ROEA REPORTER
September 18, 2000

Dear ROEA members,

Our recently ratified contract is an excellent one due to the quantity and quality of membership participation. About half of our members participated in the initial survey and almost 400 voted. Many people are due our thanks for the specialized work that they did in our behalf. Here is a listing of those individuals and the jobs they performed.

 

The survey was developed by Maureen Altermatt, Cheryl Goodgine, and Connie Gill. In addition to developing the survey, they tabulated the survey results.

 

Our health care advisory committee was instrumental in helping us to understand the costs of various MESSA benefits and in developing a priority list of benefit programs. The members of the health care committee are Stuart Asch, Marilyn Droz, Kate Rybicki, and Ken Weiss. Bill Vandagriff and Jill Eichenberg crunched numbers for us. They prepared a spreadsheet that enabled us to easily establish the total costs of various salary proposals. They also provided county comparables for coaching supplementals.

 

Our bargaining team was a responsible and hard working team that devoted many hours to negotiations. In addition to bargaining with the administration in direct negotiations, the team met on several occasions to develop our bargaining strategies. Our bargaining team members are Stuart Asch, Vince Caruso, Linda Flynn, Barbara Pollis, and Tom Steeby. Kim Pino, our Uniserv Director, was responsible for coordinating and presenting our concerns to administration, and writing the language that represents and protects our concerns. 

 

Our Association Representatives did a great job getting out the vote. They then turned the ballots over to our Elections Committee Chairperson, Bill Spurgeon. Bill received capable assistance in accurately counting the ballots from Steve Lawson and Nada Northey.

Our Executive Board members are Maureen Altermatt, Bertha Arribas, Stuart Asch, Dave Copp, Linda Flynn, Cheryl Goodgine, Barbara Pollis, Marcia Rauschendorfer, Marty Sauer, Monty Weathers, Jacqui Williams, Nila Wilson, and myself. We appointed the bargaining team and deliberated the good and bad points of the contract prior to recommending it to the membership for ratification.

Finally, I want to acknowledge the importance of controversy and open debate. The role played by our younger teachers in fostering debate was a critical one. It forced the entire membership to evaluate what they considered to be fair and right for our union. I applaud our newer teachers in persevering for a fair contract for everyone. Such an articulate, strong group of newer members bodes well for our future.

 My commendations to all for a job well done.

Sincerely,
Sid
Sidney Kardon, President
Royal Oak Education Association