Posted on Oct 14, 2009

With a new school year upon us, the challenges we face as a union are many. In order to enforce our contract and build a stronger and more effective union, we all rely on our very dedicated Association Representatives. They are the eyes and ears of the union at our school and program sites. In order to more effectively carry out their duties as union representatives, over 130 ARs, CRs and Site Organizers (including over a dozen new recruits) attended the Fall Leadership conference this year, held at Marina Village on Saturday, Oct. 3.

The unspoken theme was, “It’s all about site organizing.” As every year, Fall Leadership is the place where ARs and other union leaders come to brush up and build their union representation skills. This year’s conference was also the place where reps had the chance to give their input as to how they would like to restructure the Representative Council meetings. Listening sessions were scheduled into the conference, based on grade levels, to determine what the restructuring would look like, and to address the training needs of the ARs for the coming school year. Melody Welch, an AR from Tierrasanta Elementary, summed it up best: “The morning [listening] sessions were invigorating! We spent the time collaborating on how to make the Rep. Council more productive and useful.”

This year’s Fall Leadership also included a series of electives that reinforced the “site-based organizing for power” theme. Creative Organizing Tactics, Organizing for Power, Tools for Organizing and Building Power at Work were just some of the electives offered this year. The sessions were conducted in various ways, from panel discussions to collaborative group work. New ARs were introduced to their responsibilities and rights in the New AR Training session, and many reps dove directly into the contract, addressing hypothetical situations that might arise at school sites during the Know Your Contract session.

This year’s Fall Leadership laid a strong foundation for the year ahead. As Stacie Klages, an AR from Golden Hill Elementary said, the conference proved “very informative and useful, very worth attending… essential.”  Karen Toyohara, an AR at Crown Point Elementary, expanded on this point, expressing that this conference was an “excellent experience… the insights I gained, the reference materials I received, the sessions I attended will all prove to be extremely valuable to me as my site’s AR.”

It is at the sites where our union strength resides, and having well-trained union representatives ensures that all of our rights that we have fought for and won are protected and enforced.