Platform
scroll down for Response to current threats
〰️
scroll down for Response to current threats 〰️
Demanding Living Wage for All Education Employees
The problem: We won’t be able to meet the needs of our diverse student population if we can not hire and retain a highly trained and qualified workforce. This will impact our ability to provide students with the quality education they need to learn and thrive. Nationally, in our post pandemic world, students are behind in core subjects. Simultaneously, fewer students are enrolled in teacher training programs and veteran educators are leaving in droves. We need a national course correction, increasing school funding to meet the needs of our current students. We must show aspiring and current educators that the education profession is valued and that every educator will earn a living wage, so that they are able to live in the communities they serve.
Short term steps to solve it:
NEA leads a national study on wage disparities of education personnel, comparing states and comparing educators to like professionals in other sectors.
NEA then disseminates this information to help each state improve its workforce compensation.
Addressing mental health of students and educators
The problem: Our students come to school with emotional health challenges that extend from low-grade anxiety to more serious mental health afflictions. For students, these impact learning in terms of focus, which can lead to lower achievement and increased risk for social isolation and suicide (a leading cause of adolescent death). Schools have been coping with years of disruptive behaviors in elementary school that turn into chronic absenteeism in middle and high school and deprive all students of learning opportunities.
Educators, too, must be a part of our focus. Their jobs have become more stressful over time, due to the largely untreated and growing number of students whose adverse childhood experiences and mental health challenges have made teaching and serving them more difficult. Additionally, the demands of the profession – whether externally imposed through anti-public school critiques or internally created by understaffing, large class sizes, and other stressors – have created job-related health impacts on our workforce.
Short term steps to solve it:
NEA will lobby for federal funding to enhance onsite supports for schools struggling with these challenges.
NEA will promote best-practice caseloads recommended by education-related professionals such as school counselors, nurses, and other specialists.
NEA will promote research-based recommendations for class-size reduction to create optimal learning environments.
Response to Current Threats
The presidential administration is currently:
Threatening the safety of students through attacks on immigrants.
Threatening student safety through attacks on transgender students. This includes limiting the ability of school counselors to confidentially serve all students.
Attacking diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. Dismantling the structure in place for special education and 504, including temporarily taking down or changing websites and firing federal employees who support these efforts.
Promoting a national voucher program taking away precious tax payer dollars crucial to the maintenance of effective public schools.
Trying to freeze grants and loans, which was temporarily blocked by a federal judge.
Looking to dismantle the Department of Education.
And all of this is in the first two weeks; I anticipate that this list will grow over time.
It is essential that NEA, member affiliates, and all educators stand together to uphold our values. There are many ways to take action. For some, simply being supporters of our schools and students is what they are able to do. Some supporters may also be able to thank and provide cover for people in power (superintendents, schools boards, legislators, etc). The agitators among us may be willing to address our concerns in various other ways – through policy advocacy, rallies, and other forms of activism. And all of us can be unifiers, who help to bring all people of good will together, irrespective of party or other affiliation differences. I am, as a leader, committed to help all my colleagues do what they can, where they can, when they can.
Sufficient Funding for Public Education
The problem: In virtually no state is public school funding sufficient to meet the expectations of our society nor the needs of our students. This derives from both political and fiscal challenges. Each state copes with this challenge differently, but few have found meaningful solutions. Yet, every state is expected to produce learning “outcomes” irrespective of investment levels. This is the most fundamental underlying issue impacting every other problem identified here.
Short term steps to solve it:
With 2025 being the 50th anniversary of IDEA, NEA will lobby Congress for Full funding of IDEA and Title I.
Due to the overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress for repealing GPO-WEP, NEA will seize the moment, coordinate nationwide lobbying.
NEA will coordinate state lobbying on bills such as education funding, starting salaries, and living wage.
Fighting School Vouchers
The problem: Opponents of public education have made significant inroads in their fight to institute school vouchers and tax credits, which only erode available public funding for public schools. Arguing for “school choice” really only exacerbates school funding inequities by leaving most students behind in poorly funded public schools. Though messaged as everything from Education Savings Accounts to Parent Choice Programs, they all have the same result: reduced opportunity for our students.
Across the nation, anti union forces are setting up our public school systems to fail by design. Their efforts to defund public schools through vouchers and provide substandard education by keeping educator pay low, causing attrition are two ways they are deliberately dismantling the system. Where they have succeeded, states have begun to allow less-qualified subs, ESP, teachers, and specialists to deliver public education. A less-qualified educator workforce creates the perfect climate in which to attack public schools and promote vouchers.
Short term steps to solve it:
An NEA team of dedicated professionals work with Congress every day on such issues. Additionally, the NEA Board of Directors provide intermittent lobbying efforts from an “on the ground” perspective that is invaluable. To bolster their efforts, NEA will call for a national day of action, with representatives from every state bringing letters from educators to their Congressional representatives laying out the threats of school vouchers to the students they serve.
NEA will compile the best messages from a variety of states who have pushed back voucher efforts, understanding that a message that works in a red state may need to look different from the messages in blue states.
NEA will produce a public education campaign that includes evidence that private and religious schools profiting from school voucher programs in such states as Indiana are actually funding their religious institutions more from public school funds than they are from their parishioners.