Issue link: http://educator.cta.org/i/1541528
Burbank Teachers Association (BTA) has been trying to help the school district win a local funding source since shortly after Prop. 55 passed in 2016 to help address increasing needs. "My class sizes have never been larger, and they keep growing," says Weiner, a high school teacher. "It's not sustainable to be able to provide the level of edu- cation I know my students deserve with this number of students in my classroom." According to Celia Greene, third grade teacher and BTA internal organizing chair, recruitment and retention of educators is already difficult. " You lose institutional knowledge and you're constantly training new people and starting over," Greene says. Without an extension of Prop. 55, Burbank Unified would lose $21.7 million in funding — a stag- gering amount that Weiner says would mean layoffs and the end of so many programs, including all the district 's CTE and arts programs, student mental health services, counseling, and college and career readiness resources. " There is no fat to cut at my school at all. We don't have arts teachers at the elementary level — we don't even have arts supplies, I buy my own watercolor paper and markers," says Greene. " The things that would be cut would not be supplementary. Those are gone. In our bargain, we squabble over a few hundred thousand dollars; $21 million is unfathomable." As they explored a potential parcel tax campaign, BTA sent a team to the NEA Skills to Win training earlier this year, learning skills and techniques to increase member engagement and build structures to increase the capacity of their site representatives and make them a meaningful part of the union's governance. When they held their first structure test in the spring, BTA had a baseline participation of 300 out of 720 members. Greene says they built out their structures to track membership engagement, including exactly how and where people got involved, and asked their members to sign a commitment card. " The structures existed — we had site reps — but we streamlined and decen- tralized our communication and added more supports at every level," Greene says. "We started giving the reps sig- nificantly more support in their roles, including meetings, lists, talking points and tools. We shadowed them and we modeled conversations. We gave them training in 1-on-1's with the ultimate goal of building member engagement and it worked — (from April to the start of this school year) we went from just over 300 active members to 470!" Greene adds that the structures can be easily repli- cated to be a test of rep capacity. Externally, BTA is meeting with the community at large, holding a parent roundtable, building relation- ships with families. The time and effort invested into organizing is working, exceeding BTA's expectations as the fight continues for the schools Burbank stu- dents deserve and to permanently extend Prop. 55. "I was surprised to see how hungry people were to participate and take action," Greene says. " They were waiting for someone to give them an oppor- tunity to do something — and the fight for funding gave them that." BURBANK: Site Structures That Build Power Burbank Teachers Association members are building internal structures and external partnerships, and joining forces with other unions, to win more resources for Burbank students. 24 cta.org Greene Feature