The ProTeach ® portfolio, a fully online assessment run by the Educational Testing Service (ETS), is the means by which teachers earn their professional certification. The WEA ProTeach ® Jump Start Seminar provides candidates with important information about the portfolio requirements, time to examine the three-entry portfolio in detail and the opportunity to plan how to meet requirements. This pre-candidacy support option helps candidates to prepare for the process and complements work with a support group during candidacy. Click here for more information about the ProTeach ® Jump Start Seminar, including information about four-day summer offerings.
Winter Seminars: For the first time, WEA will offer a "condensed" two-day winter version of its ProTeach ® Jump Start Seminar. The cost for this 20-hour event is $120 for full WEA members. Trainings will be 10 hours each day (8:30 a.m. to 8 p.m.) and will include breakfast, lunch and dinner. Participants must cover their own substitutes for the Friday portion of the training, if needed. Registration is on a first-come, first-served basis. Up to 20 clock hours are included in the registration fee. To run each seminar we require at least 20 registrants. If there are insufficient numbers, we will fully reimburse registrations that have been submitted. Course registration will close if a given event reaches capacity.
Spokane 2-Day Seminar (20 hours) -- Feb. 10-11, 2012 (Friday/Saturday). Register now.
Note: Our registration system closes Jan. 23 at 5 p.m. After that date, please e-mail Sheila Beaver to see if space is still available.
We hope you'll join us for this high-quality introduction to the ProTeach ® portfolio. Past participants have given this seminar series consistently positive evaluations.
Washington teachers certified after Aug. 31, 2000 are required to attain professional certification. The ProTeach ® portfolio, a fully online assessment run by the Educational Testing Service (ETS), is the means by which teachers earn their professional certification. The WEA ProTeach ® Jump Start Seminar provides candidates with important information about the portfolio requirements, time to examine the three-entry portfolio in detail and the opportunity to plan how to meet requirements. This pre-candidacy support option helps candidates to prepare for the process and complements work with a support group during candidacy. Click here for more information about the ProTeach ® Jump Start Seminar, including information about four-day summer offerings.
Winter Seminars: For the first time, WEA will offer a "condensed" two-day winter version of its ProTeach ® Jump Start Seminar. The cost for this 20-hour event is $120 for full WEA members. Trainings will be 10 hours each day (8:30 a.m. to 8 p.m.) and will include breakfast, lunch and dinner. Participants must cover their own substitutes for the Friday portion of the training, if needed. Registration is on a first-come, first-served basis. Up to 20 clock hours are included in the registration fee. To run each seminar we require at least 20 registrants. If there are insufficient numbers, we will fully reimburse registrations that have been submitted. Course registration will close if a given event reaches capacity.
Spokane 2-Day Seminar (20 hours) -- Feb. 10-11, 2012 (Friday/Saturday). Register now.
Note: Our registration system closes Jan. 23 at 5 p.m. After that date, please e-mail Sheila Beaver to see if space is still available.
We hope you'll join us for this high-quality introduction to the ProTeach ® portfolio. Past participants have given this seminar series consistently positive evaluations.
What You Need to Know About................The Health Insurance Takeover
Currently in Washington State most every school district has a separate insurance program. Here in Medical Lake we have 10 options, which differ slightly from the options in Cheney, which is different from Spokane, right on down the line statewide.
What the legislature is considering is creating one statewide insurance plan, much like the other state employees have, and putting all school employees into this new system. The genesis of this was a report out of the state auditor's office last year that said the state could save $180 million dollars by creating One Big Pool, which is math that is strenuously denied by the WEA. Statewide the Public School Employees union, which represents classified staff, has come out in favor of the idea, though our own local PSE has concerns.
In general, the thought about switching is that folks who cover their entire family would likely end up paying less out of pocket than they do now. Those who cover only themselves--essentially, those who contribute to the pool--would see their rates increase, and there wouldn't be pooling and longer. If the plan switched there wouldn't be a guarantee that you would be able to keep your current doctor or dentist, though if they accepted other state employees odds are they would take the new School Employees plan, too.
For more information please visit the WEA Our Voice website, here. The Governor, the Senate Majority Leader, and the House budget writer have all come out for the idea, but even if it goes through the important thing is to let them know that lowering our health benefits would be an awful thing to do to families.
What the legislature is considering is creating one statewide insurance plan, much like the other state employees have, and putting all school employees into this new system. The genesis of this was a report out of the state auditor's office last year that said the state could save $180 million dollars by creating One Big Pool, which is math that is strenuously denied by the WEA. Statewide the Public School Employees union, which represents classified staff, has come out in favor of the idea, though our own local PSE has concerns.
In general, the thought about switching is that folks who cover their entire family would likely end up paying less out of pocket than they do now. Those who cover only themselves--essentially, those who contribute to the pool--would see their rates increase, and there wouldn't be pooling and longer. If the plan switched there wouldn't be a guarantee that you would be able to keep your current doctor or dentist, though if they accepted other state employees odds are they would take the new School Employees plan, too.
For more information please visit the WEA Our Voice website, here. The Governor, the Senate Majority Leader, and the House budget writer have all come out for the idea, but even if it goes through the important thing is to let them know that lowering our health benefits would be an awful thing to do to families.
What You Need to Know About................The Redistricting Commission
Currently the MLSD is split roughly into between the 7th LD district, which includes Fairchild AFB and most everything north of Highway 2, and the 9th LD, which contains the town of Medical Lake proper and stretches all the way south to Pullman. We've been well represented by those legislators on our big issues like levy equalization, and it's been great to have them representing us.
Over the Christmas break the lines were re-drawn, and now Medical Lake will be in the 6th LD. You can see all the maps on the Redistricting Commission's website here and the new 6th LD specifically here; the upshot is that we'll now Cheney, Medical Lake, Nine Mile Falls, Airway Heights, Fairchild, and parts of the northern and southern portions of Spokane will all be in the same legislative district together.
We'll be working with the District to invite the current 6th LD legislators out to Medical Lake this spring; this includes Rep. John Ahern, who is on the House Education Committee, Rep. Kevin Parker, who serves on the important Ways and Means Committee, and Senator Michael Baumgartner, who is running against Maria Cantwell for US Senate. I have every hope that they'll be just as passionate about school funding as our previous legislators were, and we look forward to working with them in the future!
Over the Christmas break the lines were re-drawn, and now Medical Lake will be in the 6th LD. You can see all the maps on the Redistricting Commission's website here and the new 6th LD specifically here; the upshot is that we'll now Cheney, Medical Lake, Nine Mile Falls, Airway Heights, Fairchild, and parts of the northern and southern portions of Spokane will all be in the same legislative district together.
We'll be working with the District to invite the current 6th LD legislators out to Medical Lake this spring; this includes Rep. John Ahern, who is on the House Education Committee, Rep. Kevin Parker, who serves on the important Ways and Means Committee, and Senator Michael Baumgartner, who is running against Maria Cantwell for US Senate. I have every hope that they'll be just as passionate about school funding as our previous legislators were, and we look forward to working with them in the future!
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
The WEA-Eastern Newsletter
Hopefully most of you have received the newsletter via your home email address, but just in case you haven't you can read the WEA-Eastern newsletter by following the link here.
Monday, October 3, 2011
The American Jobs Act
It would be a happy thing for teachers, certainly. Here's an ad that the NEA is putting out:
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