It's been a long hard road

Hi, miss me? Yeah, I know it's been a while but I just didn't have the drive to write. The unfortunate thing is that there is a ton of stuff to talk about so this will be a long entry. Maybe then I can try to keep up and post more often. You could read this in shifts if it gets a bit long or you can just join me on the long hard road.

California
My last post had us planning our trip to see Aunt Debbie and the boys and Aunt Ellen and Emily Jane. Mary and I traveled together and Nora came on a later flight. Mary wore her face mask to minimize germ contact in the plane. She said that it was like parting the Red Sea. She could have had any seat she wanted. Little did the other passengers know that it was for her protection and not theirs. We pretty much headed straight out to Mendocino. Mary, Debbie and I in one car and the kids in another. There was a time that the thought of Nora and the Boys driving to Mendo together would have sent me over the edge. But fortunately, they are all pretty responsible drivers and we are all better off for it. I think Austin was the primary driver and he is very cautious. Because he has been all over California in search of the perfect bike/skate park, his navigational skills are pretty good.
We stayed at our usual place, The MacCallum House. We have been going there since the kids were about three. They think of it as a second home and often talk about buying property there and continuing to meet there as adults. We did all of the usual things. I biked with the boys. Fell on the trail and may have cracked a rib. It is healed now. We played by the tide pools, poked sea annenomie and picked up starfish and urchins. We ate breakfast in the inn and dinners in Fort Bragg. Mary and Debbie shopped and each of the kids got some special shopping time with his or her mom. Mary and I found some wedding rings in the Old Gold store that we may buy to celebrate our upcoming 25Th anniversary. It's so peaceful and calm there. Our only disappointment may have been that one of our favorite stores, Sticks closed and the proprietor moved to Oregon.
When we got back to Aunt Debbie's we had a fabulous dinner at Bing's Supper Club with Nora and Hubbell, ran some crazy errands, went to Costco and had a nice party for Ellen and Emily and then it was time to go. I was to start school with negotiations on the following Monday and Mary was to have her last chemo treatment.
Our trip to California was a lot of fun. It went very quickly and it was great to have all the kids together again. We have to count those blessings.

Chemo Mary had her last chemo on the 13th or August. Her white count was a little low so Dr. Robin gave her a half-dose. I'm not exactly sure why, but this dose really kicked butt. We're thinking it was a cumulative effect of all of the treatments. One might like to look at it as six separate doses, but I think they built upon each other making the last a whopper. The rest of August and September were difficult months for Mary. It was obvious that the treatments were having an effect on her energy, but not on her positive outlook. People who saw her could not readily see her struggle. In fact, she hid it so well, Nora and I were guilty of being impatient and insensitive at times because we couldn't always tell how she was feeling. In September Mary went to the doctor expecting great news but was greeted with a reduced white blood cell count. It was the first time her disappointment was evident. She went back two weeks later with a slightly higher count and a good old cold. She got a prescription to help fight off any possible infection, but I think her immune system was getting stronger as she was able to fight off the cold in less than a week. The good news came just this week when she found that her white blood cell count had tripled. She's good to go. No appointments for two months. A special thanks goes out to Candice and to Penny and Aunt Carole for taking Mary to some of these appointments. Because of negotiations and the fall play, I was unable to go. I can't thank them enough. It is cool though that two of Mary's best friends and my sister were able to assist her in her healing process.
By the way, good to go partially refers to Mary and Aunt Debbie going to Pennsylvania to see Grandma Bette next week. They are set to rendezvous in Pittsburgh and then drive up to DuBois. That should be fun...no, I mean it.

Tonsils When we got back from California, Nora had a week to see her friends off to college and to prepare to have surgery. Last year, Nora had several bouts with strep and numerous other throat infections. We took her to a specialist who recommended a tonsillectomy. Essentially, he said that the antibiotics would stop working and then her throat infections could develop into something more serious. So, we all decided to go for it and on August 21st I went to the surgicenter in Munster for the operation. All I can say is that the operation was the easy part. The doctor warned us that adults take about ten full days to recover and that it did. We had a very uncomfortable kid in our house, but she made it through with enough time to pack and get ready to head off for her sophomore year at Augustana.
Sending a sophomore off to college is a lot less stressful than sending a freshman. First of all, Nora packed her car with a lot of her stuff and took off a day early with her roommate Elsa. Mary and I packed the van with her futon and some other larger items and headed down the next day. When we got to her new digs, The House on the Hill, most of her belongings were nestled there on the third floor. Some of it was unpacked. We only had about four or five trips up from the van. We set up the futons and the beds, helped to rearrange the room and then went to dinner with Elsa and her mom, made a trip to Target and got the hell out of there. No, not really. By the time we left Mary and I were very happy with their room and we felt very positive about the whole situation.

