Month: July 2018
One and Done
Chancellor at Rutgers’s flagship campus resigns after a year, an unusually short tenure at a university already juggling its share of changes.
Rick Seltzer, InsideHigherEd
[…]Faculty members found themselves surprised by the way Dutta’s resignation was announced. The chancellor sent out a resignation email that arrived about 40 minutes before professors received an email from Barchi about the chancellor change, said David M.…
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Supreme Court rules Kean must disclose meeting minutes ‘promptly’
Thomas Infante, Union County Local Source
James Castiglione, a Kean physics professor who heads the Kean Federation of Teachers, is satisfied that the ruling will strengthen sunshine laws in place to hold public institutions accountable.
“More open transparency will always help serve the public,” Castiglione said in a July 9 telephone interview. “The ruling will help push public institutions to fulfill a broader service to the public in general by releasing minutes more promptly.”…
Zahra Bukhari Awarded Yovnello Scholarship
As a Muslim-American woman of mixed ethnicity, Rutgers student Zahra Bukhari said she has always been categorized as the “other” and embraced activism by bringing people together through art. For her social justice work, Bukhari has been named the “Nick Yovnello Social Justice Scholarship” winner by the American Federation of Teachers New Jersey, according to political education chair Kay Schechter.…
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New Jersey will move away from PARCC testing, but the transition could take years
Dustin Racioppi and Hannan Adely, NorthJersey
New Jersey will begin moving away from the controversial PARCC exams and move toward a “new generation” of statewide testing, Gov. Phil Murphy said Tuesday.
[…]Robert Barbier, a high school English teacher in Garfield, said he believes the proposed changes in testing would have a big impact in the classroom.…
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Press: AFT New Jersey on moving away from high-stakes testing
Contact: Nat Bender, 908-377-0393, nbender [at] aftnj.org
AFT New Jersey President Donna M. Chiera said, “Today, Governor Murphy took the first step in returning students to classrooms where the focus is on teaching—not just testing. These proposals will allow students to be engaged in a rich, rigorous, broad curriculum rather than one narrowed down to where attention is only focused on tested subjects.…
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Gutierrez: ‘Working men and women need a unified voice’
The following letter appeared in the Star-Ledger.
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Tell the World Why You Are Sticking To The Union.
To write a letter to the Star-Ledger editor, See Guidelines here |
The Supreme Court’s Janus v. AFSCME decision last week strikes a blow against the unions that fight for members’ hard-earned benefits. More importantly, lower wages and lessened benefits create even more uncertainty to workers without the security of a union and collective bargaining.…
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Advocating to Keep Families Together
Union members across the nation joined many of the more than 750 demonstrations against the Trump administration’s family separation policy on June 30. United Adjunct Faculty of New Jersey – Mercer Chapter President Leonard Winogora, spoke out against the injustice at an 800-person rally in Princeton.
Winogora, a philosophy professor at Mercer County Community College, decried the forced separations and read excerpts from the complaint delivered by AFT to the United Nations against this “cruel and immoral” action.…
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Report a Union Buster #IAmAFT
If you hear anything about strange home-visits or members being encouraged to drop out of the union, share what you’ve heard so we can spread the word.
The same billionaires who funded the Janus case are trying another approach to weaken us. They just don’t want us to be able to stand up for ourselves, our schools and our neighborhoods.…
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