As a school board member in Billings, Mont., Karen Moses understood the importance of the district's PSRPs better than most. But it wasn't until Moses left the board after seven years' service, took a job as a high school hall monitor--at little better than minimum wage--and became president of the Billings Classified Employees Association that she really came to appreciate how overworked and underpaid the district's 450 PSRPs are.

"I continue to be absolutely amazed by the classified employees in our schools," says Moses, who served a year as local president and is still a building representative and member of the negotiating team. "There's no way the superintendent could step into the special ed room and do those jobs." As the wife of an attorney, Moses considers herself lucky to be able to work in the schools and still support her family, something many of her co-workers struggle with every day. (Her union, a former local of the Montana Education Association, is now an affiliate of the newly merged state organization in Montana, known as MEA-MFT.)

During the local's most recent contract negotiations last year, the union and its members mounted an aggressive campaign to draw attention to their inadequate wages. "We had people going to school board meetings to speak who no more went there before than the man in the moon," she quips. But hearing from rank-and-file staff--like the 15-year elementary school secretary who makes less than an entry-level cleaner in school--helped the union win its biggest salary increases in years. Many still earn below what Moses considers a living wage in Montana--about $9 an hour--but they made gains and hope to get more jobs upgraded through reclassification.

Having to jump through those extra bureaucratic hurdles clearly irritates Moses, who points out that administrators received a 9.6 percent pay raise last year--without having to rewrite their job descriptions. For some administrators, she adds, those raises alone amount to more than many PSRPs take home in a year.

"What we have done to classified employees in schools is just not right, and we need to look at that," Moses says. "We'll never pay them what they're worth, but we need to at least pay them a living wage."

Getting kids back on the right path
Illinois truant officer tracks down students and gets them the help they need

To be an effective truant officer, you have to know the truant's tricks--getting the mail and pulling out notices from school before parents get home, deleting automated phone messages from school, showing up for first period and then taking off for the rest of the day. John Wicks, a truant officer and security guard in West Proviso, Ill., and member of the West Suburban Teachers Union, has seen all those and more in his efforts to help chronically absent students get back on track in school.

"Our job is to find those kids, get them back into school and get them to the people in school they need to get to," such as counselors and social workers, says Wicks. His job isn't really to counsel the students. "It's more like a pep talk," he says, although the efforts of Wicks and the other truant officers in the district clearly have helped turn around students' lives. A story in the local newspaper last year included high praise from students who said they would still be heading downhill if it wasn't for the efforts of the district's 12 truant officers.

The truant officer positions were created last school year as a pilot project. During the first year, Wicks and his colleagues all worked part time as security officers and part time as truant officers. "I love the work," says Wicks, who credits his background as a local police officer working with gangs with helping him on the job. ÒI love working with the kids. It really keeps me going."

A dedicated advocate for the union's members, Wicks also worked with a local college to develop a 20-hour security training program for the officers that's comparable to what starting police officers complete. "Everyone can always use more training. There's really no limit," Wicks comments. "It makes you do your job better and react better in difficult situations."

For many of the truants Wicks works with, the extra attention from a caring adult is what they need. "I tell them, 'This is nothing your mother and your father didn't tell you. You just didn't listen to them.'"