Join the March

 

Join the March for Farm Worker Justice

 Our August 3 to 26 peregrinacion has followed the same route as our historic 1966 Cesar Chavez-led march. Our goal is to convince Governor Gavin Newsom to sign #AB2183 (Stone), the United Farm Workers’ bill making it easier for farm workers to vote in a union election free from intimidation by grower foremen, supervisors and farm labor contractors.

An incredible group of 19 permanent farm worker peregrinos have marched the entire length of the peregrinacion. They have given up wages, time with their family, and the comfort and security of their home to march in temperatures frequently exceeding 100 degrees.

The journey has been pretty incredible. Last Saturday, Martin Luther King III joined us on the march. His father, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., stood in solidarity with Cesar Chavez during tough times in the 1960s. That afternoon, 1,000 supporters greeted us in Stockton during 104-degree heat. UFW co-founder Dolores Huerta was there inspiring the crowd.

Community enthusiasm across the state has built as hundreds greeted our marchers along the route and joined end-of-day rallies in valley farm towns. Local committees in each town which our march has passed through have provided food, water, cold drinks, shoes and other supplies, plus housing. Nurses tended to marchers. Supporters from near and far turned up to hand out water, drinks, popsicles and food as the peregrinos passed by. 

It’s been beautiful to see the youth out supporting us as our march has moved through the Central Valley. Our eyes tear up as a new generation is activated to honor the past and mobilize for the future.

CA Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a similar measure last September. What’s different this year is increased public support, including solid backing by the California labor movement under its new leader, Lorena Gonzalez, as well as union, religious, and community leaders, activists and organizations.

Please come and be a part of this historic event. If are not able to be there in person, you can still join us virtually. Many options, including the ones above, can be found at ufw.org/camarch.

PS: Please share this event on Facebook & Twitter. 

antiracismdsa: Why We March – Again

antiracismdsa: Why We March – Again:   Gov. Newsom’s choice: Back California farm workers or help the rich. Why is this so hard?   Read more at: https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/a...

The teacher pay penalty has hit a new high: Trends in teacher wages and compensation through 2021

The teacher pay penalty has hit a new high: Trends in teacher wages and compensation through 2021: Over the last 18 years, EPI has closely tracked trends in teacher pay. Over these nearly two decades, a picture of increasingly alarming trends has emerged. Simply put, teachers are paid less (in weekly wages and total compensation) than their nonteacher college-educated counterparts, and the situation has worsened considerably over time. Prior to the pandemic, the long-trending erosion in the relative wages and total compensation of teachers was already a serious concern. The financial penalty that teachers face discourages college students from entering the teaching profession and makes it difficult for school districts to keep current teachers in the classroom. Trends in teacher pay coupled with pandemic challenges may exacerbate annual shortages of regular and substitute teachers. Providing teachers with compensation commensurate with that of other similarly educated professionals is not simply a matter of fairness but is necessary to improve educational outcomes and foster future economic stability of workers, their families, and communities across the U.S. We explain in greater detail why teacher pay and compensation is so important in a prior report (Allegretto and Mishel 2019). In this analysis, we add two more years, 2020 and 2021, to our long-running series.

Right Wing Extremist Runs for San Juan School Board

 A member the far-right group Proud Boys who recently lost a bid for the California state Assembly has filed papers to run for a seat on a Sacramento-area school board. Jeffrey Erik Perrine, 38, plans to challenge San Juan Unified School District Board of Education member Michael McKibbin in the November election. Tanya Kravchuk, who works at Children’s Receiving Home of Sacramento, is also running against McKibbin. They’re competing to represent the district Area 5, which represents the Orangevale area. San Juan Unified serves more than 40,000 students from Sacramento’s Arden-Arcade neighborhood to Fair Oaks and Citrus Heights.

From Sacramento Bee, 

Read more at: https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article264522856.html#storylink=cpy

'Five-Alarm Crisis': US Has Shortage of 300K Teachers,

 'Five-Alarm Crisis': US Has Shortage of 300K Teachers, School Staff

To stay in their profession, said a union leader, educators need "professional respect" including fair pay and the right "to make teaching and learning decisions for their students."

JULIA CONLEY

August 12, 2022

National Education Association president Becky Pringle on Thursday warned that the U.S. teacher shortage has spiraled into a "five-alarm crisis," with nearly 300,000 teaching and support positions left unfilled and policymakers taking desperate—and in some cases, questionable—measures to staff classrooms.

Pringle told ABC News that teachers unions have been warning for years that chronic disinvestment in schools has placed untenable pressure on educators as they face low pay and overcrowded classrooms.

"The political situation in the United States, combined with legitimate aftereffects of Covid, has created this shortage."

"We have a crisis in the number of students who are going into the teaching profession and the number of teachers who are leaving it," Pringle told the outlet. "But, of course, as with everything else, the pandemic just made it worse."

As a survey taken by the NEA earlier this year showed, 91% of educators said pandemic-related stress and burnout is a "serious problem" in the profession, and 55% reported they plan to leave their profession earlier than originally planned.

Chronically low pay is a problem in the profession which was well-documented prior to the pandemic, and educators across the country report it is a contributing factor as teachers leave schools. The national average salary for teachers is $64,000, but in states including Mississippi, South Dakota, and Florida, many educators earn far less.

As The Week reported on Monday, teachers in Arizona are paid an average of $52,000 per year as they face one of the highest teacher-to-student ratios in the nation.

"I do think the main root cause of the teacher shortage is pay," Justin Wing of the Arizona School Personnel Administrators Association told Fox 10 Phoenix, adding that the state has a "very concerning" shortage of 2,200 teachers.

While advocates have for years called on state lawmakers to invest heavily in schools in order to recruit and retain highly qualified educators—with Arizona teachers staging a walkout in 2018 after legislators passed corporate tax cuts that would have left the state $100 million short—Republican leaders this year have turned to other methods of keeping classrooms sufficiently staffed.