Day One: July 1, 2009

We had breakfast in our room--we brought breakfast food because after the first couple of days our meetings start at 7AM! At 9AM we headed for New Delegate Orientation where we were introduced to both the CTA and NEA Board Members--I knew them from State Council. We were given an overview of procedures for both the CA Caucus meetings and then the NEA Rep. Assembly. A few of the interesting facts:
*NEA's RA is larger than the Democratic and Republican Conventions together!
*It is the largest democratically elected body in the world
*Most states have 30-60 delegates and we have 1150--with 50 staff that keep everything organized and running smoothly.
*There are approximately 10,000 delegates from all over the country at the RA

At 10:15 we attended the first CA Caucus. We found our seats with the Santa Clara County Service Center--there are about 55 of us. We sang the Star Spangled Banner with the CTA/NEA Choir they will open the Padres game tonight. We adopted Caucus Rules and Procedures and then the rest of the meeting was mostly introductions and procedural items.

David Sanchez talked about the dire budget situation. He had been at the Convention Center from 7AM on giving news interviews. He asked us to call the governor and Republican senators during our lunch break. The Democrat's budget has some cuts but does include some revenue and it puts back some college funding along with a plan for repayment of 9.8 billion eventually (Prop. 98) The governor and the Republicans are holding it up. Bank of America has said it will not honor the IOU's.

When we broke for lunch we headed down to the Convention Center to do our NEA Registration--yes we have to register twice--once for CA Caucus and once for the RA. In order to vote on the RA floor we have to have our delegate ID cards. We grabbed a quick lunch at the Hard Rock Hotel across the street and then headed back for our 1PM Caucus.

David Sanchez gave us a budget update from Sacramento--we were to stop calling--the message had been received and the governor was meeting with Nunez. Later reports said that he now wanted to suspend Prop 98 (which protects minimum school funding) so there will be a full RA activity--later this week to continue the fight to prevent further cuts to education.

We had committee reports and then discussed a proposed new business item dealing with turnaround schools. Obama has proposed spending 5 billion to turn around the 5,000 lowest performing schools in the country and the NEA Board of Directors wanted to develop and implement an action plan. This will be discussed at the RA but we amended it to include that we "oppose conversion of public schools to charter schools."

At 4PM we helped our Service Center Chair pack sets of 55 "snack bags" for the days that we will be in the convention center. At 6PM we headed to Petco Park wearing our CTA shirts. We were in the "All you can eat" seats--hotdogs, popcorn, nachos, soda, ice cream.... We were up high and it was cold so we left when the score was 6-1 with the Padres losing:) It's been fun to see my colleagues from State Council and to meet folks from all over the state. I look forward to meeting teachers from all over the country in the next few days!