Executive Director’s Report
March 24, 2015 Meeting
The servicing model is “trying to help people by solving problems for them,” while the organizing
model is “involving members in solutions.”
Current Situation and Updates:
I.
2015 Legislative Session:

Lay of the Land
o The primary fight going on in Carson City is whether Business will step up and support a tax
to fund education. The Governor and key Republicans led by the Senate leadership are
attempting to win enough support among the Business community and 2/3 support in both
houses to pass the Business License Fee, an increase in the cigarette tax and a modest
mining tax increase that, combined, would generate over $438 million for the biennium
budget. Our efforts are to support this attempt to pass this part of the budget.
o The secondary fight is around at what cost? Commonly referred to as accountability i.e.
reforms. We must be part of these discussions. We do not have the luxury to simply say no.
We have to be part of solutions. Solutions we can live with that are based on working with
our relationships with lawmakers and business leaders- this will be the key to our success. A
number of bills related to education and educators are bad. One party controls both houses
and the Governors seat. Our efforts are to align with the moderate wing of the Republican
Party along with Democrat support to prevent bad anti-education and anti-teacher
legislation will be critical.
o Finally, our role in this session is to help build and foster bi-partisan support i.e. 2/3 votes
for funding and majority votes to kill bad legislation. This will not be easy and we will move
forward firm in our efforts. We are redefining who we are and how we work in the political
arena.
o Our comprehensive campaign involving member mobilization, public media campaign, issue
based lobbying engagement, and developing coalition with parents and business leaders
continues. The March 7th Town Hall meeting with over 350 participants of primarily teachers
with parents and students was a success. Over 14 lawmakers attended with the key
leadership present to hear what our issues are. The meeting was led off by a welcoming
speech by a leading business leader who applauded efforts in working with educators to
fund education. We have made much progress but need to escalate it. More on this at our
meeting.

CCEA’s Strategy
o Offense- We are not only supporting the Governor’s Business License Fee (BLF) but are
trying to increase the pot of money going to education by $110 million. We have begun to
raise the issue of the teacher shortage, 600 substitutes in the classes and not starting the
next school year without enough qualified teaches in the classroom. This issue rates high in
the polls that something must be done. We have gotten positive feedback from the
Governor, Rs, Ds, and the business community for this issue. We will explain more of this at
the meeting.
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Currently, the DSA’s per pupil spending is $7 lower than last year. The significance of this is
it affects salaries, benefits etc. We have to work to increase this or we will see the affect in
bargaining. Though there is money in the budget for roll-up costs (step and columns) and
PERs (CCSD’s contribution) and health 1.7% all of it currently is not enough for us to stay
even. Our aim is to increase this. More on this at the meeting.
We are also proposing bills to provide more support to educators and other licensed
professionals (see our hand out). We have three of our bills sponsored and moving i.e. PAR,
PDP, and Reimbursement of out of pocket expenses, and social worker issues, etc.
o
Defense- There is a lots of bad legislation coming out of this Session (see our hand out) on
collective bargaining reforms, PERs, local school districts ability to declare emergencies and
restrict from collective bargaining certain funds, vouchers, charters to name a few.
Percentage of student outcomes on evaluations is another issue that we are attempting to
address and will be working through the Teacher Leaders Council to find assistance.
Larger with greater impact issues that we are addressing is creating an Achievement School
District by taking turnaround schools and creating a special district that could lead to no
collective bargaining rights for up to 80 schools and 4000 teachers. Another issue is the
breaking up CCSD into smaller districts run by local governments. Though this issue has not
yet been heard in Carson City it will get lots of attention.

What’s Next?
o
We expect that the BLF funding piece will be headed to a floor vote in April. The pace of
events in Carson City has been rapid. We must be prepared to stay in the game and achieve
our objectives:
 Get the BLF passed
 Find additional funding to address the teacher shortage through a strategic salary
schedule targeting at risk schools
 Defeat bad legislation
 Pass CCEA sponsored legislation.
Over 100 educators have signed up to our Legislative Action Team Intern program and our
leading the way in helping to educate and mobilize members and non-members into action.
To date we have had several thousand educators and professionals involved in this
campaign. Over 12,000 people wore buttons on March 2. Several thousand have sent emails
to legislators about issues and bills. Close to 4000 people are on our text alert for notices to
action. Many educators have spoken at hearings or held a roundtable with a lawmaker. But
our work is far from over.
As things heat up now is the time for us to step up our efforts to influence outcomes. You
can sign up for our text alert system by texting the keyword “CCEA” to 877877 to stay
informed during the Session which ends June 1st.
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
Key Dates for Member Mobilization:
o March 30th Carson City Rally and Lobby Day- We are taking educators to Carson City for an
educators’ lobby day. This will be a critical time in the Session where there may be a vote on
the BLF funding proposal. We will report more on this at the meeting.
o April 11th Parent Town Hall Meeting- East Las Vegas Community Center- this is an event
organized by parent and community organizations that will be addressing issues among of
which the teacher shortage will be discussed. Please plan on attending.
II.
Health Insurance and the Status of THT
 We will be providing a report in full at the ARC meeting on this. Suffice to say that changes are
imminent and a full report will be provided at the March 24th meeting.
III.
2015-16 Contract Negotiations and the Salary Schedule Work Group
 Negotiations for next year’s contract with CCSD will begin on April 16th. There is currently a survey
being run for member input. Please inform folks of this because their input is critical for the
negotiation committee to develop a contract agenda.
 CCEA’s work group, a subgroup of the negotiation committee, has completed its work on a new
salary schedule. Findings from this workgroup will be used in the upcoming negotiations for a new
contract we will begin negotiating with CCSD.
IV.
CCEA’s Professional Learning Program (PLP) and National Board (NBCT)
V.

Brenda Pearson is CCEA’s new Director of Professional Learning Program. Brenda and other
colleagues will be testifying on CCEA’s professional development bill. This bill will certify CCEA as a
provider of professional learning for educators in CCSD. This is critical as we move forward and
develop a new salary schedule that will be based on professional development.

Betsy Giles continues to lead our National Board Certification Program and is making great progress
expanding NBC work locally and now statewide. Teams of NBC trained teachers have helped provide
input and research to Legislators on issues and bills currently at play in this Session.

Please see Brenda’s and Betsy’s written reports in your packet for more detailed information on the
work our great team is doing.
CCEA’s Advocacy and Representation:
 CCEA has done a remarkable job to reduce its back log of cases down to approximately 130 while
improving the standard and performance of representation our staff provide to members. This is a
significant development given we had a back log of cases ranging up to 800 that were not moved on
by previous staff for years. For those ARs interested training on Advocacy and Representation as
well as TAC training can be scheduled. Please review Michelle Kim’s report on Advocacy and
Representation.
 Our member resource center made up of member leaders who return calls to members who have
questions has been operating. More recently the Member Resource Center has been utilized to
contact educators to get involved in this Legislative Session.
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
New Member Growth, Organizing Update:
New teachers continue to be hired at a slow pace. We still have too many subs and unfilled positions
in our classrooms. As new teachers are hired we reach out to them and invite them to a new hire
orientation. We ask every AR to introduce a new teacher if they arrive at your school and share with
them what CCEA is and invite them to join. New teachers can join any time of the year. In
April we will have our special early enrollment program offering a special membership for new
members. To date we have signed up over 1135 new members. This is good buy for every new
teacher hired this year CCSD has lost 1-2 through early separation- i.e. they left before the school
year ended.
The Final Word
There are over 650 year long substitutes in the classrooms. If anyone can change this, we can. We must!
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