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ActionLine NEAInnovative K-16 Union EffortUp With Achievement is an NEA-supported pilot project of the United Faculty of Florida and the Pinellas Classroom Teachers Association. NEA members, in partnership with the local school district and community, are aiming to improve the likelihood that minority students will succeed in postsecondary education. The project, geared to improving the achievement of all students and reducing the current achievement gap between majority and minority students, was launched last summer at a community-wide, two-day conference of 1,200 K-16 educators, parents, and community activists. Since the conference, a community-wide reading tutoring program has been started, involving several hundred community people and UFF members, who are tutoring students and their parents in reading. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has overturned the firings of 125 University of the District of Columbia faculty members in a case brought by NEA's legal action arm. The appeals court upheld an earlier district court ruling that the university and the federally appointed D.C. Financial Control Board had no right to ignore provisions of the faculty collective bargaining agreement during a financial crisis in 1997. At that time, the financial control board gave UDC the go ahead to ignore seniority provisions in the faculty contract when it laid off almost one-third of the full-time faculty. The university also ignored a provision that required a year's notice, or a year's severance pay, for those laid off and cut back on faculty pension contributions. The 1999 NEA Higher Education Almanac will be posted on the NEA Higher Ed Web site in March. This year's topics include: faculty workload in an era of performance measures, worklife issues of higher education support personnel, and a look at the fiscal prospects for higher education in 1999, along with full-time salary data from higher education institutions across the nation. All of this will be fully downloadable from the Web. If you wish a printed copy of the 1999 NEA Higher Education Almanac, contact the NEA Higher Education Office at 1201 Sixteenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. or phone 202-822-7162. The deadline for submissions to the 1999 NEA Excellence in the Academy Awards is September 30, 1999. Categories are: The Art of Teaching, Democracy in Higher Education, New Unionism in the Academy, and the New Scholar Prize. For detailed guidelines email: CLehane@nea.org or visit the NEA Higher Education Web site: www.nea.org/he. |
