Serving as your president for the past year and a half has only reinforced my fundamental commitments — to public education as the foundation of democracy, to unions as the essential organizations for achieving educational, economic, racial and gender justice, and to continuing to transform the MTA into a social justice union based in rank-and-file power. I am thrilled and honored to run for re-election as president, and alongside Deb McCarthy as vice president, so we can continue to work to make our vision of public education a reality.
I live in the house I grew up in and went to the same outstanding Amherst public schools my children were lucky enough to attend, serving as the first student school committee member, and learning from the courageous members of the Amherst-Pelham Education Association as they fought for better schools. I am the son of two public school educators. My father, a refugee from Nazi Germany, was able (because of the GI Bill) to become a professor of English at UMass Amherst. My mother, born in Camden, New Jersey, was a drama teacher and then a longtime principal of elementary schools in Rowe and South Hadley, before finishing her work as an education professor at Mount Holyoke College. I have had a career as a scholar and teacher of American history, with a focus on the history of cities and the politics of historic preservation.
As soon as I arrived at UMass in 2001, I was invited by a fellow union member to become involved in my local, the 1,500-member Massachusetts Society of Professors, working with others to transform the MSP in the way we are all transforming the MTA. I was president and led bargaining campaigns, which resulted in two path-breaking contracts (around paid family and medical leave and adjunct rights). Following my leadership of the MSP, I focused on work within the MTA, as a member of the Executive Committee and Board, as head of the Revenue Committee, as vice chair of the Government Relations Committee, and starting in 2018, as vice president. More important than these positions, I am proud to have helped found Educators for a Democratic Union, building on the efforts of the group of "angry presidents" and the Peace and Justice caucus.
I am excited about the work we have done in the past year and a half since I was elected president. We have supported local organizing as the key to our strength as a union, including helping striking locals — Brookline, Malden, Haverhill, Woburn, Melrose, Andover and Newton — win outstanding contracts that are securing ESP living wages, paid parental leave, prep and collaboration time, and fairer pay for all. With the Board’s approval, we created a new Organizing Department with a team of organizers to support local contract campaigns. So many of you have seen their effectiveness in helping mount strong contract campaigns. If I had to point to just one advance in local contract campaigns, I would point to the opening up of bargaining including the use of silent representatives. This approach, which has helped build the power of every local, has become the new standard approach to contract negotiations.
At the state level, in the fall of 2022, we won passage of the Fair Share Amendment, a once-in-a-century victory to raise taxes on the wealthiest people in the Commonwealth and invest the revenues in our public schools, colleges and transportation systems. We are seeing the results in universal school meals for all students, free community college and improved roads, bridges and public transportation — and that’s just the first year! Now that Fair Share is in the state Constitution, we look forward to having upwards of $2 billion to spend every year on education and transportation.
This past fall, our members gathered 135,000 signatures to eliminate the use of the MCAS as a graduation requirement. Led by Vice President Deb McCarthy, we are on track, either through the Legislature or at the ballot box, to remove the keystone of a punitive, high-stakes, testing regime. We also remain committed to securing a generational reinvestment in public higher education — including fair pay and working conditions for staff and faculty — through passage of the Cherish Act. We will also continue the fight for dignity for our current and future retired members by improving the cost-of-living adjustments for pensions and working with the NEA to finally fix the harmful, federal GPO/WEP pension laws.
Across our union, attendance at learning opportunities — such as Winter Union Skills, Summer Conference, the EMAC, ESP and Early Career Educator conferences, and Retired members gatherings — keeps growing as more and more members are getting involved, committed to building an MTA that is committed as a union to economic, racial and gender justice.
Dissatisfaction with the ways things are and how far they are from the way they should be is our love language as union activists. That’s because even as we celebrate our victories — and we must — we always demand more for our schools and students. We have big plans for the coming years, including accelerating our gains for ESPs, addressing the mental health crisis among our students and educators, and moving away from a deadening, scripted curriculum, test-and-punish system to one that allows you, the educators of the finest education system in the nation, to fulfill your hopes for public education, using your skills, experience and creativity. In the coming years we want to focus on building community schools and raising the wages and housing security of the families of our students. We know that unless we improve the economic security of Massachusetts families, our students cannot reach their highest potential.
The pandemic laid bare — and made worse — so many of the inequalities in the Commonwealth. That experience challenged me, and it should challenge all of us, to raise our expectations about what is necessary, what we in the MTA can achieve. Now we need to raise more hell to win greater justice for our students, members and the Commonwealth.
