Our Teachers Union

My view is that a strong teachers union is an important way for teachers to improve their work environment (which is our students’ learning environment). Each year I was a teacher, I was a dues-paying member of the teachers union. I served as a representative on the state-mandated discussion committee, which is a monthly meeting of school administrators with the union leadership and a few regular union member representatives like me. I encouraged teachers to share their concerns with me so I could bring them to these discussion meetings. I brought up issues, provided data, and suggested improvements. I believe that a teachers union can be effective in advocating for teachers, but unfortunately our school district’s union leaders are not.

Our union leaders have a “cozy” relationship with the administrators and school board. I have never seen our teachers union give any push back on a school board decision. I have never seen our teachers union say anything critical of a school administrator decision. Rather than advocate for our teachers, the union leaders send messages to the teachers encouraging them to support the school board and to support the administrators. This isn’t how a teachers union is supposed to work. I’ll give a couple of examples:

1. In April 2019, when the school board voted to fire all the first-year teachers at WLES and WLIS, the union leaders should have jumped into action and defended those teachers’ jobs. Class sizes were higher than ever, the state had forecast an increase in our enrollment for the next year, and the school corporation had millions saved in the referendum fund that was supposed to be used to support teachers and reduce class size. However, the union leaders expressed their support for the school board’s decision and then sat quietly. Teachers were frustrated. I met with the union leaders to encourage them to take action, they listened, but were not willing to do anything to advocate for the teachers. With jobs at risk and no support from the union, 23 teachers left our district that year. We lost some great teachers to neighboring districts. The principals did some last-minute hiring at the beginning of the next school year to make up for all the exits and we ended up employing more teachers than the year before. What good is a teachers union that is unwilling to work to save teachers’ jobs?

2. In the fall of 2020, I was one of 15 candidates to run for four open seats on the school board (I was very close to winning a seat that year and then did win a seat in the 2022 election). The RDP-PAC announced that they would support whichever candidates were chosen by the teachers. But this was a fiction. The RDP-PAC placed orders for their candidates’ yard signs before the group of 5 union representatives met to “decide” which candidates to tell the RDP-PAC to support. It was the RDP-PAC leaders telling the union leaders who to support, not the other way around. Teachers (in or out of the union) were never asked which candidates to support. Yet, the union transferred another $5,000 to the RDP-PAC and did not complain when the RDP-PAC put “teacher endorsed” sign-toppers on their candidates’ yard signs in an attempt to mislead the community that the PAC-supported candidates were the teachers’ choice. It is inappropriate for teachers union leaders to be so heavily involved with the RDP-PAC (scholars call this regulatory capture).

The union leaders in our school district have done a poor job advocating for our teachers. They work in harmony with the school board leadership and school administrators and then use their influence to try to keep teachers in line. Effective union leaders would at least occasionally take issue with administrators’ decisions and use their influence to improve working conditions for teachers. As a union member, a teacher, and now as an elected school board member, I want the teachers union to advocate for our teachers. There have been some changes in union leadership which has brought in a few new people. I’m hopeful.