Negotiations I have been on the negotiations team for our Faculty Association for two years. Our contract was actually up in 2005, but we took a pay freeze and rolled it over for a year to allow time to negotiate a new contract. Well, the next year we tried to move the process along, but were met with total disrespect and we found ourselves in a completely concessionary bargaining situation. That is not the typical position for union bargaining. Historically, unions have been the ones who have demanded increases in pay, benefits, provisions and working conditions. When we entered this process, we found that the district was not the least interested in giving anything. They only interested in taking away. Fortunately for us, our contract was strong and financially very healthy. Our strategy was to make some concessions to show good faith bargaining, but also to strengthen some language, get a little raise and pretty much keep our benefits intact. We were always prepared at the table. They were not. They were consistently late and unprepared. When we finally demanded some kind of counter proposal, what we received was devastating. They offered no money. They wanted us to pay half of our premium for insurance which was up from our current seven percent contribution. They were looking to increase class size. They were demanding unpaid professional development hours outside of the school day. They wanted total freedom to move teachers from building to building. They wanted to be able to use any anecdotal information in a teacher's evaluation which could include phone calls, casual observations, notes from kids, etc. They wanted no early retirement option, no paid retirement insurance and no retirement incentives. I could go on and on, but that pretty much explains the tone of their proposals. In addition, our bargaining sessions like the one that caused me to miss one of Mary's appointments had us sit for four hours waiting for a response to our proposal with no contact other than through the Federal Mediator.
Meanwhile, the faculty had done informational picketing before and after school, wore black on Fridays and stormed school board meetings. There was talk of striking among some faculty but that was consistently stifled because any job action would have negated our current contract and we would have had to start from scratch. Also, the district would have locked us out and saved about $160,000.00 a day and would have not let us back in until they had saved a significant amount of money (millions) and we came back begging. No freakin' way was that going to happen. Well, things really started to happen after the September board meeting which was partially delayed when the fire Marshall was called and had to empty and rearrange the room in order to meet fire code. That meeting was electric and filled with teachers, students and parents who wanted to be heard not only for contractual issues, but for curricular and systemic concerns as well. We put a comprehensive proposal together shortly thereafter. We dared not call it our final offer, but rather a kind of "take it or leave it" package. Once they received the package, we met and set October 1st as a date to try to get this thing wrapped up. Naively, we thought it would be an I dotting and a T crossing session. It was way more than that. We spent from 8:00 a.m. until 7:19 p.m. giving and taking, writing and rewriting and cursing and swearing until we came to a tentative agreement. There were so many documents to cover, it took over an hour for our Chief Negotiator, Ken Wendorff and their lawyer, Charlie Rose to sign the documents.
The process of ratification is laborious. First we had to present to our Executive Board. The unanimously recommended the contract to the Representative Council. Rep Council unanimously recommended the contract to the membership and then we had to present the contract to the membership. The membership has had three days to vote to ratify or to reject the contract. The vote to ratify need only be a simple majority...thank God. It appears that some people are not happy with the contract. They seem to be from one building and that is the building I am in right now.
There are some concessions we had to make which were very difficult. Some, like paying our own early retirement penalties were OK considering that the district wanted to offer no ERO.
The most difficult concession is allowing the district to get rid of all department chairs and to make one district-wide administrative chair for each department. Special Ed was the exception. Oh, and Media Services...I gave up my position as well. In exchange, we were able to retain two librarians in each of the schools. It looks like I will have to eventually bump back into the library. How that will happen is yet to be seen.
So here I sit in what will probably not be my office in a few months waiting for the school day to come to an end so we can count the ballots and find out if we have a new contract or not. I'm pretty positive about ratification, but the negativity in this building has me a little on edge.

The fall play So the auditorium at Thornridge burned last December and has yet to be fixed. The board just voted to start work in the next couple of weeks with a completion date in six to eight months. We didn't just want to skip the fall play, so we decided to do it in the courtyard and make a day of it. So tomorrow, we will present Deja Vu, an original play with music. Yvonne Nesbitt's speech II class wrote the play and some of the music. It should be a very entertaining production. It all started with me presenting a play writing formula to the class and them taking off with the ideas they came up with. While they were writing, I was building a stage outside. I'll have to post some pictures of the play. It's pretty hard to describe. In addition to the play, we will have a rap group, several dance groups, a jazz combo and grunge band perform throughout the day. We also have a storytelling area for kids with games, face painting and dancing. The art club will be painting a mural which will be hung in the building next week. Some of the clubs are sponsoring food booths selling hot dogs, nachos, pop, chips and candy. We're starting the day at 10:00 a.m. and ending at 4:00 p.m. The weather forecast looks good. All in all it should be a very interesting alternative to a traditional fall play.

Speaking of plays, Aunt Carole came in for a week to see Wicked. Actually, there was more to it than that, but Wicked was the big event. We had a great time.

OK, that's it for now. I will fill you in on how things go with the contract and the play and just about everything else on a more regular basis. I promise...unless I get distracted.

Peace to you and to those you love.
Rob