Thank you to everyone who attended our Family2Family (formerly Parent2Parent) conference this weekend! It was wonderful to connect, build and work together both in in-person and virtually! Our partnerships with families and community allies make our union stronger. They also make our advocacy for our students and schools stronger.
At last Wednesday’s membership meeting, we shared the frustrating reality we are facing at the bargaining table: BPS has cancelled four out of seven bargaining sessions in 2022 and has continued to reject all of our proposals. This is unacceptable and we need to send this message loud and clear to BPS. We need all BTU members to sign this petition demanding that BPS immediately sit down to bargain a fair contract that will improve the quality of our schools. Let’s turn up the heat and demand the improvements and investments #BostonStudentsDeserve!
Welcome to the new Hub School Coordinators! We’re proud to partner with the YMCA and Boston Public Schools to expand Hub Schools in BPS. We have been spearheading the campaign for whole-child and family wrap-around supports with BPS since 2013 and are thrilled that this campaign has resulted in 14 new Hub Community Schools. We’d be remiss not to also shout out Renee Omalade, who became the first city-wide Hub Schools Coordinator and has been leading this work since we negotiated this position in our last contract.
On the one-year anniversary of the #AmericanRescuePlan being signed into law, we are proud to share the work of BTU member and Hernández School educator Melanie Allen, whose reflection of the last year was published by the AFT blog! Check out Melanie’s full post here.
The Charlestown, Madison Park and McKinley Schools Intervention teams have been appointed. Thank you to all who have stepped up to serve in these important roles. We will be working closely with the teams to support them and to ensure that there is a stakeholder informed process that will enable the schools to get the resources, attention and supports they need to flourish.
We are shifting to a new method of accepting submissions for the BTU Bulletin. If you would like to submit an announcement to be featured in our weekly bulletins, we are now accepting submissions via Google form at bit.ly/BTUbulletin. Thank you for your cooperation!
Finally, we stand in solidarity with the educators of Minneapolis Federation of Teachers who are currently on strike fighting for safe and stable schools for their students.