PA Bylaws Proposed Changes, December 2024
At the People’s Alliance membership meeting on December 11th, the board will be submitting this proposal to amend Article III of the PA Bylaws. You can refer to that link for the specific language. This blog post explains the rationale behind the changes to Sections II and IV.
Currently, Section II ties PA memberships to the calendar year, and such memberships need to be renewed on that schedule, even if a member joined more recently. This cadence was originally established due to technical constraints on our capacity to set up auto-renewals in the past, and allowed staff and volunteers to make a concerted effort to remind members to renew during the last part of the year, rather than having to deal with a constant stream of renewals throughout the year.
However, our database software has since introduced the capability to have annual memberships auto-renew. Auto-renewals are more convenient for both members and the PA, but we can’t set the system up to bind auto-renewals to the calendar year, so we need the proposed amendments to Section II in order to allow them to happen at all.
The changes to Section IV simply establish a new timeline for when any future changes to dues will go into effect, given that payment of annual dues is no longer bound to the calendar year.
If you are a current monthly donor to PA these changes wouldn’t affect you (since your membership will automatically renew for 2025, so you’ll still be in sync with the calendar year even though the Bylaws would no longer require that of all memberships) and those of you with annual memberships will still need to renew for next year. In the future, however, your membership will renew automatically, if you choose to have it be set up to do so.
I hope this post has helped you to better understand the implications of and reasoning behind these proposed changes. Please feel free to raise any questions or concerns in the comments below, as well as at the membership meeting on December 11th.
November 07, 2024
See you on Election Day
Join the community, People's Alliance and the PA Political Action Committee at the Polls on November 5th.
If you are voting here is the PA's sample ballot
If you want to help volunteer please go to this link and someone will reach out.
Finally - stop by Bull McCabe's after 7:30pm. There is a lot going on in Durham that night but you are welcome to some fellowship with People's Alliance
ONWARD!
October 31, 2024
Education Team Statement: Meet and Confer
These volunteer leaders
- Met with representatives of DAE and reviewed documentation prepared by DAE
- Reached out to all Board of Education members and met with board members (Beyer, Carda-Auten, Chavez, Umstead)
- Discussed the proposal and context at multiple Education Team meetings
- Drafted and approved a statement
- Sent the statement to the Chapter/c4 board for approval
The final statement is as follows.
Thanks to all our volunteer leaders on the Ed team and with the Chapter board!
The People's Alliance is founded on a set of values. We rely on these to guide our decisions. We believe that implementing a Meet and Confer Policy would enhance the ability of the Durham Public Schools to honor Honesty, Transparency & Accountability. Success for Durham’s students relies on the ability to lean into difficult conversations and ensure that everyone has access to information. Given the stellar organizing work Durham Association of Educators has done, we fully expect and support their continued growth in membership. We recommend that ALL parties strive for robust and timely communication and information sharing.
At PA we also believe in Collaboration as a shared responsibility to the whole, both internally and externally. In this case, the “whole” is our students. For our elected leaders, administration, and educators to truly be in community, it will take compromise. The process and language of compromise does take time. We also understand the power of protest and honor the need to wield that tool when necessary. Now that we have a new Superintendent we recommend a new beginning that starts with civil engagement and negotiations. With the school year beginning the focus should be on stability and making sure the fundamentals for school success are met.
In adopting Meet and Confer we recommend additional actions to make all staff feel seen and heard. We encourage DAE to be an open tent for conversations beyond the membership and we ask that the Board and Administrators honor the leadership democratically elected by DAE representatives who are DPS employees. At PA we keep our focus on Durham first and also understand that we operate in a state context. Together we can work toward the true problem of underfunding and privatization from the State Legislature.
September 29, 2024