To Our ECS Administration and School Communities:

Environmental Charter Schools is an incredibly unique collection of schools that we all have
gravitated towards for a multitude of reasons. Our schools provide a mission that many of us
believe in, have allowed many of us the freedom to be creative in our content subjects, and have
provided a beautiful community to be a part of. With that said, we know that ECS could live up
to its mission of reimagining education for students and educators. When educators have a real
voice in important decisions, we could cut down on turnover and burnout, make our schools
more stable for our students, and more sustainable for our staff. That is why we decided to
form our union, Environmental Educators United, a union of educators across Environmental
Charter Schools.

Historically we have done and continue to do the work necessary for our communities, but that
success is heavily dependent on the work of our teachers and Counseling Department who often
fill in the structural gaps that are repeatedly not filled by our organization. We wear many hats
to maintain the community that is ECS. While we continue producing the successful results
that make our school function, we consistently, year-after-year, experience high teacher
turnover and burnout that does not make this work sustainable. This turnover and burnout is
the result of:

● Ineffective and overly extensive list of meetings and professional development

that do not fully benefit us in accomplishing our day-to-day tasks
● Lack of support for our SPED and ELs that result in general education teachers to
pick up the labor outside of their designated work hours
● Juggling multiple ECS goals that are placed upon us without adequate planning
time to effectively implement them in our classes and schools: such as organizing
tasks that come with planning major events on campus including intersession,
grade-level trips, and dia de los muertos

We do all of this on top of teaching in the classroom, grading, planning outside of our
classrooms, and ensuring the social-emotional success of our students with some cases that
require high behavioral management due to inadequate funding and lack of systems in place.
We have watched some of our leaders and heroes in education step away from our communities
for a myriad of reasons, but most commonly are the inadequate pay for the amount of labor we
do, inadequate benefits for their families, and lack of consistent transparency from the
organization. Some of the improvements that will help stabilize our schools include:
 ● Job Stability & Sustainable Working Conditions For Educators to cut down on
turnover and burnout
● Increase in Benefits for Families so we do not have to choose between working
here and raising a family
● Funding and Development for our SPED and EL Program because our students
deserve greater support
● Equitable Pay for Educators because the cost of living in our area has gone up so
much

Since we have started this process, we have heard whispers that mischaracterize our effort to
unionize. These suggest that our union will create tension, will not prioritize students, will
make teachers ineffective or will strain our budget. Such rumors are not true. The educators
who work hard to build our union are committed to our students and schools and guided by
ECS' principles of social justice. We will work with all ECS educators to make decisions about
our priorities and look forward to educators having a real seat at the table and a real voice in all
decisions. We approach this process with open-mindedness and positivity and are confident our
community will unite through our union: Environmental Educators United. We, as a staff, will
design a union we envision through collective voice. We hope that our message is received with
open-mindedness and positivity, and we believe that our community can unite through this
union.

We are proud to be educators at ECS; we are members of this committee because we love our
schools and want to see ECS and its students thrive. We call on ECS to respect our legally
protected, collective decision; to not exercise influence or interference; and to work with us in a
structural, sustainable, and legally-protected fashion to make our schools the best possible
places to teach and learn. While nothing is guaranteed, a union would provide the structural
changes and collective bargaining needed to ensure our profound work and progress can be
taken further in the generations to come.

Sincerely,
Environmental Educators United

Marco Landon, ECHS-Gardena

Fabian Ponciano, ECMS-Inglewood
Shawn Hua, ECHS-Lawndale
Janus Baetiong, ECMS-Gardena
Brittney Beck, ECHS-Gardena
Lauren Pell, ECHS-Lawndale
Tulsi Patel, ECHS-Lawndale
Jennica Tibbetts, ECMS-Inglewood
Amber Medina, ECMS-Inglewood
Kameron Lopez, ECHS-Gardena
Francisco McCurry, ECHS-Lawndale
Sarahi Martinez, ECMS-Gardena