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The Wednesday meeting on November 20 is set aside for a BTA general membership meeting. However, I will be out of town with the seventh grade in Williamsburg. Therefore, each school liaison will hold his or her second school-level meeting.
Elementary teachers meet Maryellen in the elementary library. Middle School teachers meet Joyce in Joyce's room. High School teachers meet Patrick in Patrick's room. This was written by Victor Maxwell and is especially helpful to those who commute (or can commute) by public transportation. Victor had been working for a couple of years to get this benefit extended to employees of the Bronxville School. It's a great deal!
Bronxville Gets Greener There are two new benefits being offered by the district this year that will help some of us save between $500 and $1000 and might help reduce our collective carbon footprint as well. Our flexible spending plans now also cover transit spending and parking expenses. If you commute on Metro North, for example, you can pay for your rail passes with pre-tax dollars. Although the IRS has lowered the maximum amount you can contribute toward transit spending to $1560, this will still save you about $562 per year! If anyone is paying for parking near work or near the train station they commute to work from, they can use up to $3000 of pre-tax dollars to pay for those parking expenses. So if you live in an area served by public transportation, there's now one more great reason to use it. Your colleagues who are looking for parking spaces will thank you, and the earth will as well. Won't you join Bob Devlin, Stephanie Grohowski, Lisa Britvan, Katie Brosnahan, Roseanne Silves, Christina Reidel, Dana Landesman and me at this event? It's a great, fun fundraising event for a good cause. You can come for the bowling, or come for the camaraderie (you don't have to bowl at all to have a good time - plenty of NYSUT members and their families come just to hang out). You can come for the cash bar, or the raffle prizes. You can come for Project Share. We're bowling at 5:00 and 6:00 on Lane 12 at Spins Bowl. Join us, even if only for a short time.  On Thursday, November 14 there will be a NYSUT Bowling Extravaganza, which will raise funds for Project Share: A Thanksgiving Dinner for the Homeless.
Won't you join us at Spins Bowl in Mount Kisco? We'll be bowling for a good cause with our brothers and sisters from teachers unions all over Westchester, Rockland, and Putnam Counties. It'll be a terrific event. Please let me know that you'll be on the BTA bowling team - you don't have to know how to bowl to come and have a good time for a good cause. http://www.salon.com/2013/11/07/we_need_a_war_on_poverty_not_teachers/
It's a short read. Here's one quote: "In short, if we were serious about education, then our education discussion wouldn’t be focused on demonizing teachers and coming up with radical schemes to undermine traditional public schools. It would instead be focused on mounting a new war on poverty and thus directly addressing the biggest education problem of all." Gillian Garzia will be representing the BTA Tuesday afternoon as part of a NYSUT focus group on APPR. Thanks, Gillian, for volunteering to speak for us.
This came my way from Eileen Mahoney. You might enjoy listening to this student address his Knox County, Tennessee school board.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PprP5TCZBRI&sns=em Executive Council meets today in the Board Room at 3ish.
All members of the BTA are welcome to attend Executive Council meetings. On Wednesday, November 20 at 3:00, we are scheduled for a BTA general membership meeting.
Instead of meeting in the cafeteria, we'll meet in each school with our BTA school liaisons. Be ready with questions and concerns for Patrick, Maryellen, and Joyce. |
