Please fill out our RTA Reopening Survey and mark your calendars for our RTA zoom meeting to plan our “Crisis Action Teams” about returning to school on Tuesday, July 28, 4:00-5:30. Invite to come.

Many of us are participating in the six district committees for reopening schools, developing the plans to be submitted to DESE.  This is important work and we should try to influence the district’s process and plans to the greatest degree possible.  But these are employer committees. We need to be clear that just because union officers and members are on those committees does not imply union endorsement of the committees’ processes or final plans. Most importantly, the RTA is reserving its rights (and will exercise its rights) to negotiate over all the reopening plans.

Stress levels are understandably extremely high.  RTA officers and some members have been attending ongoing meetings with union presidents from all over the state to coordinate reopening plans, obtain health and safety guidance for bargaining proposals and caucus regarding the state level bargaining with DESE.  In the next couple of weeks, our union, both state and local, will be trying to answer the questions “What does safe look like?  How will we know it is safe?  When will it be safe?”  Members will ultimately decide the answers to these questions with our organizing throughout the bargaining process, such as working on RTA committees, drafting bargaining proposals, caucusing during bargaining, and more.

[wonderplugin_pdf src=”https://www.revereteachers.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Proposals-for-DESE-Negotiations-07-09-20-Draft.pdf” width=”100%” height=”600px” style=”border:0;”]

If the viewer fails to load, you can access the pdf here:
https://www.revereteachers.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Proposals-for-DESE-Negotiations-07-09-20-Draft.pdf

The Revere Teachers Association is deeply saddened and angered by the recent murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and Tony McDade, as well as the countless other Black and brown lives taken as a result of the ever-apparent racism that saturates our society. As educators it is our duty to stand in solidarity with and in support of Revere’s Black community, teachers, students, and their families. Black people and people of color across the country continue to suffer severe trauma, pain, and anguish at the hands of the very systems that are alleged to protect them.

The RTA plans to do the necessary work to better understand the deep racial history and trauma caused by the design of systems in this country through the lenses of white privilege. We strive to achieve racial justice for Black members of our student body, staff, and community. This will include working alongside one another with ongoing sustained conversations and actions that need the support of every stakeholder.

We recognize we are all in different places in our anti-racist work, and this will be a life-long journey for all of us. As educators we regularly reflect on our educational practices, but today we are self-reflecting as human beings. This is not an easy or comfortable task, but one we must commit to in order to move forward as individuals, as educators, and together as a Union.

We applaud the strong voices of our students, the youth of Revere, who have made a bold statement about the inequities they suffer and who have made powerful requests of Revere community leaders for immediate and critical change. We are encouraged that the City of Revere has also committed to building an intentionally anti-racist community. We look forward to being partners in this work.

We recognize the urgent and ever-present need for action and implementation of active anti-racist practices in our own lives, in our schools, and across the community. Together we must commit to the life-long battle to dismantle systemic racism, address prejudices that exist in ourselves and in our communities, and tear down structures that allow for racism to persist in our society.

 “And so, we say: Black Lives Matter… because All Lives have not Mattered. Racism takes black and brown lives. Explicit racism foments hate and aggression. But implicit bias grows unreasonable fear and suspicion, moving people to act unreasonably on their fear and suspicion. We must do better.” 

-National Education Association

Black lives matter.

In Solidarity,

The RTA Executive Board on behalf of the Revere Teachers Association