National Education Association Representative Assembly 2019: Post 2

From July 3-7, 2019, Medina Delegates Bradley Dalzell, Katie Shaffer, and Stephani Itibrout attended the 2019 National Education Association Representative Assembly in Houston, Texas.  The NEA is the largest labor organization in the United States, and we had about 9,000 people there to prove it.

Today I would like to write about fundraising. 

Union dues do not go towards any sort of political activity, but union activity is often very political. I have served on committees that have recommended policies to legislators.  The NEA has a separate, voluntary donation program that goes toward legislative policy; it is called the Fund for Children and Public Education (FCPE). To give you an idea of its importance, the FCPE in Ohio was instrumental in reducing arduous and repetitive requirements for New Educators.  Also, FCPE helps the OEA to inform legislators of the dangers of unnecessary testing. Charter school regulation? FCPE is working on that. 

Anyway, fund-raising for FCPE at the Representative Assemblies is very important, and at the NEA RA, it can get very creative.  One of the fun fund-raising activities for FCPE involves forcing our union leaders to do silly things in public. This year it started with hats. The FCPE auctioneer took bids on forcing members to wear Texas-inspired hats during important moments of the RA. The members targeted are then allowed to outbid in order to give the hat to someone else. There was some heavy bidding this year, but many members combined funds in order to keep the humiliation within the leaders. 

From left: Treasurer Mark Hill, VP Scott DiMauro, and Pres. Becky Higgins are wearing weird hats. Daniel Boone?  I don't know. Members donated to FCPE to make them wear these hats on the floor of the RA.

Our Vice-President-Elect, Jeff Wensing, gets picked on every year. I swear I have nothing to do with it:

The best part was when members pooled their funds to make Darryl wear an astronaut suit on the floor of the Assembly.  He was an incredibly good sport about it, and he even got memed on Twitter because he was sitting right by a camera:

We also raised money for the Houston food bank. Darryl played an important role in this because he allowed anyone at the RA to take a picture with him if they donated to the Houston food bank. 

We also collected money by playing Bingo during the RA. If you have ever attended a staff or faculty meeting, you know how this works. The bingo card has a list of "buzz words" or even people, and when you can make a bingo with the events of the RA, you win money or prizes. We bought bingo cards each day for two dollars, and that money also went to the Houston food bank. The cards were VERY popular. I got a bingo, but it was too late for money; I won candy.

I can't write a blog post without a picture of the Medina Delegates. Here we are, excited about our place on the Representative Assembly floor:

Ohio has a large delegation. It is really exciting to be a part of that. Here is a picture of all of us:

To give you an idea of the importance of presence at the RA, I will tell you an anecdote:

There was a hugely-debated New Business Item on the floor of the RA (there are many, so I don't remember which one this was--sorry). We had many votes on many amendments to this NBI, but we just couldn't settle it. Then it came time for Ohio to leave the RA floor to vote for NEA Directors, so all of us stood up at once. Immediately, delegates from other states started screaming, "Ohio! DON'T LEAVE! STAY FOR OUR VOTE!" 

I often tell people that I am a geek for Parliamentary Procedure. It must be true because I get chills whenever I think of that moment.

I think this is enough for Post #2 of the NEA RA. Don't worry; I still have lots more information to share. Specifically, stay with me to read about the presentations of ten Democratic candidates!

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National Education Association Representative Assembly 2019

From July 3-7, 2019, Medina Delegates Bradley Dalzell, Katie Shaffer, and Stephani Itibrout attended the 2019 National Education Association Representative Assembly in Houston, Texas.  The NEA is the largest labor organization in the United States, and we had about 9,000 people there to prove it.

As usual, Katie, Bradley, and I had to get our airport selfie when we left.

We arrived in Houston just in time to register for the Assembly, change, and go to our Ohio Night Celebration. This was an opportunity to talk with delegates from other school districts. For me it was another photo opportunity, of course:

Sue Messinger, President of Parma Educators Association

Scott DiMauro, Vice President and President-Elect of Ohio Education Association

Mary Alice Conkey, Executive Director of the North Eastern Ohio Education Association

Between the traveling and the excitement of networking, we were all ready to call it a day relatively early so that we could be fresh for our morning caucuses for both OEA and NEOEA.

I volunteered for two committees this year: The Communications Committee and the Elections Committee. I'll describe our roles in the Assembly later in this blog.

I woke up at 4:45 AM to get in a run in downtown Houston. I wanted to run the trail by the river, but there were police blocking the trail who told me that I should stick to running downtown, so I did just that.

My morning run

During our Ohio Caucus, we listened to campaign speeches for candidates for the NEA Directors. We also discussed campaign strategy for our own candidate, Andrea Beeman. Katie, Bradley, and I volunteered to be a part of the Scream Team, which meant we passed out campaign literature and chanted for Andrea in the Convention Center for about an hour and a half on election day.

"We are screamin'! Vote for Beeman!"
John, Bradley, Me, Terry, Katie

As a member of the OEA Elections Committee, I had to be an Observer, which at first meant I just directed people to the ballot boxes, made sure there were enough pencils, and told voters not to fold their ballots. Then, when the ballot boxes were transferred to be counted, we had to watch the counting process and collectively solve problems for any situations that might arise. The ballots are scanned and counted electronically; it looks like you are running them through a mini-printer. Sometimes the machine spits back a ballot--for example, a bubble wasn't dark enough--and the committee decides whether the bubble was actually blackened or not. There were no real problems with the ballots, so counting was pretty uneventful but instructive.

Our reward for a long day of work was a group outing to The Truckyard, a restaurant/music venue that rotates in food trucks and has all kinds of music and fun.  I ate some amazing duck sliders and resisted the urge to ride the mini ferris wheel.

Katie, Bradley and I enjoyed our sandwiches!

Then we moved on to Axelrad, an outdoor music venue where the main seating is hammocks!  Hammocks everywhere!

Fellow NEOEA Delegates

Chillaxin' at Axelrad

Want to read more about the NEA RA? Want to know about Caucus voting, fundraising, and BS Bingo? Maybe you might like to read about 10 Democratic Presidential Candidates who spoke to us? If so, continue to follow our journey.  Stay tuned for our next post.

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