East Longmeadow Education Association

Tim Mullett, Dawn Quercia, Julie Elkhay, Rebecca Tidlund, Erica Nissenbaum, Kris Nordin, Abby Steiner, Hilary Coughlin, Nancy Carver

 

Introductions

Abby Steiner presided and asked people to introduce themselves and explain their goals. Introduced herself and mentioned increasing delegation and empowering building reps. Kris Nordin talked about wanting to improve communication. Erica Nissenbaum wants to follow up with new hires and make sure people know each other in the building. Julie Elkhay wants to build relationships with people in her building. Rebecca Tidlund encourages paras to come to her with problems and wants to work on connecting with others and encouraging people to come to her. Nancy Carver was often considered as the para representative by other paras, even though she was only on the negotiations team. Eliel Gonzalez encouraged her to be a rep. She sees paras needing to understand more about their contract and wants to do outreach. Jill Rogalski looks forward to working with the co-presidents as a team and wants to work on paras understanding the effectiveness of the union. Jason Mathes spoke about the teacher shortage. For teachers, East Longmeadow has one of the top five highest salaries in Western Massachusetts. For paras, East Longmeadow has one of the five lowest salaries in Western Massachusetts. ELEA does well on turning out people for statewide campaigns like Question 2. We are good at solving problems and putting out fires, but we have an opportunity to build our union. People can feel like the union matters and be part

of something. Hilary Coughlin feels like her colleagues are looking for her help and was a union rep in Springfield and looks forward to being more informed and helping people. Dawn Quercia wants to see some changes happen and wants to take a big picture approach to our union. She sees what the business world gets and thinks we can do better in attracting teachers and paras. Tim Mullet recruited by Kim Kehoe and Eliel Gonzalez. Mark Bail wants people to be informed enough to be empowered.

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There might be a fix for the teachers who missed joining retirement plus. Teachers who started after 2002 were automatically enrolled in Retirement Plus. Teachers can tell if they are in Retirement Plus by seeing what percentage of

their pay is deducted for their pensions.

 

Contract, By Laws, and Committee Membership: Make them available.

 

Vacancies/Mid-Year Elections

Kris Nordin read the appropriate bylaws. The Executive board will appoint a vacancy for secretary. Erica nominated me for secretary. Julie seconded. Mark was unanimously elected. Building rep vacancy for building rep in BPMS and at ELHS. Kim Kehoe is retiring. Announce that there will be an announcement for the first day of school and election at those schools a few weeks later.

 

Treasurer Update

Our accounts are in good standing. We are trying to end our scholarship account. It had been started when non-union members had to pay an agency fee. Erica receives info for new hires and directs building reps to give them information.

Union dues memo coming in the next week.

 

Secretary Role

Secretary will communicate to members through the website and social media.

 

MTA Handbooks

Jason Mathes passed out MTA materials. Fair Share Amendment aka The Millionaire’s task. It is a ballot initiative so there will be a 4% surcharge on income over $1,000,000. First, identify supporters among the membership by having a conversation with every member. Second, talk to community members and family members and ask them to find two people to support it. Jason passed out a Building Rep/Steward Training book and talked about training for building reps. Ninety-five percent of the time people complaining are only thinking about themselves. Ask yourself, “Is this person a leader? Do they have followers?” Involve them in the union conversations.

 

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