**Our Health Care Committee is up and running! Thanks to Alyson Brauning who will chair the committee, and Brenda Hensley, Kent Puddy, Scott Bassett, Nancy Anderson-Louie, Lisa Aspey and Stacie Smith who have signed up to take on this job. The role of the committee will be to research alternative options and gather data that will help us make informed decisions about how we provide health care benefits to our members. The committee will report to the Exec Board, Rep Council, and membership, and solicit input from members to inform the bargaining process.
**There is a School Board workshop January 23rd at 5:30. The purpose of the workshop is to finalize the parameters for the Smarter Balanced (SBAC) testing and for the Board to share its vision for future technology in VUSD. One of the decisions before the School Board is whether to use wired labs with desktop computers or mobile carts with wireless notebooks for the SBAC testing we will be required to do this spring. There was much discussion at the January 9th School Board meeting on which option is best. Below is a link to the January 23rd workshop agenda and to the video of the January 9th Board meeting if you would like to get caught up on the discussion. I strongly encourage members who have an opinion about this topic to share it with Board Members. Their email addresses can be found on the third link.