It doesn’t seem possible that we will be wrapping up the month of September by the time all of you receive this newsletter.  Hopefully, summer has been a time of rest and rejuvenation and is not too much of a distant memory!

We will need our individual strengths this year as well as our collective strength if July, August and the beginning of September are any indication of what is in store for us this year.

I found it necessary to include in this issue the remarks I made at the last Board of Education meeting in August.  Sadly, we couldn’t even get through the summer without major problems that directly resulted from Central Administration’s lack of planning, organization and communication.  It would have been so much nicer to begin the school year with news of positive events and circumstances.  However, if I must begin this issue continuing where I left off last year then so be it.  Telling the truth and revealing the truth must take precedence.

Here we are, barely into the new school year, and we have issues that extend across the district:

• Scheduling of elementary in-service trainings violated contract language.
• The lack of planning and preparation at the High School (yet again)  caused chaos and confusion and contributed to an embarrassing and extremely unsatisfactory start.
• Cross Pointe has once again proven that it cannot handle the scheduling of high school classes.
• No apparent planning for the new 9th Grade Academy was evident when teachers entered school on September 4th and no training was in place nor was there any information to guide and support teachers who were assigned to be a part of this new venture.
• Necessary supplies and materials were not available to teachers– including textbooks that should have been ordered months ago.
• Duty rosters for HS teachers were e-mailed on the evening of Wednesday, September 12th, long after teachers were gone and at the start of a four day weekend (with duties to begin on the Monday teachers return).
• There was no uniform distribution and no standardized training provided on the new Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR) document that took the entire school 2006-2007 year to create.  The completion of this document was due in large part to the concerted effort of the teacher majority on the APPR committee.  The committee made clear recommendations to the Superintendent regarding how the document should be presented to both administrators and teachers.  Unfortunately, the correct and appropriate handling of such an extremely important document did not occur as envisioned.

The above list is not comprehensive and serves only to provide some examples of what has been experienced by our members within the first month of school.  The MTA will continue to work on behalf of all its members but in turn we will need your help throughout this year.  Do not be a stranger to this office and please step forward to lend your union a hand when it is needed.

Through unity we build strength and the foreshadowing is evident.  We will need a surplus of strength in this new school year!