MHFT Newsletter -- September 25, 2014

Taste of Morgan Hill

MHFT will have a booth at the Taste of Morgan Hill this Saturday, September 27 and Sunday, September 28 from 9:30-6:30 each day. We will be promoting our schools and supporting our endorsed candidates. We are asking each school to cover one 2-hour shift (which can be divided among several teachers). Please see your building rep to sign up for your site. If all of us do a little, none of us will need to do it all!

This is a great opportunity to enjoy some time with your colleagues, connect with the community, and support all of our schools!

If you have student art work or projects that can be displayed, please make arrangements with your building rep to be sure they make it there (and back).

Charter Petitions Denied by MHUSD Board of Education

This week’s MHUSD board meeting, the Voices and Navigator charter petitions were both denied by a 6-to-1 vote. We want to thank Gemma Abels, Terri Knudsen, Joan Best, Jeanie Wallace, and Chris Mink for standing in support of all of our students, our neighborhood schools and public education! It is likely that both charter management companies will appeal to the Santa Clara County level. We believe we can win this battle, if we continue to stand up for our students and our schools. It is critical that we do so. Please be sure to stay informed and plan to assist in supporting our district when the time comes.
If you are looking for inspiration, please read Gemma’s speech below!

MHFT & SEIU Joint General Meeting

October 2, 2014
3:45 – 5:15
Las Palmas Restaurant
16825 Condit Road

MEET OUR ENDORSED CANDIDATES:
David Gerard
Steve Klem
Donna Foster-Ruebusch
Ron Woolf
Claudia Rossi

Teacher of the Year to Be Honored at County Ceremony

Congratulations to Britton teacher Vincent Gutierrez, who will be honored as Morgan Hill’s Teacher of the Year at a celebration sponsored by the Santa Clara County Office of Education on October 2. The event will feature honorees from every district in the county, and is always both inspirational and heartwarming.

Friends, family, and colleagues are welcome to attend, and no RSVP is required.

Heritage Theater
1 W. Campbell Avenue, Campbell
6:15 pm hors d’oeuvres
7:00 pm program

MHFT is on Facebook! 

The first site to get all members to LIKE us will get a pizza lunch. Please SHARE with friends & family!
https://www.facebook.com/mhft2022?ref=br_tf

Teachers at the Mic

These presentations are so important, so that the board members and the community at large can learn about the great things that are happening on all of our campuses.

Remember that our focus this year is “unity and community.” This is certainly displayed when your site is represented by teachers, classified staff, administrators, parents, and students. Please invite these folks to attend with you, and showcase how you are all working together to create a quality learning environment.

We hope to see all of you there!

October 7 – Paradise Valley
October 21 – Barrett

Teacher Expertise Needed: Your Voice Matters

The following message is shared on behalf of the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, an institutional member of CCTE.

The electronic application is now open for interested educators who have knowledge and expertise and want to assist the Commission in its Accreditation and Standards work during 2014-15.  There have been six task groups identified—
1) Preliminary Teacher Preparation Standards
2) Induction Standards, Policies, and Regulations
3) Performance Assessments
4) Accreditation Policies and Procedures
5) Outcomes and Data
6) Public Access-Data Dashboards

The task groups will be formed in September and the work is scheduled for the 2014-15 year. 

A complete application is the completed electronic survey, a resume, and a letter of interest for the identified task group. Applying to serve on one or more task groups does not guarantee that you will be selected, since a large number of applications are expected to be received. There will be opportunities for stakeholder input if you are not selected to serve on a task group.
Applications are available at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Accreditation_Standards_14_15

Provided by CFT:

Accreditor on defensive in advance of October trial
Governor signs two bills; judge dismisses objections to suit

Over the past ten days, the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) received three setbacks in its ideological quest to run roughshod over fair accreditation practices and common decency. 

Governor Brown signed two bills that claw back a bit of the damage done by the ACCJC in its unfair and illegal actions to close City College of San Francisco. And late Friday, Superior Court judge Curtis Karnow rejected the ACCJC’s arguments for dismissal of the case brought by S.F. City Attorney Dennis Herrera against it, and granted summary adjudication on one issue argued by Herrera. 

Herrera's suit seeks to reverse the ACCJC's closure order against City College of San Francisco (CCSF) due to the agency's violations of its own policies and state law. In a hearing on September 10, the ACCJC argued the agency could not be tried under California law because it was not a business.

In his 40 page ruling Judge Karnow found the Commission is a business governed by California's Unfair Competition law. He determined that the courts had widely applied Business and Professions Code Section 17200 to "associations and other organizations of persons" and other private entities.

Karnow also ruled that the ACCJC “violated controlling federal regulations” when it staffed a 2013 CCSF evaluation panel with just one academic among nine reviewers. “The judge slapped aside the ACCJC attorney’s attempt to argue in court that no regulation specified what constituted a balanced team—as if eight to one represents balance in any universe,” said CFT president Joshua Pechthalt.

Karnow said in his ruling that if the evidence at trial is sufficient, the law recognizes that the Court may issue injunctive relief that restores City College's accreditation.

