Archived State Council Report - January 2007

State Council Report - January 2007

My name is Carleen Maselli, and I am your elected State Council Representative for the remainder of the 2007 school year.

Please review the First Readings (listed below) of the proposed policy presented at State Council in January. A second reading and vote will occur at March State Council. Of great importance is the first reading from the Negotiations Committee, which has proposed policy language regarding alternate compensation.

At the January 2007 State Council, a presentation was made by the Denver Teachers Association president regarding an alternative compensation plan that is "NOT THOUGHT TO BE MERIT PAY". Members from each State Council committee were asked to attend this presentation. This model is called Procomp, and may be reviewed at www.denverprocomp.org. The basis of the model is to reward unit members with compensation for doing extra work, getting units, additional degrees, and years of experience. Also included are some "merit" type issues such as knowledge and skills, hard to staff positions, as well as teachers, along with administrators, setting goals and then being rewarded for meeting these goals. The really dangerous part of the model, in my opinion, is a 3% decrease in compensation for not meeting the teacher/administrator set goals. Please visit www.denverprocomp.org to get full details.

As you can imagine, many Council representatives were in an uproar upon reviewing this model. The president of the Denver Teachers Association admitted to not opting in to this system herself. Denver has 38% of their teachers under the Procomp plan; however, approximately 14% of those teachers were new hires, and they DID NOT HAVE AN OPTION WHETHER OR NOT TO PARTICIPATE IN PROCOMP. Every new teacher was placed in the Procomp system.

Between sessions, I made it my mission to ask the CTA leadership present what their beliefs were concerning alternate compensation plans. The answer I kept hearing was alternate compensation is "coming," and the members need to be prepared. Leadership’s belief is the government is going to try and force these compensation models down teachers’ throats, and CTA needs to be prepared with its own policy language so staff will be equipped to fight any ideas CTA members believe are wrong.

Council members also were told the CTA Board conducted surveys of "younger members" asking what they wanted in the way of compensation. The result of this survey was that younger CTA members wanted to be paid for being great teachers and doing extra work. MY concern is that surveying our younger members isn't enough. I personally have twenty to twenty-five years left in teaching. I did not have any input into this survey and wonder if anyone else had input besides “younger” members. Secondly, if these surveyed teachers are ones who have yet to enter into the profession, i.e., Student CTA, do they have enough experience to understand all the issues surrounding education when they were surveyed about alternative compensation?

At this point, I am inclined to vote against setting any policy that would implement establishing guidelines for alternative compensation models. I believe State Council has not had sufficient time to debate this issue. I do believe it is important to be prepared should the government send down a merit pay system, but the message I want to send is our members need more information before we can even consider any type of alternate compensation plan. Any concerns you have, please let me know by email as soon as you can.

FYI: Elections from last council were as follows:

• CTA President: David Sanchez: 6/26/07-6/25/09
• CTA Vice President: Dean E. Vogel: 6/26/07-6/25/09
• NEA Director, District 4-KC Walsh: 9/1/07-8/31/10
• NEA Director, District 5-Carol J. Matthews: 9/1/07-8/31/10
• NEA Director District 6/14-Errol J. Campbell 9/1/07-8/31/10
• NEA District 13-Guy DeRosa 9/1/07-8/31/10
• CTA Director, AT Large- Marty G. Meeden

Upcoming Elections: Secretary-Treasurer:

Redwood Service Center has endorsed Lynette Henley. Other candidates are Pixie Hayward-Schickele, Dan Vaughn, and Tom Conry. If you have a strong opinion on any of these candidates, now is the time to speak up as well.

Next State Council is March 30-April 1st, so I need to hear from you by then regarding anything that needs a vote. You can email me at cmaselli@global.net.

Carleen Maselli
State Council, Sol-1/District A

First Readings