Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/120877
Note: In every 2013 issue of the Educator we will be highlighting a portion of CTA���s proud history in a timeline. Collect all 9 and put them together for a big look at all we���ve accomplished over the past 150 years. To get started just cut out the timeline from this page. Your next installment will be coming to you in May. The Great Depression. By the advent of World War II, California has an old age assistance law, unemployment compensation, a maximum 48hour work week for women, an apprentice law, and workplace safety rules. 19 3 0-4 5 L ike other workers in the United States during the Depression, California teachers attempted to hold on to their jobs as well as the gains they���d made in previous decades.��One particularly fierce battle occurred in 1933, when a flurry of bills proposed by Gov. James Rolph Jr. attempted to reduce school funding by 20 percent and allow the state to use the ���perpetual school fund��� of $100 million in a state of emergency. CTA opposed and stopped the bills. Executive Secretary Roy Cloud later wrote, ���Never during my 20 years as CTA representative were so many letters and telegrams sent to senators and assemblymen or personal visits made during that session. ��� The power of the public stopped the raid on education which had been skillfully but unwisely planned.��� CTA was concerned enough about the impact of the Depression on members that it joined with the state Department of Education in 1934 to find emergency employment for unemployed teachers and provide nointerest loans to help teachers in need. Attacks on due process rights continued, and CTA successfully fought back a proposed amendment in 1934 that would have entirely eliminated tenure, which we now call due process rights. It wouldn���t be the last time. By 1937, as American businesses started to emerge from the depths of the Depression, the Legislature passed a CTA-sponsored bill that set minimum salaries for teachers at $1,320 a year. The action increased the salaries of all teachers, but especially those in rural areas, where the average salary had been $1,180.�� 1933 1937 1939 1944 A retired teachers��� home is established in Pasadena by CTA Southern Section. Advertisers in CTA���s magazine, Sierra Educational News, include travel companies that cater to teachers, textbook companies, and the National Association of Chewing Gum Manufacturers. Legislature permits school districts to provide paid sabbatical leaves if a bond is posted against possible failure of the teacher to return. In November 1944, as World War II continues far away, CTA urges members to stump for Proposition 9 to increase state funding for elementary schools. It passes overwhelmingly.