The BTU Membership Meeting

Good day. The Extended Learning Time Question and Answer Session scheduled for last week’s no-school-Brrrr-day will be held today, Monday, January 12, from 4:30 onward. All members are welcome.

The BTU membership meeting with a scheduled ratification vote is this Wednesday. The meeting starts at 4:15. Only active members can vote. Retired members are welcome to attend, but they cannot vote.

All members will need either a membership card or a current payroll stub to enter the hall. Please bring one or the other. If you don’t have either, you will be asked to report to the problem table and verify membership. In the latter case, you will need a photo ID. To the extent you can, please allow sufficient time. Any questions on these procedures, please call the BTU office at 617-288-2000 in advance if you can.

The membership meeting on Wednesday will be conducted under our standing rules for any contract ratification vote:

1. President’s Report
2. Question and Answer Period (30 Minutes)
3. Debate on the Motion (30 Minutes)
4. Vote on the Motion — voice vote or hand vote if necessary
5. Recess
6. Back to the Orders of the Day

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Last week we placed an invitation to members to submit (new) questions to the BTU concerning the ELT. The questions were answered privately, and a sampling of the new questions are printed below with identifying tags eliminated. See a complete listing of new questions and answers. In some cases the questions have been edited for brevity. Here’s a sampling:

• (I am) just curious as to why compensation is not at the contractual rate. Accepting compensation at a lower rate just diminishes the work we do. In addition, I know I am not the only one who also has the issue of this stipend not even covering the cost of the added childcare I am going to have to pay for my own children.
• I am hoping you could share regarding what the plan is to bring pilot/innovation school compensation to the same levels and if/how this has been part the conversation during this negotiation. Thanks.
• I work in a school (Turnaround) that is not subject to this agreement. I wish it were. Why should I vote for the proposal?

• I am not currently assigned to a Schedule A school. Why should I bother to vote?

• Will all BPS union members be able to vote on Thursday the 15th?
• Does this include all provisional teachers? Paras? Nurses?
• How is the membership vote conducted? Does everyone get to vote? Or do Building Reps only get to vote? Is it a secret ballot?
• When will we know the results of the vote?
• Because ____ is a “schedule A” school when will we know if the extended day will start for us next year or not?
• Will the $200 (supply budget) given to each teacher be for our use on our classroom? Will that money come every year?
• I have a question about sick/personal days and how they will be affected by the extended day.
• If a schedule A school wishes to volunteer to be in the first roll-out for 2015-2016, does the faculty at the school vote on this or does the administration just decide? Thanks.
• Can schools opt to just add minutes onto the existing blocks in their schedules? (Considering many schools are well under the recommended minutes for instruction in different subjects, this seems like a common-sense use of the time.)
• If this is Planning and Development then is it up to the individual schools to decide how it will be structured such as by grade level or by subject matter taught and such? These teacher facilitators… will they be trained and given guidance by someone/ some department? Really concerned as to the facilitators actually being able to meaningfully impact and lead.
• Where would money come from to extend in the way “of other subjects such as arts, drama, foreign language, and so on”?

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The initial Q & A can be found here. The tentative agreement can be found here. We have prepared a graph and a chart for informational purposes. Both are below.

The graph below shows the improvement in compensation between the current negotiated proposal and the prior proposal from September 2012. It also shows how other groupings of schools that have extended days get compensated.

The chart shows a comparison between the last offer made under the previous school/city administration and the current negotiated settlement. The previous offer to extend the school day came in September 2012 during the last contract settlement.

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