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With a crowd of education support staff standing before them waving fans with their priority issues written on them, delegates to the AFT convention agreed that paraprofessionals and school-related personnel should get the dignity, respect and paychecks they deserve.
Carl Williams, whose career has included working as a special education assistant and a senior custodian, invited the delegates to appreciate how school and college staff maintain the buildings and grounds, prepare students’ meals and transport them safely. Before the school buses arrive, support staff are already on the job, said Williams, who co-chairs the PSRP program and policy council and is also an AFT vice president.
His fellow co-chair Sarah Wofford, president of the Oregon School Employees Association and an accounting specialist at Rogue Community College, was more direct: “We care, we fight, we show up and we get shit done.”
Wofford, who is also an AFT vice president, noted that support staff love, protect and believe in their students, “but unfortunately, we are definitely undervalued.” Williams said that the three resolutions approved July 18 will amplify their value.
“We have something to say,” added Yolanda Fisher of Alliance/AFT in Texas. A food service manager in a Dallas public school, Fisher told the delegates that the fans, bearing written messages, tell a story of struggle. “But I am here to say no way,” she said. “We deserve to be respected.”
Megan Accardo of the Grayslake (Ill.) PSRP Council agreed, saying that when unions raise standards for the lowest-paid workers, they build a stronger labor movement. And Priscilla Castro, chair of the United Federation of Teachers paraprofessionals chapter in New York City, brought the point home: “One job should be enough,” she said. “This is a movement.”
[Annette Licitra/Photo credit: Pamela Wolfe]