Please support legislators who support kids!

Welcome back to a new school year! If you followed the Kansas legislature last year, you know that KNEA's advocacy made a huge difference in some of the proposals that were made and blocked others that would not have been good for students and teachers. 

There are still representatives in our state government who want radical budget changes that would slash education funding and KPERS.  They could have their way if more like-minded legislators are elected.  PLEASE support the candidates who will make responsible choices on behalf of schoolchildren in Kansas.

Click here for Kansas House candidates who support education.
Click here for Kansas Senate candidates who support education.

Contact us if you didn't get the email that allows you to vote

Please contact us at lneanews@gmail.com if you are a continuing teacher in USD453, employed under the negotiated agreement, and did not get the email from SurveyMonkey allowing you to vote.  We can also help if you need that message sent to an alternate address.

Negotiations Summary

Here is our summary of all the changes made to the negotiated agreement for 2012-13. We feel good about the final agreement, and recommend ratification. We will be sending you an email with your opportunity to vote as soon as we can. Since all currently employed teachers get to vote, our mailing list has to be verified first. We are also waiting for a copy of the new agreement and will forward that to you when we get it. If you have questions or comments, please post them here or email us at lneanews@gmail.com.

First, a quick summary:

· Retained binding arbitration of grievances.

· Got rid of the “double dock” of leave days adjacent to negotiated holidays

· Got pay or leave days for people whose assignment is changed after July 15

· Retained workdays

· Began work toward a compacted salary schedule that will maximize teacher career earnings. No longer will each position in the salary schedule be determined by a percentage of a low base salary. The salary schedule will be restructured every year to ensure as fair a distribution of increases as possible. We will hold informational sessions to explain more about why this multi-year process is important and beneficial to teachers and the district.

· Base pay for supplemental has been raised slightly. Pay for cafeteria supervision and district committee work was raised to $15/hour. Additional pay was added for elementary yearbook sponsors and a video productions sponsor.

· Be watching your email for your ballot from SurveyMonkey. (We'll send another message to this address when it goes out, just in case your junk mail filter catches it.)

Below are more detailed explanations for each of the items opened for negotiations and how they ended up.

Article 3: Duration. The contract is a two-year contract except for money items and calendar. All items will remain as is through the end of 2013-14, except Vertical and Lateral Movement, Salary, Fringe Benefits, and Calendar.

Article 5: Contract Year. The contract year remains at 186 days.

Article 6: Duty Day. We retained full-length workdays at the end of 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd quarters and 1-1/2 days at the beginning and ½ day at the end of the school year. For Parent Conferences, all buildings will be on the following schedule: Wednesday will be a school day, followed by conferences from 4-8 (Secondary) or 5-9 (Elementary). On Thursday all buildings will have conferences 9-5 with a 1-hour break. Friday will be a day off.

Article 10: Grievance Procedure. We retained the right to binding arbitration.

Article 12: Assignment and Transfer. All teachers must be notified of their teaching assignment for the next year by the 3^rdFriday in May. It must be specific as to grade level for elementary and specific to the classes to be taught for secondary.

A change to that assignment that occurs after July 15 will result in either 3 professional leave days or at the teacher’s choice, pay for 3 days at the rate of $124 per day (the sub pay rate). Any combination of leave and pay may be determined upon mutual agreement of the building administrator and teacher.

Article 19: Leave. No more restriction for taking leave adjacent to a negotiated holiday. Some outdated verbiage restricting paternity and adoption leave was also deleted.

Article 24: Vertical Movement. Vertical movement on the salary schedule will occur this year. (Lateral movement was not opened for negotiation, so that will also occur.)

Article 26: Salary. The salary schedule was restructured. No longer is each position in the salary schedule determined by a percentage of a low base salary. Restructuring will occur again every year for a while, to ensure as fair a distribution of increases as possible. You won’t see a lot of differences yet, but over the next few years, we expect some major changes will occur. We will hold informational sessions to explain more about why this multi-year process is important and beneficial to teachers and the district. For now, the rows will be renumbered (both the previous and the future numbers are listed in the schedule below). The lines about an embedded amount have been deleted from the agreement, since they no longer apply. The reference to MHT has been changed to SIT. Base pay for supplemental has been raised slightly to $28000. Pay for cafeteria supervision and district committee work was raised to $15/hour. Additional pay was added for elementary yearbook sponsors and a video productions sponsor. Also, the district proposed raising supplemental stipends for JROTC activities. Many of the extracurricular jobs at all levels are underpaid relative to other districts, so we proposed an audit of the supplemental salary scale. The district will be conducting this over the course of 2012-13 in preparation for the next negotiations.   Here are links to the new salary schedule and the new supplemental schedule (in two separate pages).

