N.M. affiliate helps put finding measure over the top
Reading Academy extends reach
Students take the lead to improve their environment
AFT leaders boost Africa-AIDS project
Teacher union leaders targeted in Colombia

N.M. affiliate helps put funding measure over the top

The final tally was so close that it took three weeks to certify the results, but in the end, voters in New Mexico approved a constitutional amendment that will transfer millions of dollars to public schools. The ballot measure, which would increase the percentage of money from the state’s permanent fund that goes to education, passed by just 195 votes out of more than 184,000 cast Sept. 23.

In such a close race, the New Mexico Federation of Educational Employees (NMFEE) was clearly a decisive force; the union worked hard to get out the vote among its affiliates statewide.

By a more comfortable margin, voters also approved another education-related amendment on the same ballot. That measure elevates the state department of education to cabinet-level status and creates the position of state secretary of education. The AFT state federation supported both measures.

“This is a tremendous victory,” said AFT president Sandra Feldman, who commended Gov. Bill Richardson for his leadership on the issue. “The new money will be invested in programs that will make a tangible and immediate impact, such as providing enough textbooks, quality reading programs, tutoring and summer school, and competitive salaries to recruit top-notch teachers.”

Passage of the funding amendment—which promises to send more than $600 million to schools over the next 12 years—is just the latest victory for supporters of public education and labor in New Mexico since Richardson was elected governor in 2002 with strong AFT support.

The AFT’s Solidarity Fund, which AFT convention delegates approved in 2002, also played a role by supporting NMFEE efforts to get the two ballot measures approved.

Toledo local approved as supplemental services provider under NCLB
Reading Academy extends reach

Several years ago, the Toledo Federation of Teachers (TFT) teamed up with the city’s public schools and launched the Reading Academy to respond to the district’s literacy needs—to teach teachers the best approach to reading instruction and offer a summer school program for struggling students.

Today, the school district and TFT are taking the Reading Academy one step further as a state-approved supplemental educational services provider.

The Reading Academy’s expansion into supplemental services came about as a result of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Signed into law in 2002, NCLB requires school districts to offer a list of supplemental educational service providers to parents of children who need extra help in certain subjects, including language arts and reading. The 2003-04 school year marks the first full year the Reading Academy will offer supplemental services.

With the academy’s summer school results, the district and the Toledo federation thought that becoming a state-approved supplemental services provider was a logical next step. The reading program, Help for Achieving Reading Proficiency (HARP), is similar to the academy’s summer school program, which is based on the AFT’s Educational Research and Dissemination (ER&D) program’s strategies for reading instruction. These strategies include focusing on phonemic awareness, letter-sound correspondence, phonics, decoding, fluency, vocabulary, reading and writing connection, flexible group instruction and maximizing time on task.

“We are considered an outside provider,” says Georgianne Czerniak, one of the Reading Academy’s five full-time literacy support teachers. “But the glory of it is that we are Toledo teachers within the Toledo public school system. We know the curriculum. We know the state standards.”

“It is just ER&D at its best,” says TFT president Francine Lawrence.

Pam Jackson, an in-class model teacher at Nathan Hale Elementary School, signed up to be a HARP tutor. She was sold on the curriculum after going through the training last year so she could teach at the Reading Academy’s 2003 summer school.

“I really think [the program] is great,” says Jackson. “The results have been really great here in Toledo. When students retook the proficiency test this summer, the passage rate was in the 60 percent range.

“The children are real enthused about this [HARP] program,” Jackson notes, “because it involves a lot of participation on their part.”

Students get to play the role of teachers, Jackson explains. “They really like it—and I think that makes a difference, too,” she says.

Students in grades 2-6 from designated “school improvement” buildings are eligible for supplemental educational services. This year, says Czerniak, although there were more than 1,550 students who were eligible for the services, only 121 parents indicated they were interested.

Students take the lead to improve their environment

When students at Herndon High School in Herndon, Va., started a recycling program 13 years ago, many people thought it wouldn’t last.

“We were told we could never do it—that the program would die out,” says Gary Gepford, a Spanish teacher and a founding sponsor of the school’s recycling program. He is also a member of the Fairfax (Va.) Federation of Teachers.

The naysayers were proven wrong, and the recycling project continues to flourish. Students Against Global Abuse (SAGA), which runs the program, has received many awards, and the program has become a model for other schools that want to start their own recycling projects. The SAGA students recycle more than 100 tons of paper and other waste annually and have raised nearly $175,000 for scholarships, which are given to program members.

SAGA recently received the Green Flag Award of Environmental Leadership in recognition of its efforts. The award is bestowed by the Green Flag Program, a national environmental initiative started by community activist Lois Gibbs, who is perhaps best known for spearheading the 1978 cleanup of the toxic-chemical dump in Love Canal, near Niagara Falls, N.Y.

Gibbs’ organization, the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, is determined to help students take the lead in addressing environmental issues by encouraging them to play an active role in making their schools safe and healthy. Students can do this by improving school policy and establishing programs in any of four areas: indoor air quality, nontoxic products, recycling and integrated pest management.

Although SAGA got its start by recycling only school materials, over the years the project was expanded to include businesses, churches and libraries. To date, there have been nearly 275 student volunteers in the program.

Gepford credits SAGA with helping create a new generation of environmental activists. The students not only recycle, they are active in local reforestation and wildlife habitat projects. “They will take what they have learned through this project and use it wherever they go,” he says.

Becky Elstad, a senior at Herndon and current president of SAGA, couldn’t agree more. “I have a deeper respect for the environment,” from working in the program, she says, and “I have learned not to be wasteful. Recycling is a permanent part of my routine.”

