At NEA Representative Assembly, Educators Prepare to Make an Impact in 2020
Galvanized by the historic mobilization of public school educators that caught the attention of the entire nation, educators converged on the George E. Brown convention center in Houston, Texas on July 4 for the 157th National Education Association Representative Assembly (RA). The theme of the 2019 RA was Our Democracy. Our Responsibility. Our Time! After four busy and exciting days, the more than 6,000 delegates left Houston ready to carry the momentum of the #RedforEd movement into 2020 and play a pivotal in choosing the next president.
“This movement has created something better for millions of students and educators, but it’s bigger than that,” NEA President Lily Eskelsen GarcÃa told delegates in her keynote address. ” We’ve created something better for communities—for this country that we love.”
And that unnerves people like Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and the army of billionaires who are funding the school privatization schemes that driver her agenda. But if we are to bring real change, Eskelsen GarcÃa said, we need to look to the top.
Electing a new U.S. president in November 2020, she said, should be a priority of anyone who cares about public education. And public school educators should not shy away from working toward that goal.
“Political action isn’t subversive,” Eskelsen GarcÃa said. “It’s the essence of democracy. … We will use our collective power to listen and learn and teach and reach and engage and organize and convince.”
At this year’s RA, NEA took a big first step in leading the conversation around public CONTINUE READING: At NEA Representative Assembly, Educators Prepare to Make an Impact in 2020
