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San Mateo Federation of Teachers Local 4681 of California Federation of Teachers Representing the Teachers of San Mateo Adult School July 14, 2018 Re:  AB 2098 (McCarty and Thurmond) - Support Dear Assembly Members McCarty and Thurmond, We the teachers of CFT Local 4681 are writing to thank you for authoring  AB 2098 - the bill that establishes immigrant integration metrics. We are very much in support of it. We are teachers at San Mateo Adult School .  Most of us teach English as a Second Language.   Others teach in the GED and High School Diploma, Career Tech Education, or Fifty Plus (Older Adults) programs. Our school is part of ACCEL, the Regional Consortium providing Adult Education for the County of San Mateo. A few facts about the area we serve: As of 2010, San Mateo County ranked fourth among counties in California and eight across the nation in the concentration of foreign-born residents. Between 2000 and 2010 San Mateo County’s immigrant population incre...

San Mateo Adult School Federation of Teachers 789 E. Poplar Ave. San Mateo, CA 94401 Anthony Rendon, Speaker of the Assembly Attention:  Rick Simpson State Capitol Room 219 Sacramento, CA 95814  May 21, 2016 Dear Speaker Rendon: We are writing to urge you to increase adult education funding from $500 million to $750 million in this year’s budget. California adult schools received $754 million in funding in 2007. Our budgets were cut drastically during the recession, and adult schools are the only public education system whose funding has not been restored. Also during the recession, school districts were allowed to take money from adult schools. Many districts closed their adult schools outright, while others cut adult school budgets by 50%, 75%, 95%. Oakland adult school, for example, had 25,000 students before the recession and now has less than 1,200. Even before the recession, adult schools were the most efficient public education system in the state. We educated 1.2 mil...

In mid January, CFT Local 4681 of San Mateo Adult School wrote and passed a resolution about Adult Education.  You can the Local 4681 resolution in full here .   Local 4681 then took their resolution, titled, "Resolution to Ensure that Adult Education Exists in Best and Fullest Capacity" to the CFT Adult Education Commission on January 23rd.   The Adult Education Commission considered it, made some alterations to it - primarily shortening it - kept the same title, and then passed it. CFT Adult Education Commission members at their January 23rd, 2016 meeting. Chair Jack Carroll is in the center bac.  Lily Adlawan, center front, is the Local 4681 member who brought the resolution to the meeting. Kathy Jasper, in the red Adult Education Matters t-shirt, is an AEC member and also a CFT Vice President in the CFT State Executive Council. Both resolutions - different with the same name and the same intention - were submitted to the CFT 2016 State Convention ...

CFT's Adult Education Commission met on January 23rd, 2016.  One of the topics for discussion was credentialing.  With the new Regional Consortia system, which entails Adult Schools and Community Colleges working together to provide Adult Education, there is a need for clarity and streamlining where credentialing is concerned.   Click the "read more" link to learn more. Shari Deghi, Coordinator of the new La Costa Adult School, details why she is concerned about this issue: "I am happy the Adult Education Commission is shining a light on credentialing and I would like to add a major concern. The Adult Ed requirements for teachers are archaic, out of step with other post-secondary institutions and significantly hamper our ability to hire teachers and serve students. I am an administrator of La Costa Adult School on the San Mateo coast. I recently recruited a teacher with an MATESOL (Masters in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) who could not teach ESL in...

CFT Local 4681, out of San Mateo Adult School , passed the following resolution: Resolution to Ensure that Adult Education  Exists in Best and Fullest Capacity Whereas education is a human right for people of all ages, and Whereas Adult Schools have been serving the people of California from every community, including those with the greatest needs and least resources, for over 150 years, and Whereas, during the last recession, Adult Education was the only branch of public education in California which was nearly eliminated through a combination of funding cuts and allowing districts to take any and all adult school funds for other purposes (Categorial Flexibility), and Whereas K-12 adult schools were saved only through the determined action of teachers, students, administrators, and their allies, and Click the "read more" link to learn more. Whereas it was only as a result of this activism that the state recognized the need to fund adult education, which Governor Brown and th...

George Porter, a fourteen year veteran teacher of Older Adults classes at Berkeley Adult School, two term chair of the City of Berkeley's Aging Commission, and member of CCAE (California Council of Adult Education) and CFT (California Federation of Teachers), wrote this perspective piece in response to the news about Acalanes Adult School's survival and their Older Adult program.  ( You can read the news report here .) A PERSPECTIVE ON ACALANES ADULT SCHOOL'S "OLDER ADULT PROGRAM": Congrats to Acalanes Older Adult Ed. for surviving, but at what cost and should they be viewed as a model? Click on the "read more" link to learn more. First off, please bear in mind that Acalanes Adult Ed. is immediately adjacent to Rossmoor, a close to 10,000 strong, gated, 55+, "active senior" community. This is a highly regarded, award winning development that in years past provided an affordable option for middle-class retirees to relocate. That, though (to my ...

Lick your finger and stick it in the air. Feel that? The wind is shifting. Hit the link to learn more and go here for the short version . The Back Story A year or two ago, many people - in and out of the Legislature - felt that Parent Education and Older Adults Adult Education programs were valuable but couldn't be saved.  We were coming out of a great scourge.  Between 70 and 100 Adult Schools had been closed (statistics vary).  All Adult Schools had shrunk in size and scope.   People were focused on survival.  At that time, many felt it was best to "go with the program" and the program was that Governor Brown and many in the Legislature wanted to narrow the focus of Adult Education and limit the funding to five programs.   A number of legislators felt differently and spoke up publically at various hearings - but they did not win out. Politics is a big, slow, messy process that is, ultimately, by, for, and about peop...