Thank you to the Comsewogue community who came out yesterday to pass the Comsewogue school budget with a shade under 80% of the voters voting “Yes” for the school budget. PJSTA endorsed candidates Alexandra Gordon and James Sanchez won re-election in unopposed races.
In other news PJSTA members Gerriann McNamee and Kelly Vallette won election o the school boards in their home school districts of North Babylon and Islip! Congratulations to them! When we fight, we win!
In march we had Jia Lee and Alison McDowell join us for an episode of The PJSTA Live. Students Not Scores has announced tonight that they will be hosting a forum on June 1st at Terryville Elementary School with McDowell coming all the way from Philly to join them. The flyer is below. You won’t wanna miss it!
PDF: Ed Reform 2.0 Flyer
In 2014 at the UCORE conference in Chicago, I had the pleasure of briefly meeting Sarah Chambers in a workshop. Since then Chambers, like so many other teachers from the rank and file caucuses who make up UCORE, has been busy continuing to fight back against ed deform and for the schools her students deserve. Very few teachers have fought as ferociously and vocally as Chambers. As Michelle Gunderson put it in her post on Living in Dialogue, “If you are fortunate, every once in a while you will meet someone who breathes the fire of justice. In my life Sarah Chambers, a special education teacher from Maria Saucedo School in Chicago, fills that role.”
Unfortunately Chambers is under attack from her school district, Chicago Public Schools. CPS has suspended and is seeking to fire Chambers because of her role in vocally defending students. Please check out Gunderson’s piece above, Dr. Lois Weiner’s post titled A Teacher Who’s Dangerous- To Chicago’s Power Elites, and then sign this petition to support Sarah Chambers.
You can see Chambers eviscerate the Common Core at the 2014 AFT Convention in this video.
PJSTA President-elect Katie Kleinpeter.
For the first time since 2009 there will be a new PJSTA President. Katie Kleinpeter will succeed the soon to be retired Beth Dimino on June 1st. Listed below are the winners of today’s election:
A big thank you to all members who ran in today’s elections along with the Building Election Coordinators and the Election Chairperson, Sue Niver, for making today’s elections a success. All newly elected positions will begin on June 1, 2017.
A reminder to PJSTA members that elections for our local take place tomorrow, Wednesday, April 5th. We are fortunate enough to have some contested elections within our local, so you’ll want to be sure that you are on time to vote. All voting must take place prior to first period as per the PJSTA Voting Guidelines. Tomorrow we will be electing the following positions…
Check back tomorrow evening for the election winners. The new term begins on June 1, 2017.
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