The 200,000 paraprofessional and school-related personnel (PSRP) AFT represents make up the fasting-growing segment of the national union. Twenty-five years ago--when the AFT had only about 27,000 PSRP members--it would have been accurate to say that the majority of the AFT's PSRPs were K-12 paraprofessionals and that most of them worked in urban schools.

Today, however, the PSRP ranks have become much more diverse, both in the types of jobs that people perform and in the locations where they work. Other than the AFT's public employee division, the PSRP group incorporates the most varied collection of workers. AFT PSRPs include everyone from Title I and special education paraprofessionals--probably the two biggest sub-groups of membership--to security guards to college computer lab technicians, not to mention the main categories of bus drivers, food service workers, secretaries, and custodial/maintenance.

PSRP membership in local unions ranges from the United Federation of Teachers, with some 20,000 paraprofessionals and secretaries, to tiny rural locals in places like Missouri and Montana that have fewer than a dozen members. A look at AFT's PSRP locals reveals a distinct split between the 435 that include only PSRPs and the 488 that include PSRPs along with teachers or faculty. The PSRP-only locals are much smaller, with an average size of 116 members, while the joint locals are more than five times larger, with an average membership of 660.

A few other pieces of information about the union's PSRPs might surprise some people. The two largest age groups within the membership are 45-49 and 50-54, together accounting for more than 40 percent. Detailed data from some local affiliates, however, reveal that many of those in their 40s and 50s have only a few years of experience on the job--an indication that many are in their second career or took the job after taking time off to raise a family. To take two examples, in St. Tammany Parish, La., 24 percent of the members over age 40 have been on the job fewer than four years. In Oklahoma City, that figure is almost the same: 23 percent.

Education is another area that reveals some surprises. Rather than being a group in which higher education is the exception, large percentages of AFT PSRPs have at least two years of college and many have a lot more than that. In fact, 13 percent have master's degrees.

It's one thing to read a bunch of words about numbers; it's usually easier to digest them visually. So we've put together a series of charts below to help paint a portrait of "who we are" in the AFT's PSRP division. These charts can only show a slice of the division--a rich and complex mixture that remains a vital part of the AFT's total membership of 1 million strong and growing.

Type of Members

Age Range of Members

Education Level of Members

Where Members Live