2015 PBS LearningMedia Digital Innovator

2015 PBS LearningMedia Digital Innovator

Thursday, July 11, 2019

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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