Plans

In addition to ensuring the union is an active and effective advocate for the economic and professional well-being of ALL its members, my priorities will continue to be to:

• Rebuild trust between union leadership, members, and central administration through advocating for effective joint labor management structures and practices.

• Make our schools equitable places for ALL educators and scholars - build out the social justice component of our union.

• Build and employ effective, consistent communication systems to keep members informed and leadership in touch with members.

• Strengthen our new member engagement and build leadership capacity, focusing on historically underrepresented populations.

As CEA President, my highest priority will continue to be building relationships and trust between union leadership, members and administration. When we have conflicts, we will need those relationships to help us work through the crises. The best way to start building relationships is for union leadership to be an active presence in schools to better know members, issues and the workings of each school. Fortunately I already have relationships with many members and principals, and an inside perspective on those schools from my work as a district science coach. I have been building even more relationships with members during my first six years as president. I will also take on the responsibility of ensuring that each school has a functioning Faculty Advisory Committee. There still are too many schools that do not currently have an effective FACs. I will support building reps to get this critical group back in place where it has gone missing. The contract lays out the makeup and tasks of the group, and this structure is foundational to building trust, accountability and clarity.

Second, while I am proud of the social justice work we have done most recently, we need to continue to build the networks and union power on issues of social justice and racial equity. We have heard, and will hear even more with the findings of the Building Equity Bridges grant that about the systemic racial inequities in our schools. Our Educators of Color Coalition is strong supporting our educators of color, particularly with the Employee Resource Groups, but this is just getting started. To truly dismantle systemic racism, we need to advocate for change in the district, as well as in our own union.

My third priority is communication. At the current time, the CEA does not have a solid communication structures to most effectively communicate with its members - one on one conversations. We need to build those structures and then use them to build a powerful, collective voice. For years the CEA has talked about “mapping buildings” (setting up and documenting face-to-face networks between educators) but we have only been successful in a few locations. Because we now have much better systems in place to track membership, we can build on those to support the communication structures.

Finally, we have not done all we can to reach out to and support our newest members. They are the future of our organization and we must make sure they are engaged and understand the importance of our union. In order to do this, we need to make sure there are leadership opportunities for them to build their leadership skills and union involvement.