It’s hard to believe that Election Day was just a week ago! As always, we hope you all have had a chance to take some time for self-care during these turbulent times and that you were able to enjoy this beautiful weekend. We are also wishing all of our veteran members and families a Happy Veterans Day tomorrow, November 11.
Thank you to the close to 2,000 members who joined our emergency BTU Membership Town Hall Sunday evening. We appreciated your questions and hearing from everyone as we plan our next steps. If you did not fill out the newest member survey, please take a minute to do so. We want to hear from as many members as possible. Please find the survey in the BTU member portal and follow up with your Building Reps for the latest information.
At the meeting, we celebrated the victory of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to the offices of President and Vice President of the United States. Thank you to everyone who volunteered, donated, voted and participated in our democracy to make this happen! While there is a lot of work to be done on the federal level to curb the COVID-19 pandemic, adequately fund our schools as we try to reopen, and more, we are confident that this is a massive step in the right direction and very much look forward to a new Secretary of Education who will actually support public education.
Our negotiations for a better and safer plan for our highest needs students resumed yesterday. We met with BPS twice and negotiated until 9:00 p.m., and we meet again this morning. While we are getting close on many issues, it has become more apparent that BPS has had plans that we and our educators have not been privy to. We have asked to see the plans that were sent to and approved by the BPHC and hope to get them this morning to share with the four school communities currently being considered for a resumption on in-person learning.
To be clear, we want our highest-needs students to return and are very frustated that it is taking so long to get our schools ready. We are also finding it difficult to help BPS plan for the resumption of in-person learning and identify staffing needs without the necessary data and information. For example, staff at three of the four schools being considered have still not been notified of which students are returning, which makes it very difficult to plan for staffing needs and the educational program. We are asking the district to be more transparent with all stakeholders.
Lastly, while we hope to reach a signed agreement as soon as possible, if we do need to have an emergency membership meeting this week, we will send out an emergency bulletin. In the meantime, please register for our next monthly membership meeting on Wednesday, November 18 at 4:30 p.m. We have changed the procedure to a Google form, as it will help to expedite the approval process. Please be sure to register in advance of the meeting. When registering, it is very important that you include your exact BPS ID# in order to expedite approvals. If you are retired or don’t have an ID# for another reason, please enter “000000”.
Thank you all for your continued engagment in our union advocacy as we strive to find solutions and reach an agreement that provides the safety everyone deserves and the flexibility that everyone needs during this pandemic.