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Welcome to the Wisconsin Education Association Council!
What is WEAC?
Who are its Members
What is WEAC's History?
How Do I Join?
Welcome to the Wisconsin Education Association Council!
WEAC members work hard every day in Wisconsin’s schools, educating our children and making the future brighter for everyone who lives and works in Wisconsin. And WEAC’s staff members and leaders work hard every day to serve WEAC members.
When WEAC began organizing members in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Wisconsin’s schools had no set standards and many members qualified for food stamps and had no health insurance.
From those humble beginnings, Wisconsin’s public schools have become some of the best in the world, with the top score in the nation on the ACT college entrance exam for eight years running and a high school dropout rate that was tied for the lowest in 2000. WEAC has now grown to 92,000 members, and includes Wisconsin public school teachers and educational support personnel, retirees, technical college employees and student teachers.
Wisconsin’s schools are among the best because they have the best people working in them. The improvements for Wisconsin’s schools and education professions have not happened by accident or chance. They happened because generations of WEAC members made them happen.
The strength of WEAC lies in the efforts of members working together to accomplish common goals. While looking through this booklet you will see that members, working through their local associations and UniServ units, direct WEAC. In other words, you are WEAC and WEAC is you.
We hope you will take advantage of the many services and benefits that are made possible through the collective strength of our members. And we hope you will become active in our organization, whether it’s at the state, UniServ or local level, because active members are the heart of our collective organization.
Welcome, and please let us know what we can do to help.
Stan Johnson
President
The Wisconsin Education Association Council represents
the public policy, labor and professional interests of its 92,000 members.
WEAC is a strong voice for its members and for the 800,000 children in
Wisconsin public schools.
WEAC membership includes:
WEAC began as a statewide educational organization in 1853. For its first 108 years, membership included teachers and administrators. In the 1960s, following passage of a collective bargaining law for teachers, WEAC evolved into a pro-active teachers union. It was involved in many teacher strikes during the 1960s and early 1970s. Following the bitter 1974 Hortonville teachers strike in which all 84 teachers were fired, the Legislature passed the mediation-arbitration law, which created a system for resolving contract disputes without strikes. That law was severely weakened in 1993 by the Qualified Economic Offer law. Now labor strife has returned to many communities. In the 1980s and early 1990s, WEAC expanded its membership to education support staff, as well as UW, technical college and State of Wisconsin education and information professionals. WEAC is now one of the fastest growing state-level associations in the country.
You must complete an enrollment form, which is distributed
by members of your local association. These forms are frequently distributed
at special local meetings for new members
or through building representatives.
Updated July 23, 2001