Rocky Hill Teachers' Association (RHTA)

Sent on Behalf of CEA President Sheila Cohen

LPs: Distribute ASAP

Thank you for what you do each and every day!

Greetings, All.

Since we met and I spoke to you at the last round of County Presidents Forums, circumstances have changed at the state legislature.

At this moment in time, it would appear that the Connecticut Democratic Leadership in both the Senate and the House are pushing for the approval of the cost shift to municipalities and towns of payments towards the teacher retirement pensions.

I cannot stress enough how important it will be for our members to come to the County Forums which begin next week. Our legislators will be there, and they need to hear directly from the grassroots membership how egregious this action is and how it will affect the budgets in our districts, what it will mean to you as a teacher as well as a taxpayer, and how this shift in cost will affect the students in our classrooms across the state.

***Please – forward this email to all our members and ask them to let you know if they plan to attend so that we have the correct number for the food count.

Attached is the list of upcoming County Forums and the contact information for the Senior Director in each county.

Now is the time for a mobilizing action. It may indeed be one of many this legislative session, but we cannot be silent. We cannot do this alone. We must stand together as a unified voice for doing what is right.

Sincerely,

Sheila Cohen

President

Connecticut Education Association

CtyForums 3rd Round 2017 – Revised

Sent on Behalf of CEA President Sheila Cohen

Executive Director, Mark Waxenberg

Director of PRR, Don Williams

Thank you for what you do each and every day!!

Teacher Evaluation and SBAC scores—the Fight Continues

This year we embarked on an important journey. A journey to ensure that teacher evaluations have integrity—that they do not contain measures of student growth that experts agree are inappropriate and invalid for TEVAL, such as the SBAC test. We won an additional one-year moratorium from the mandatory use of SBAC as 22.5 percent of a teacher’s evaluation, but were blocked from winning legislation that would have required a longer moratorium and a state-sponsored study of whether SBAC is appropriate for TEVAL. Our opponents do not want legislators to know the facts about SBAC and TEVAL, and the growing body of research and information that support our position.

With tremendous teacher support across the state and agreement from all the stakeholders—teachers unions, administrators groups, superintendents, and Boards of Education—we had the pledged support of the vast majority of rank and file members in the legislature to secure passage. Unfortunately, we did not receive the support of the Governor, Commissioner of Education and the Democratic Leadership in the House and Senate when it mattered most, and our coalition proposal was never called for a vote.

In addition, special interest groups that favor the corporate takeover of public education, such as ConnCAN, engaged in dirty politics as they spread false and misleading information about the proposal.

It is unfortunate that Senate President Martin Looney, Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, Speaker of the House Brendan Sharkey, and House Majority Leader Representative Joe Aresimowicz chose not to allow the democratic process to go forward on such an important issue as integrity in teacher evaluation.

We understand the pressures of this year’s legislative session, with budget concerns and difficult challenges. We look forward, however, to a return to decisions based on the merits instead of falsehoods, and a return to letting the majority rule.