President Kim Kohlhaas has sent letters to the state legislative committees considering legislation that would prevent transgender students from fully participating in sports aligned with their identity: "These bills won’t make sports safer or fairer for any student—they would only stigmatize and exclude a group of students who already face high levels of discrimination... Wisconsin’s teachers, faculty, and staff oppose any bill that hurts transgender youth from passing out of the legislature." You can read the (identical) letters in full here:

Join us in asking the Senate to amend the budget and increase pay raises for teachers and school employees.

AFT-NH is proud to award two $1,000 scholarships for the 2021-22 academic year. The Cascio scholarship will be offered to one graduating senior who has been accepted at an institution of higher learning, while the Donovan scholarship will go to one continuing student at an accredited institution of higher learning for the 2021-2022 academic year.  Prior scholarship winners are ineligible. 

Just a few quick items that came up this morning.  We will still be releasing our normal weekly update on Friday

REC Recognizes Additional Money

On Tuesday, the Revenue Estimating Conference met to consider economic projections from economist who determined that the state has more money than previously thought. They increased their revenue projections for both this year and next by hundreds of millions of dollars.

Lawmakers will now have $357 million more to spend in the current fiscal year and $320 million more to spend next year. LFT is pushing legislators to use some of this additional money to fund further increases for teachers and school employees. We can and should match the pay increase seen in 2019 ($1000 for teachers and $500 for school employees), if not exceed it.

Teacher Safety in Classroom Discipline

House Bill 411 by Representative Hughes seeks to revamp school discipline procedures. While we can all support sensible, transparent and progressive discipline practices, we need to take measures to ensure that teachers and school employees are safe through that process. As currently written, this bill could take away the provision that insists that if a student is removed from the classroom three times then a parent conference be required before the student returns.

Fellow union members at Seattle Colleges Local 1789 will present this pledge  early next week to urge the Amer

Click here for this week's issue

In This Update!

1) Try Something New!

2) ILP Update

3) Evaluation Update

4) Non-tenured Notice

And More!