Lunch lady rises to teachers union leader and takes on all comers, bluntly
On Sept. 1, Lily Eskelsen García becomes president of the National Education Association, the largest labor union in the country. She was photographed at the NEA building in Washington. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)
It is an unlikely story: The lunch lady rises to run the nation’s largest labor union.
That’s what will happen in three weeks when Lily Eskelsen García, 59, a telegenic, guitar-slinging firebrand takes the helm of the National Education Association, which is facing the most daunting political challenges in its 157-year history. She is already fighting back with blunt talk, urging teachers nationwide to revolt against “stupid” education reforms and telling politicians to leave teaching to the professionals.
Her first priority: Putting the brakes on standardized testing, an issue she believes will resonate not only with her members but also with parents — important potential allies for the political clashes she sees ahead. García believes the country is in the grip of testing mania, the quest for high scores killing joy, narrowing curriculums and perverting the learning process.
“I’ll be damned if I will sit quietly and play nice and say diplomatic things about something that has corrupted the profession I love,” García said.
Stepping in as the first new president in six years, García is taking over a union that is at war with old antagonists and increasingly sparring with its longtime allies.
Lily Eskelsen greets a supporter on Election Day in November 1998. Eskelsen ran for a House seat that year in Utah, losing to the incumbent, Republican Merrill Cook. (Ravell Call/Deseret (Utah) Morning News)
While Republicans are aiming to weaken teachers unions through policies such as private-school vouchers and legal battles over dues collection, the unions also are colliding with Democrats who arechallenging bedrock labor rightssuch as seniority and teacher tenure. High-profile Democrats, such as Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, shocked teachers in June when they applauded a Los Angeles judge’s ruling that found California’s teacher tenure laws were unconstitutional. Last month, former CNN anchor Campbell Brown organized a similar lawsuit in New York and has pledged more to come in other states.
The NEA, which represents about one out of every 100 Americans, has been increasingly at odds with the Obama administration over testing and teacher evaluations, among other issues. That tension reached a boil in July, when the NEA — historically the more reticent of the two major Lunch lady rises to teachers union leader and takes on all comers, bluntly - The Washington Post:
