Posted on Jul 27, 2009
SDEA has launched its new Strong Site Program, designed to increase our organizing capacity throughout the District.
On April 1, 2009 SDEA held an Emergency Rep. Council meeting to discuss next steps in the bargaining campaign. Sites were asked to volunteer for intensive site-organizing in support of the bargaining campaign and to support their own site communication structures. 29 sites volunteered for this important program.
Since April, SDEA staff and leaders have been visiting these “Strong Sites,” helping to recruit site organizing teams and holding site solidarity actions to demonstrate support for the bargaining campaign. Each strong site is holding meetings with all staff and with their organizing team to plan and take part in solidarity actions of their choice. Montgomery MS staff will hold a pot lock with parents to talk about the reality behind our contract fight. Chollas-Mead teachers held a joint PTA and SDEA meeting to talk with parents about the issues affecting their classrooms. UCHS staff are calling on Trustee John Lee Evans to meet with them and discuss the impact of special education program changes on all classrooms. Horton Elementary staff will present their “full plate” (pictured below) to district leaders. These are just a few examples of how SDEA members creatively express their unity and their resolve to find meaningful solutions through bargaining.
Our union is strongest when all members take ownership of the issues that matter most to them. When we organize to win changes at the most personal level, the sites where we work with students every day, we not only win important changes for the union but we building a stronger SDEA.
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- SDEA Members on Horton’s site organizing team (Yoli Banda and Rachel Stillwell) create space for their co-workers to add the “full plate.”
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- Horton Elementary’s full plate, complete with children clinging to their education and getting dropped off, is the staff’s visual depiction of their overloaded teaching day. SDEA members added examples of the many things that fill their plates and take away valuable instructional time.
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- The Site Organizing team (Natasha Frost, Yoli Banda, Rachel Stillwell and Alfredo Vargas) discuss their plans to collect signatures and ideas from co-workers and to present their poster to district leadership, demonstrating their solidarity behind a this critical issue.
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- At the emergency Rep. Council meeting called on April 1, sites were asked to volunteer for intensive site-organizing in support of the bargaining campaign and to support their own site communication structures.
