I had the great privilege a few weeks ago to be invited to serve as a silent representative at a Malden Education Association bargaining session with the School Committee. For those of you who don’t know, that means sitting in as a fellow member who is not on the official bargaining team but observes, offers ideas to the union side, and shares the latest information back to the wider membership. I was joined by 20 other educators — mostly MEA members but also fellow MTA members from Cambridge, Brookline and UMass Boston. We marched in together and sat in chairs in a semicircle around the MEA’s five-member team. The MEA representatives sat down at a table directly opposite the School Committee members, who sat behind an identical table.
The School Committee members looked around at the unexpected guests. They were visibly squirming. At this moment, our members — the workers — were equal to the employer. The School Committee members were there, simply put, not because they wanted to be but because they had to be.
It was a powerful reminder of who we are: a network of nearly 400 locals in almost every city and town in Massachusetts, bound together into the largest union in Massachusetts, dedicated to advancing the working and learning conditions in our public schools and colleges and building a more just Commonwealth.
We don’t do that by sending hopeful wish lists or deferentially requesting an audience with the allpowerful superintendent. No, we express our expert knowledge about what it takes to educate young people through collective bargaining and through organized, assertive advocacy at the local and statewide levels — always as a union of professional education workers.
I am so proud to serve as your president — and to do so with Deb McCarthy as our vice president. I am honored to amplify your voices at the state level and support your daily work to secure the best public schools and colleges in the nation — not just for the wealthy few but for all of our young people.
We have much to be proud of in Massachusetts. But we also have a long way to go to achieve that goal.
The next few months and the coming year offer us tantalizing possibilities that we have the power and obligation to seize.
First comes the Fair Share Amendment, which will bring $2 billion every single year to our public schools, colleges, and roads and bridges. As I write this, our MTA Summer Member Organizers, Senate District Coordinators and volunteers have knocked on more than 50,000 doors and made more than 379,000 calls to fellow educators and the general public.
As we head into the final months of this campaign, we all must do our part. I ask every single one of you to join a canvass or a phone bank, contacting your fellow members as well as other residents of our communities. When you speak, people listen. Indeed, they trust you on education matters more than they do anyone else.
Then comes the campaign to make sure that public education gets a Fair Share of the Fair Share Amendment revenues. After we celebrate on Nov. 8, we have to make clear to the next governor and the new Legislature our top priorities for our students, our schools, and our colleges and universities: more educators in classrooms, living wages for Education Support Professionals, justice for adjunct faculty members, green and healthy buildings, and highquality, debt-free public higher education throughout Massachusetts.
And when we send more money to our schools, we want those schools to be places for educating the whole child — for nurturing the minds, bodies and hearts of our young people. MTA members educate not to have students pass high-stakes tests but to build thinking, caring, active adults who will form healthy families and strengthen their communities. The Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System — MCAS — contributes nothing to that vision of our schools. We have to redouble our efforts to undo the decades of damage it has done.
I have found that some of the most exciting organizing in our union is happening among our ESP members, who are demanding and winning, in solidarity with all educators in our schools, true living wages. We are far from securing the basic justice of fair pay for a full week’s work, but dozens of our locals have made it a priority at the bargaining table. We must build on that momentum in the coming year.
Massachusetts is in many ways defined by its localism. We love the community each of us is a part of — all 351 of them — and our 29 public campuses. That localism builds connection and pride. But the flip side of localism is the challenge of building the regional and statewide bonds that are necessary for us as a union to exercise our power.
So much can only be won at the state level — the end of MCAS, sufficient school and college funding, and laws and policies that shape everything from health care to recess to curriculum. Yet at the same time, we can only win at the state level if we build stronger locals. We will do both!
One way we knit ourselves together as the MTA is through communication. Deb and I will be sending our "MTA Union News" to you every Tuesday so you can reliably know about the latest MTA events, resources and ways to support fellow union members.
More importantly, we will do our best to be with you all over the state, knocking on doors with you to win the passage of the Fair Share Amendment, supporting your bargaining campaigns, and standing up for you and your fellow members whenever it’s needed. Invite us to support your work as educators and unionists. We look forward to joining you.
Letters policy
MTA Today welcomes letters to the editor from MTA members. Letters should be no longer than 200 words. Each letter submitted for publication must address a topic covered in MTA Today, must be signed and must include the writer’s telephone number for confirmation purposes. Opinions must be clearly identified as belonging to the letter-writer. We reserve the right to edit for length, clarity and style. To submit a letter, mail it to MTA Today, 2 Heritage Drive, 8th floor, Quincy, MA 02171-2119, or email it to mtatodayletters@massteacher.org. For additional information, please refer to the guidelines posted on www.massteacher.org.