On the legislative front, AB 1942 (Bonta) mandates more transparency and accountability from the ACCJC by requiring biannual reports of policy changes and other specific reporting to the Legislature. Given federal jurisdiction over most accreditation matters, this was as far as state legislators could go after initially considering a more comprehensive bill. Nonetheless, “It is a step in the right direction for more transparency in the notoriously secretive agency, and signals that previously hands-off legislators understand that they need to monitor the commission more closely,” Pechthalt said.

And AB 2087 (Ammiano) requires the state Community College Board of Governors to include benchmarks for restoration of an elected local college district board of trustees if it is replaced by a “special trustee,” as occurred in San Francisco. It also requires the “special trustee” to consult meaningfully with the college district in decision-making, instead of simply issuing decisions by fiat.

The CFT and its affiliate at CCSF, AFT 2121, filed the original complaint with the U.S. Department of Education that argued the ACCJC, in its dealings with City College and many other colleges, has consistently violated its own policies and state and federal law. After the Department agreed with significant portions of the complaint a year ago, the City Attorney filed suit against the ACCJC, and legislators crafted bills targeting the agency’s actions. Judge Karnow issued an injunction in January 2014 to keep CCSF open and accredited for its 80,000 students pending trial.

Gemma Abels’ Speech to the Board

September 23, 2014

Here we are again.  Last year at this time I spoke to you about the business of education.  I think you all know how I feel about the bottom line of education being a test score.  There should be no bottom line in education, education should open possibility after possibility to our young people.  What a great place we live in where STEM is mixed with DIME at San Martin-Gwinn, and Math and Music are both  promoted at JAMM, and Art is as integral to learning as Science at P.A . Walsh. If you decide to approve VOICES and Navigator, they will say that you have diversified the portfolio of schools in Morgan Hill, we do not need a portfolio of schools in Morgan Hill because we have 13 schools that educate all students in all subjects and we provide all of our students the opportunity to participate in extra support and extracurricular activities.

Tonight you have to decide on two petitions.  VOICES and Navigator have come to you as separate charter schools.  You heard two separate presentations on August 11.   But we know that these two schools are already part of a portfolio of schools that care deeply about test scores and about creating more and more schools.  Two organizations seem to connect these schools:  the California Charter School Association and Innovate Public Schools. 

The California Charter School Association has posted a fact sheet about VOICES and Navigator.  They restate a comparison of 2012 – 2013 test scores presented in both petitions. CCSAs vision is to increase the number of “highly autonomous and accountable schools of choice.”  If  I was in a classroom right now, I would ask you to discuss the definitions of highly autonomous and accountable.  It was also at the CCSA conference last year that their key note speaker, Reed Hastings said, that the problem with the public school system is that they “don’t get to control their boards.”    We are lucky in Morgan Hill that we have an elected school board that understands learning versus test taking.  Mr. Hastings says that charters schools can control their boards by appointing them and making sure that successors have similar ideologies.  This would seem to limit he innovation charter schools so highly cherish.  And he might have it wrong – I wonder how highly autonomous VOICES is from this parent organization if a member of the VOICES Morgan Hill advisory board and the treasurer of the VOICES College-Bound Board are both employed by CCSA.

The second organization connecting these two charter schools is Innovate Public School.  In a recent webinar, Innovate Public Schools described how it will use a growth model this year in their yearly publication that measures public schools success -  and by that I mean, reporting test scores.  You might be asking yourself how this growth model will describe what is going on in schools now since test scores were not published for last school year; the answer is that it will not.  The growth model will be based on data from 2008 – 2009 to 2012 – 2013.  Schools must have a 59 point increase in API to come off of the Broken Promises  list, but schools with a one year 46 point drop such as Rocketship Los Suenos will not appear on the list and Gilroy Prep’s 36 point drop will not be mentioned.  At the Silicon Valley Leadership Group’s Education Summit, Matt Hammer, CEO of Innovate Public Schools, and another advisor to VOICES, announced that both Navigator and VOICES sent representatives to Innovate Public Schools Start-Up Schools Fellowship which provides guidance in designing schools with several workshops and direct coaching.  Let’s be clear that it does not result in an administrative credential which prepares teachers for the vast decision-making and interpersonal skills necessary for school leadership. The $10,000 program does promise a cohort of schools.  The question is whether or not we want this  cohort of VOICES and Navigator in Morgan Hill.  

If you approve either of these charter schools, you are also approving the California Charter Schools Association and Innovate Public Schools in Morgan Hill.  These organization could spend their resources educating parents about the common core or making sure that the new tests are not culturally biased.  However, both of these organizations have clear stated goals; to increase the number of charter schools in California, to organize parents to ask for more charter schools, to support legislation for more charter schools, to ask Sacramento to increase the amount of money provided for facilities for charter schools. I urge you not to increase the bottom line of these organizations – more low-income, EL students being separated from their peers – or to add to their portfolio of teach-to-the-test schools.

Gemma Abels is a Teacher on Special Assignment for Common Core implementation, and is an MHFT Vice President.