California Educator

September 2011

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SOS MARCH FOLLOW-UP LEGISLATIVE MAPS LEGISLATION – DIASTAT BILL 35 36 37 Gov. Jerry Brown stands with CTA leaders President Dean E. Vogel, Vice President Eric C. Heins, Secretary-Treasurer Mikki Cichocki and Executive Director Carolyn Doggett at the CTA Presidents Conference (left). 'We Are One' was the message at both confer- ences as demonstrated at the Summer Institute by Solano Beach teachers Tarri Baldwin and Tiffany Farnsworth (right). lion was no small feat, he noted. The passage of AB 114 should have meant that "school administrators and the education commu- nity would say thank you for the rabbit you pulled out of a hat." He vowed to make reinvesting in public education a top priority in the three and a half years he has left in the Legislature so that the state can "begin again to make Cali- fornia schools the pride of the nation." President Vogel added, "In the past three years, $20 billion has been cut from public education. If temporary tax extensions had passed, AB 114 would not have been neces- sary." Enforcing AB 114 will require a lot of vigilance, and there will be other political battles as well. He called for unity in his addresses at the Presidents Conference and Summer Institute at UCLA. Teachers in the audience waved "We Are One" posters as he spoke. The coming election cycle will be dif- ficult, he warned, with another "paycheck deception" initiative attempting to silence the political voice of educators. He went into detail about CTA's push for tax fairness to find new funding for schools and essen- tial services, a campaign that's outlined at www.cta.org/taxfairness. "If we're going to take back our state and protect our democ- racy, I think what we've really got to do is make people understand what's happening. … There are 300,000 of us, and we are in every single community all across this state." CTA members were inspired by the sum- mer speeches and the cutting-edge trainings. Darla Bramlette attended Summer Insti- tute with 11 members of her Panama-Buena Vista Teachers Association from Bakers- field, a group that took part in trainings for emerging union leaders, on school finance and on national Common Core standards. "I was very impressed by Mr. Steinberg — he was up-front," said Bramlette, the NEA director for Tulare and Kern counties and the High Desert. "And all the members were very impressed by what they saw during the week." At the Presidents Conference, Beaumont Teachers Association President Jody Behrens from Riverside County found the media rela- tions training helpful and the speech by Jerry Brown inspiring, even though she is a Repub- lican. "Had I known what the governor was going to do for us, I would have voted for him." By Mike Myslinski September 2011 / www.cta.org 31

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