Rock Stars!

Here are my little rock stars at Best Buy on Black Friday!

Fo-Hawk

This past weekend we headed down to Sea World to use our passes one more time before they expire!  We had a ton of fun! We left late morning so the kids would hopefully sleep in the car a bit.  We wanted to stay late this time so we could see the night-time show "Shamu Rocks", which was really good!  Connor insisted that morning on styling his hair in a faux hawk!  So funny!

You know you are a Twilight fan when...

You know you are a Twilight fan when ...

Your heart leaps when you see a silver Volvo drive by.

You drink cranberry juice...just to pretend.

You doodle his name.

You hunt mountain lion.

You compare every guy to Edward.

You pretend to read minds.

You run really fast (or at least try to).

You love meadows.

You suspect others of being vampires.

You think that pale-white is the new tan.

You think the Cullens are the new Brady Bunch.

StephanieMeyers.com is your homepage.

You quote the book in every day conversation.

You fantasize about fangs.

You spend rainy days pretending you are in Forks.

You will name your first born after a character form the books.

You put on white make-up and hiss at strangers in public.

You downloaded "Clair de Lune".

You interrogate pale people.

You friended Edward Cullen on facebook.

You cusually migrate away from redheads in crowds.

You are afraid of dance studios.

You think being accident prone in now "in".

You have the countdown to the movie on your blog.

You have already purchased your tickets.

Settlement

After yet another day of mediations, the district and our union have finally reached an agreement!!!  I am not happy.  At all.  But, if this is the best deal we are going to get, I trust that our union contract negotiators have done all they can.  If they are for it, then I know we can't get more than this.

Some lowlights of the settlement are:

• A 1.4% raise for the current school year.  We will not be getting a raise for last year in which we had no contract.  This contract is through August of 2010, for some reason, and offers no raise for the next year.  This also means no retroactive paycheck for last year (which I was really hoping to use for Christmas shopping!).
• The district had proposed putting a cap on the amount that they would pay for our health care plans.  This would cause a family of 3 or more to pay an additional $300 (approx.) out of pocket.  Instead of paying an additional $300 a month extra out-of-pocket for our health care plan, we are incurring higher co-pays, prescription costs, and deductibles (while the district pays the insurance companies less).
• Full day Kinder was not pushed through, but the district is forming a committee to look into doing this in the future.
• Coaching stipends were increased by 10%

All in all it is good because we can stop the madness, but I am not happy about what we are getting.  I should add that I am so glad that my prayers were answered and we did not end up striking (assuming the teachers vote to ratify this agreement).   Did the march work?  Maybe we will never know.  

P.S. Trebs-you were right!  Good things come in 3's!  Here's our 3rd!

Front page

Look!  Our march made the front page!

March

Tonight myself and 609 fellow employees and families had a march on our district office.  It was awesome!  It felt so great to be out there doing something a bit more tangible than wearing red every Tuesday.  (I can't complain red is my "signature color")  

I wrangled up Dan and the kids, and some hats, mittens, jackets, a

nd umbrellas, and we hit the streets of Covina!  We had a great time hanging out with the other people from my school.  All of the kids know each other from pre-school/day care, so they all had fun running around and playing together.  

We started out at a park about a quarter mile away from the district office.  We assembled there and collected our glow sticks, kazoos, and signs.  We then marched to the district office where the board was having their monthly meeting.  They did have the door propped open so hopefully they heard our chants: 

"2-4-6-8 settle now it's not too late!" and 

"What do we want? A contract! When do we want it? Now!"

It was great to be part of something like this, 

especially right before the national election!  Get's ya all riled up for it!  

*In case you have not heard the scoop on our district's woe's, here is the abbreviated version: The teachers in my district are without a contract.  We have not settled our contract from LAST YEAR. SO, we have been without a contract for over 14 months now.  The district is offering us nothing.  They are not agreeing to ANY of the union's proposals.  They will not even give us our Cost Of Living Allowance (COLA) which has already been funded by the state.  They are also wanting to put a cap on our health care costs so that I would end up having to suddenly pay thousands of dollars out of pocket for our health care plan.  Etc., etc., etc.

So far, we have been wearing red on Tuesdays, a button every day, and have passed out flyers to parents at back to school night and football games.  Finally I feel like we are doing something real.  

I pray it does not come to a strike.