ASPIRA’s back in the Daily News, and it’s not a proud moment for Management. CEO Alfredo Calderon has decided to ignore community demands that ASPIRA respect its employees right to organize, and to instead cancel six hours of student instruction time, one full day of parent-teacher conferences and who knows how much in taxpayer dollars to run a campaign of intimidation and misinformation.
How’s that working for him? Here’s the lede:
EXAMS ARE around the corner for city students, and nearly every teacher is squeezing in as much instructional time as humanly possible.Not so much at Olney Charter High School, whose charter operator, ASPIRA Inc. of Pennsylvania, has pared back instruction and parent-teacher conferences so staff can attend mandatory meetings to hear what a union would mean for the North Philadelphia school.It’s unclear what the cost would be to taxpayers.Now is a good time to pause and remind you that you can still support our MoveOn petition to Calderon to “Support teachers’ right to organize a union without fear at ASPIRA Charters.” Click here.
The story continues:
Unidentified outside consultants will run the informational meetings - some union advocates describe them as an “anti-union” tactic - today, Wednesday and April 28. The aim is “to assist you in making an informed decision on this matter,” school board president Frederick Ramirez wrote in an email.
The meetings were announced Thursday afternoon and leave Olney students with six hours less instruction time at a critical juncture in the school year: Keystone and advanced-placement exams will be held in early May.“It’s obvious that the students’ best interest is not a priority for them [ASPIRA] in making this decision,” said music teacher Erina Pearlstein. “It’s straight-up unprofessional.”In addition, the school had scheduled three parent-teacher conference days this week beginning Wednesday, which has been turned into a meeting day for staff. Now parents who expected to meet teachers that day will have to arrange to go in Thursday or Friday, teachers said.Parent Jocabet Gutierrez, whose stepson Rodinso is in ninth grade, said the administration’s decision is wrongheaded.“Before doing anything, they should think about the damage that they are doing to everyone else,” Gutierrez said in Spanish.Olney does have a longer school day and a longer year than required by the Pennsylvania Department of Education, according to ASPIRA chief operating officer Thomas Darden. But algebra teacher Chris Bishop argued that “to take this time right now is especially inopportune and irresponsible.”
Darden told the Daily News in an email yesterday: “We would have obviuosly [sic] preferred to aviod [sic] disruptions to instructional time but, as required by the NLRB [National Labor Relations Board] process, the only time these informational meetings could be scheduled was during work hours.”The NLRB rules don’t say that, said one labor expert. Other options include holding meetings after school and paying staff to attend.The meetings could have been made voluntary, “just like it’s voluntary for employees to go to a meeting of union organizers,” said Paul Clark, director of the School of Labor and Employment Relations at Penn State University.
Clark said the purpose of these gatherings - also known as “captive-audience” meetings - is to persuade employees not to join the union.
Such meetings are common “in the business world, where employers take a very aggressive stance in terms of fighting unions,” he said.
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Not cool with my #philly tax dollars.
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