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B7nN_3ILwmhIRTNXUHlaS2VkYTQ
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B7nN_3ILwmhIb0R0WHktM2JwSVk
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B7nN_3ILwmhIbHNWOWdjWHB5ZWs

Article 27: Fringe. We’re sorry to report that there is no increase in fringe benefits.

Article 30: Calendar. For 2012-13, the non-working days are

· September 3 Labor Day

· November 12 Veteran’s day

· November 21-23 Thanksgiving

· December 24-January 1 Winter Break

· January 21 Martin Luther King Day

· February 18 Presidents’Day

· March 18-22 Spring Break

· March 29 Non-working Day (Good Friday)

· April 29 Makeup day for inclement weather exceeding two days; otherwise off.

· May 27 Memorial Day

For 2013-14, non-working days are

· September 2 Labor Day

· November 11 Veteran’s day

· November 27-29 Thanksgiving

· December 23-January 2 Winter Break

· January 20 Martin Luther King Day

· February 17 Presidents’Day

· March 17-21 Spring Break

· April 18 Non-working Day (Good Friday)

· April 28 Makeup day for inclement weather exceeding two days; otherwise off.

· May 26 Memorial Day

Out-of-district Special Education teachers – if assigned full time to a district that has more than 186 days, the director can establish a 186-day calendar or pay additional compensation at 1/186 of the teacher’s salary per day for each additional contract day worked. For teachers working in a district where contract days are fewer than 186 days, the director can establish a 186-day calendar.

Article 31: Evaluation. The evaluation instruments are no longer part of the negotiated agreement. This means that administration has the right to change that instrument without negotiating it. The processwhich must be used IS dictated by the negotiated agreement, and has not changed. The article has been reordered to a more logical structure.

Out of district special education teachers may be evaluated with the instrument of the district to which they are assigned, but the administrator must follow the process outlined in our negotiated agreement. This guarantees that administrators actually visit for a minimum length of time for formal classroom observations and hold face-to-face discussions regarding the final evaluation, establishes time limits between formal observation and conference, a time limit between the final observation and the summative evaluation, and an orientation to the process.

Article 33: Resignation Incentive (known as Early Retirement). The board proposed ending this provision earlier than planned, but we will keep the current sunset dates. The cash incentive ends June 30, 2015, and the health benefit incentive ends June 30, 2025.

Local Teacher Robin Crim Represents our Profession in Washington, D.C.

Education leaders from across Kansas just returned from an intensive week in Washington, D.C. consisting of workshops, policy discussions, and action items to help ensure that every child has access to a great public school education.  Among the 130 Kansas NEA delegates to the Annual Meeting and Representative Assembly (RA) of the National Education Association was LNEA's own co-President Robin Crim. 

The 2012 NEA RA featured a host of workshops providing the latest research on successful programs to end bullying, implement more rigorous teacher evaluation systems, and the most promising innovations for school-wide improvement of student learning... through teacher-led professional development.  KNEA members have long benefited from their training, "BullyProof," and are now adding "Bully-Free - It Starts With Me" to their repertoire of safe-school strategies.

NEA President Dennis Van Roekel continued to press for genuine school improvement, calling on delegates to "lead a movement for new academic standards... define the multiple measures of professional practice and evidence of student learning."  Delegates answered the call with several new business items adopted to uphold outstanding professional practice and to ensure that fair tax structure provides the resources needed to sustain both quality schools and stronger communities.

Delegates celebrated both the Fourth of July and excellence in policy and professional practice throughout their lengthy days of business:

*    National Teacher of the Year Rebecca Mieliwocki drew rousing applause noting that "great teachers design exciting, relevant lessons that set kids up for success."  Referring to a counterproductive focus on standardized testing, Ms. Mieliwocky lamented that these tests "limit us to a very narrow set of parameters, and I want more for my students because the world they'll be forced to find work in will demand more from them."

*    Delegates saw promise for better public policy as Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton was recognized as the Outstanding Governor of the Year.  A former teacher, Governor Dayton stood with educators and community leaders in Minnesota to increase education funding in 2011-2012, creating one of the most positive business environments in the nation.

*    Other visitors to the NEA RA offered encouragement and hope to delegates.  National Education Support Professional of the Year, Judy Near, energized the crowd highlighting her role as a Health Tech in ensuring that our students are ready to learn; and finally, Vice President Joe Biden was joined by Dr. Jill Biden, a community college professor AND his spouse, as they praised the dedication and important work of all educators from pre-K through graduate school.