The Illinois Education Association has 14 committees on which members, governance and staff work together to assess certain issues pertinent to the association and to public education. The committees come up with goals on things they’d like to see accomplished in these areas and then work together to accomplish those goals.
The committees give annual reports, either written or by live presentation, at the IEA-Representative Assembly held each March.
Cinda Klickna, IEA president, convened an all-committee weekend in September. Members of each committee met for the first time, set goals and started working toward them. Following is a summary of each committee’s plans:
Bylaws and Resolutions Committee – Chairperson Freddy Hatfill
The committee will address any new amendments submitted by Dec. 9, will review the resolutions handbook, will finalize local bylaw training for region chairs and will look at the region bylaws to determine anything new that needs to be created or anything that needs to be amended.
Combat Attacks on Public Education (CAPE) – Chairperson Kari Vanderjack
The committee updated the CAPE webpage on the IEA website and will continue to enhance it while working toward creating its own website; created a twitter account called @capecommittee that includes its own twitter-based “newspaper,” and will create talking points to combat the most common attacks on public education.
Compensation Strategies – Chairperson Kelly Sholtis
The joint governance and staff committee intends to look at the issues of performance pay, to reach out and analyze contracts and contract language; to look at teacher evaluations and student assessments and to review the legislative platform language in regard to compensation.
Early Career Teachers Committee – Chairperson Kristi Uzzo
Discussed the importance of educating new and younger members on why they need to get involved as 47 percent of members have 10 years or less of experience and the ways they might be able to get this message across. They will assess current documents, including the Experience Inventory, and presentations to determine what may be useful in this mission. And, they intend to talk to an early career teacher in each district to gather feedback.
Early Childhood – Chairperson Karla Konieczki
The joint governance and staff task force intends to look into and encourage our ECE membership into presenting at conferences and trainings. It also: Created a list of bargaining issues which are specific to birth to five programs to be shared with field services; sought out strategies to bring the voices of the ECE mebership to the forefront; and, discussed strategies to encourage the use of developmentally appropriate strategies for all membership serving birth through third grade.
Human & Civil Rights – Chairperson India Jones
The committee hopes to form subcommittees to help meet the charges it is tasked with, including enhancing the strength of the association and advocacy of the members in areas of civil rights equity, to review the NEA Bylaw 3-1(g) plan and to prepare for an October conference on 3-1(g); and to hold diversity training this spring. In addition, it plans to develop a 15-minute 3-1(g) training video to be viewed in each reason by January 2012.
Indoor Air Quality/Environmental Issues – Chairperson Sue Schoff
The joint governance and staff task force plans to increase awareness of what their work is, to present information at the ESP conference, to set up an information booth at the IEA-RA and to update the information about the committee on the website.
Leadership Training Institute – Chairperson Cindy Cassens-Mickle
The joint governance and staff task force discussed the 2011 CORE Conference being held this fall; reviewed the evaluations for the 2011 SLA for which many quality suggestions were submitted and ways to implement those suggestions were discussed; worked on planning future conferences. The task force also discussed using technology such as virtual binders for conference participants and adding new locations to the conference repertoire.
Legislative Committee – Chairperson Bob Blade
The committee discussed the region council meeting input, solicited committee chairs, discussed looking at social media and the protection of employees, looked at the how the legislative platform steers Government Relations and the importance of the platform and decided to look at current IEA documents to make sure they are in compliance with the legislative platform.
Living Wage – Chairperson Tina Pizzitola
The joint governance and staff task force looked at whether the living wage is still an issue and determined it is, and is even broader than in the past. They are working on a new definition for the term and will attend the ESP conference to discuss. They also intend to gather statewide data and to discuss social security and healthcare as well as to develop educational materials aimed at ESPs, teachers and the community.
NBI 16 Implementation Committee – Chairperson Celina Watts
The committee is charged with looking at the pension issue and ways the IEA can best protect its members’ interests. It is compiling a history of TRS and SURS. It plans to develop letters to the editor with three main points, including that teachers receive no social security and that for most TRS is their only source of retirement income. They are going to develop a power point to be shown at the CORE conference. And, they hope to develop more materials about pensions for the webpage.
Retirement Security – Chairperson Steve Young
The joint governance and staff task force has set a goal to “rock the world” with its work. They are developing ways to communicate with members how to plan for retirement before retirement sneaks up on them and they want to reach out to younger members about why they should care.
Scholarship – Chairperson John Phillips
The committee discussed the importance of completing the application process for scholarships in the correct manner and with correct information and brainstormed ways that they can guarantee more correct forms are submitted in the future. They are also considering the number of people who will receive them as the economy has affected scholarship funds. And, they are determining how they will calculate weighted grade point averages.
Special Education – Chairperson Kara Clark
The group met with Beth Hanselman, the assistant superintendent, who updated the group on new rules and regulations that will be coming out and answered questions about RtI ESL language. It is working to discover and implement ways to increase collaboration between general and special educators. It will monitor ISBE’s actions regarding class size and other issues and will continue to make recommendations for changes in the IEA resolutions and legislative platform on the issue of inclusion.
Committees are scheduled to meet again in the next two to three months.
Illinois Education Association is an association of more than 130,000 members composed of Illinois elementary and secondary teachers, higher education faculty and staff, educational support professionals, retired educators and college students preparing to become teachers.