The 2021 MTA Annual Meeting of Delegates will be held on Friday, April 30, and Saturday, May 1 — and it will be a virtual event for the second year in a row.
The delegates will vote on important association business, including the proposed MTA budget for fiscal year 2021-2022, and elections will be held for three seats on the association’s Board of Directors. In addition, four Retired Members Committee seats will be filled by a vote of the delegates representing the Statewide Retired District.
The delegates will also consider a number of proposed amendments to the association’s bylaws, resolutions and standing rules; participate in an issues forum; take up new business items; hear leadership reports; and honor a number of educators, activists and education allies.
All new business items must be received via email by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, April 28. They should be sent to MTAGovernance@massteacher.org.
The meeting will be called to order at 1 p.m. and last until about 5 p.m. on Friday. It will resume at 9 a.m. on Saturday. Elections will begin at the conclusion of whichever item of business is being transacted at 11 a.m. on Saturday and end no less than 25 minutes later.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the impossibility of holding an in-person meeting, the Board of Directors is recommending that the delegates adopt special meeting rules.
The proposed special meeting rules impose some limits on agenda items and debate. They are intended to maximize the amount of business that can be achieved in the time allocated. More information about the special rules can be found at massteacher.org/annualmeeting.
Action on proposed amendments to the bylaws, resolutions and standing rules was deferred in 2020. The held-over proposals will be considered this year, along with new ones.
The meeting will include leadership reports by MTA President Merrie Najimy, Vice President Max Page and Executive Director-Treasurer Lisa Gallatin.
Outstanding educators, activists and education allies will receive recognition. Due to time constraints, the honorees will not address the delegates directly. Instead, award recipients’ selfsubmitted videos will be posted on the MTA website.
Jennifer Hedrington, the 2021 Massachusetts Teacher of the Year, is one of the educators who will be recognized.
A member of the Malden Education Association, Hedrington has been a seventh-grade math teacher in Malden for the past 11 years. Since being named Massachusetts Teacher of the Year in October, Hedrington has handled remote teaching at the Ferryway School during a difficult year for students, educators and families while also juggling a busy schedule resulting from her award.
Susan Soares, a special education teaching assistant in Arlington who was recently named the 2021 MTA Education Support Professional of the Year, also will be recognized. Soares was surprised with the news that she had been chosen during a virtual meeting of the Arlington Education Association on March 23.
MTA and local association leaders and members were on hand for the surprise, and many offered warm congratulations for Soares, who led a unionization drive for her fellow paraprofessionals in 2017-2018, organizing one of the last major nonunion groups of ESPs in Massachusetts.
This year’s Friend of Education Awards will be presented to Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire, whose book, "A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School," offers a powerful analysis of the profitseeking forces out to undermine public education.
Berkshire is a freelance journalist and advocate who writes about the intersection of race, public education and the remaking of the urban landscape. She teaches in the journalism program at Boston College and in the Labor Studies program at UMass Amherst, co-hosts the Have You Heard podcast and was the creator of the EduShyster blog.
Schneider is an assistant professor of education at UMass Lowell, where he leads the Beyond Test Scores project. His work broadly explores the influence of history, culture and rhetoric in education policy. Schneider writes frequently about education for publications such as The Atlantic, The New York Times and The Washington Post.
The Friend of Labor Award will be presented to the Chicago Teachers Union, which has led the way for the MTA and other education unions around the country in centering racial and social justice in its fight for the common good.
Under former President Karen Lewis, who died in February, the union launched fights against school closings, radical disparities in resources and other policies that hurt students. The first Chicago educators’ strike in 25 years took place in 2012, and the CTU, with community and parental support, continues working today to advocate for the city and schools that students deserve. The award gives special recognition to Lewis, but the CTU under current President Jesse Sharkey continues to offer inspiration and lead the way in unionism.
This year’s President’s Awards will recognize the generosity of, and partnership with, five medical and public health and safety professionals who have spent decades fighting for environmental, racial and social justice, along with dignity and fairness for workers.
Najimy said she was grateful to the recipients for the "crucial knowledge they brought to the MTA, helping us navigate the health and safety world throughout this pandemic" and for "assisting us in centering worker, student and family rights to health and safety in our buildings.
"They made a commitment to the MTA even though they are not members," she said. "They understood that their commitment was to the common good."
The award recipients are Dr. Julia Koehler, an expert in infectious diseases at Boston Children’s Hospital; Alan Geller, a senior lecturer on social and behavioral sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Carlene Pavlos, executive director of the Massachusetts Public Health Association; Dr. Regina LaRocque, a faculty member of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital; and Jodi Sugerman-Brozan, executive director of the Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health.
The proposed MTA operating budget of $49,727,962 for fiscal 2021-2022 will be presented and voted on. The Advisory Budget Committee, the Executive Committee and the Board of Directors have proposed annual dues of $483 for full-time active members, which represents a $3 increase from the current year. Under the proposed budget, dues for secretaries, clerks and custodians would be $290; dues for aides, food service personnel and other Education Support Professionals would be $145.
In addition, the proposed Public Relations/Organizing Campaign budget will be considered. The recommended general dues assessment for the PR/Organizing budget is $20. For secretaries, clerks and custodians, the assessment would be $12; aides, food service personnel and other Education Support Professionals would pay $6.
Read more about this year’s award recipients and watch videos of them at massteacher.org/annualmeeting.
