Greetings NEA-Jurupa Family,
Friday is almost over!!! Don’t forget to practice the 3 R’s over the weekend: RELAX, REFRESH, AND RECHARGE. Again, thank you to all of you for all that you do on behalf your colleagues, students, and the community at-large each and every day. I don’t think AWESOME is a word that does you justice, you are all so much more than that.
The JUSD School Board Special Study Session ended after 4 hours. Many of you expressed your frustrations that the meeting took place during the instructional day to me and to the board through Public Verbal Comments. Although the Association has no input on when the meetings take place, I too let the district know that it was not acceptable. For those of you who were not able to submit comments, several board members did continue to encourage that you reach out to them.
Here’s a short recap of what took place:
• Several public verbal comments were submitted, the majority encouraged the school board to take a slow and cautious approach to any type of in-person return to schools.
• All Cabinet Members presented information on issues that would need to be addressed in order to safely reopen schools including: County Status and Public Health Guidelines (Mr. Duchon), Education Services (Mr. Doubravsky), Health, Safety, and Trainings (Dr. Hansen), Fiscal and Operations (Mrs. Ford), Negotiations (Mr. Brooks), and Next Steps (Mr. Duchon). I have attached the Google Slides presentation for your reference.
• The School Board asked a myriad of questions on each topic, specifically related to the many complexities, logistical issues, negotiations impact, and health and safety requirements that would need to be discussed/met based on the scenarios presented.
• There were no action items on the agenda and the district made no recommendations as to next steps, other than to create a timeline of sorts.
• My overall impressions were that the Board is going to stick to their priorities of Health and Safety for all and that they didn’t appear to be in any rush to return to in-person instruction. Even if they bring something to a vote at their next meeting or two, there are still a lot of things that would need to be put into place including negotiations with both NEA-Jurupa and CSEA Jurupa.
The Board adjourned the Open Session and moved into Closed Session. If you would like to watch the Open Session, here is the YouTube link. The next regularly scheduled meeting will take place on Monday, October 19th, then again on November 2nd.
I’m looking forward to watching the LAKERS win their 17th NBA World Championship tonight (hope this isn’t too controversial), getting in some Netflix, relishing in the cooler weather, and taking nap or two! Whatever you decide to do, please enjoy!!!
Best to all of you and your loved ones.
In Unity-
Wendy Eccles 🙂
NEA-Jurupa President
Office Phone: 951-681-7997, Google Voice: 951-643-4076
Non-district email: president@neaj.org
Website: www.neaj.org
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