With the start of the 2019 Connecticut General Assembly session just days away, CEA is working closely with newly elected and appointed officials on legislation critical to you and your profession.
Ensuring classroom safety, protecting teacher pensions, and strengthening public school funding are some of the top issues on our agenda. Our success, however, depends on strong involvement from members like you.
Watch your inbox for CEA Action Alerts on teacher pensions, classroom safety, and other key issues. Action Alerts will give you the status of a certain legislative proposal and let you know what you can do to help defeat it or move it forward. Actions that teachers can take include emailing their legislators, making phone calls, or attending teacher-legislator get-togethers organized by CEA and local associations.
Bloomfield teachers recently met at one of the district’s schools with Senators Beth Bye and Doug McCrory, as well as Representative Bobby Gibson.
Teachers shared their concerns over aggressive student behavior in the classroom, giving eloquent and moving descriptions of how some students are significantly interfering with the learning environment in their classrooms and triggering trauma in the rest of the students. Many described physical injuries they have suffered as well as roadblocks to getting the appropriate resources and mental health support for students.
“The legislators expressed shock over the level of aggression and disruption being described by these teachers and admitted that they were moved by their stories,” says CEA’s Robyn Kaplan-Cho, who organized the get-together. “It’s clear that these in-school meetings with legislators can be an effective way of having our members’ voices heard, especially given their reticence to speak out publicly about issues such as violent students.”
To arrange for a teacher-legislator get-together about key issues in your school, contact your local association president and CEA’s Chris Donovan or Robyn Kaplan-Cho.
