AFT's 25th annual Paraprofessional and School-Related Personnel (PSRP) conference had a little of everything--emotion, inspiration, entertainment, education. The opening session of the conference, held April 5-7 in Washington, D.C., provided many of the highlights. Lorretta Johnson, who chairs the AFT's PSRP program and policy council, reminded the audience of how far the union's school-support division has come over the years. From its beginning with a small group of education secretaries in Chicago, who formed the first PSRP local in the 1930s, the division now numbers more than 200,000 members and is growing. This year's conference attracted close to 900 participants from 150 locals.

One conference theme, which AFT president Sandra Feldman emphasized in her opening address, was the vital--but often underappreciated--role PSRPs play in education. "None of our schools, colleges or universities could run without you," she said. Feldman introduced two New York City paraprofessionals who received a special award for helping save the lives of two wheelchair-bound students on Sept. 11 at their high school just two blocks from the World Trade Center. While Margaret Espinoza and Julia Martinez showed "extraordinary acts of heroism on that fateful day," Feldman said, the nation's 3.5 million PSRPs are more quiet "everyday heroes" in schools.

A conference general session, using interactive technology that allowed the audience to answer questions and see the results almost instantly, showed some of the misperceptions people hold about school support staff. A panel that included a journalist, a state legislator and a school district negotiator discussed the results and generally agreed on the need for PSRPs to keep working to tell their stories to the public and policymakers and to educate society about what they do and why their jobs are so vital.

Luncheon speaker Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Maryland's lieutenant governor and a front-runner to become the state's next governor, praised the AFT as "one of the great unions in our country." She highlighted the achievements of the Democratic administration in her own state, with one of the strongest pro-labor records in the country, and urged the attendees to "roll up their sleeves and pull a double shift" in the next election to help produce victories for working families. Townsend, a daughter of Robert Kennedy, also proved the enduring appeal of the Kennedy name as hundreds in the audience crowded around afterward to take her picture.

This year's Albert Shanker PSRP Pioneer Award, which comes with a $10,000 prize courtesy of investment broker Chris Gardner, went to AFT-Oregon president Debbi Covert. Covert, a classified employee at Portland Community College, has been a long-time union activist and officer at all levels of the AFT and was the first PSRP to serve as president of a state federation.

Just in time for the AFT's 25th anniversary PSRP conference, the national union released a comprehensive portrait of PSRPs that combines a rich collection of data with short profiles of "everyday heroes" working in our schools. The report, "It Takes a Team," includes data on PSRPs nationally, as well as inside the AFT, on topics such as salaries, benefits, working hours and education levels.

The country's 3.5 million school support staff (in K-12 as well as postsecondary institutions) make up nearly 40 percent of employees working in American schools.

The AFT report for the first time pulls together data on that large group from a number of sources. Among those 3.5 million workers are 1.2 million teacher assistants, 1.1 million office and administrative service personnel, 460,000 school bus drivers, 440,000 custodial workers, and 190,000 cooks and cafeteria workers.

PSRP salaries range widely, the report shows, from $7.18 an hour for childcare workers to nearly three times that for boiler operators at colleges and universities. In addition, many PSRPs work part time--more than one-third in K-12 schools and 21 percent in colleges and universities. The full report is available on the AFT Web site at www.aft.org/psrp/reports/team2002.pdf.