Lewis Cass Technical High School in Detroit also was awarded a Green Flag for its student-run program that keeps the school free of vermin without the use of harmful pesticides. The program requires students to use their scientific skills to address pest problems, says Michael Jones, a science teacher at the school and a member of the Detroit Federation of Teachers. And, by taking part in reshaping their environment, “students learn a higher order of thinking,” Jones says.

The student group—known as the Roach Patrol—was started in 1997 with help from the Michigan Department of Agriculture. Members of the team closely study the enemy (roaches and mice) to learn about their habitats and natural predators.

The students also learn about and implement pesticide alternatives, such as making sure teachers and students don’t leave unwrapped food out in the open.

Now when someone sees a bug, the person calls the team “instead of reaching for the bug spray,” says Jones. “The students investigate the problem and make decisions about what to do. It’s a process they can apply in the real world.”

For more information about the Green Flag Program, visit www.greenflagschools.org.

AFT leaders boost Africa-AIDS project

The AFT’s efforts to help our teacher union counterparts in Africa combat the spread of HIV/AIDS got an important boost this fall when AFT officers made a high-level visit to South Africa and Zimbabwe.

AFT secretary-treasurer Edward J. McElroy and vice president Thomas Y. Hobart Jr., also president of the New York State United Teachers, visited schools and hospitals and met with teachers, union leaders and U.S. embassy representatives in September. “We wanted to demonstrate our commitment and solidarity” for the AFT-Africa AIDS Campaign, McElroy told the union’s democracy committee in October. “Sometimes the only way to do that is to connect them to our organization personally.”

Donations from affiliates and members continue to pour into the campaign, which has now raised more than $135,000. An additional $1 million in grants is coming from the U.S. Department of State, Education International, the World Health Organization, the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other funding sources.

The campaign creates partnerships with teacher unions in Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Zimbabwe and other African countries, where as many as 30 percent of teachers are infected with the virus.

During its visit, the AFT delegation quickly got a sense of “the overwhelming task these unions face,” McElroy said. And yet, the campaign has translated into real inroads for the unions and their members. Materials and workshops prepared with help from the AFT are credible, useful and well-received.

The scope of the HIV/AIDS problem in Africa is so great that no one project can solve it alone, but the AFT campaign is a crucial catalyst in “breaking the silence” about the disease in schools and among teachers, said Hobart.

The campaign also is strengthening African teacher unions, which have taken a risk in talking about the disease. In Kenya and Zimbabwe, the unions have spearheaded efforts to ensure the privacy rights of teachers who voluntarily get tested for HIV/AIDS.

The important message “is that there is hope,” Hobart told the committee. “The teachers have great respect, and if we can get them talking” about HIV/AIDS, it’s an important first step in tackling the epidemic.

The AFT-Africa AIDS Campaign is a project of the AFT Educational Foundation. Tax deductible contributions should be made out to AFTEF, 555 New Jersey Ave. N.W., Washington, DC 20001. More information is available online at www.aft.org/africa_aids.

Teacher union leaders targeted in Colombia

Colombia is fast becoming “the most dangerous place in the world to be a union leader,” particularly a teacher union leader, AFT vice president John Cole told members of the AFT executive council’s democracy committee this fall.

Cole and AFT international affairs staffer Eric Duncan reported on their September fact-finding trip to Bogotá and Medellín, where the two met with representatives of the Colombia teachers union, (FECODE), as well as the country’s largest union federation and independent centrist nongovernmental organizations involved in labor-related activities.

Colombia’s labor movement is struggling to survive in an environment that is partly controlled by the government, partly controlled by drug traffickers and routinely terrorized by right-wing paramilitary forces or left-wing insurgents—all of them hostile to democratic trade unions, said Cole. “Whenever a village is taken over by a new group, one of the first things they do is kill the teacher union leader,” Cole said. Teacher unionists are traditional leaders in their communities, and a threat, kidnapping, exile or assassination of a teacher sends a very visible and powerful message, he added.

During their visit, one teacher was assassinated—killed in her car while waiting at a stoplight in the countryside near Medellín, her children sitting in the back seat—and entire communities, including schools, have been held hostage in the crossfire between militaries. FECODE reports that 600 members have been killed since 1982, including 30 so far in 2003. Colombia has the highest kidnapping rate in the world.

The current president of Colombia, Álvaro Uribe Velez, has done little to stop the killings and intimidation of labor leaders and is determined to put unions out of business with an unprecedented ruthlessness, Cole said. AFT president Sandra Feldman has written numerous letters to Uribe expressing outrage at the violence and human rights abuses.

Although this suggests a bleak future for democracy and trade unions in Colombia, Cole and Duncan reported that Colombia’s labor leaders persist—against the odds and with incredible bravery—in speaking out on trade union and human rights. Teacher unionists continue to battle for adequate funds for schools and teacher salaries, and they fight school closures, long working hours, privatization and attacks on collective bargaining. Also, “Lucho” Garzon, a former head of one of the national trade union federations and a friend of FECODE, won his underdog campaign in October to become mayor of Bogotá, generally seen as the second most powerful position in Colombia.

While in Bogotá, Cole and Duncan accompanied a group of trade unionists to debriefing sessions at the U.S. Embassy and the Colombia Ministry of Justice. They had just returned to Colombia after a yearlong tour in the United States sponsored by the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center. The justice ministry, which is in charge of the group’s protection, took note of Cole’s pointed promise to monitor the welfare and safety of the unionists.

Trade unionists in Colombia “are people coping with an unbelievably impossible situation,” Cole told the AFT democracy committee. “You have to be a hero to be a union leader—or even to join a union.”

Copyright by the American Federation of Teachers, AFL•CIO. All rights reserved. Photographs
and illustrations, as well as text, cannot be used without permission from the AFT.