SCTA ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

Action Alert

WEEK OF March 12, 2012

Thursday, March 15th is the deadline for school districts to issue lay-off notices to teachers for the coming school year.   In this district, nearly 400 teachers will have received their pink slips by then, the shameful result of years of state budget instability and overspending by our own school board.   This deserves repeating:  SCTA serves all teachers—pink slips are disruptive to the teaching staff of every school and every school program in this district—and we are committed to returning our pink-slipped members as quickly as possible to minimize such disruptions.

 

We are asking all of our members to wear pink this Thursday, March 15th in a simple act of solidarity with our pink-slipped colleagues.

 

But we have more to ask, too.

Your Organizing Committee is creating two videos, one which will have teachers explaining in plain terms what wasteful overspending on outside consultants looks like in the classroom, and another which will show the human costs of the reckless practice of pink-slipping hundreds of teachers every year.    We will use these videos to organize our members, confront our school board and reach out to the media and broader community.

 

To do this, we need your help.   Here are two ways:

1.       Video One:  Share your own story about the district’s unnecessary spending on outside consultants.   We prefer you be willing to talk about this on-camera, but we will arrange to interview you off-camera if necessary.  Please contactAlice Mercervia email:  alice_mercer@yahoo .com or via Twitter: @alicemer
2.       Video Two:  “Faces of the Pink Slips.”
We need pink-slipped teachers to send us a digital picture of yourself standing in front of a whiteboard with your name written on it, or, if you prefer to leave your name off, just something like  “Mr. S.”   (Smart phone images are fine).  Please also send us a few personalized bullet points, like this:   “Mr. S.  Married with two kids.   Coaches soccer after school.   Masters Degree.   Fourth pink slip.   Worried about future of his beloved profession.”    Please send these images and info (and any questions) to Nate Starace via email: nstarace @yahoo.com.
Faced with unprecedented fiscal challenges and other challenges to our profession, we must each consider ways we can step up and protect our students, our schools and our livelihoods.   Please lend your story to either one of our video projects.
And, please, let’s all be good to one another.  Together, we can get through these trying times and emerge even stronger.