Education Support Professionals Blog

Our friends at the NEA have shared a wealth of information about the Child Nutrition Bill that is working its way through Congress. This is a good time to contact your congressional representatives to advocate for the bill. Following is the latest (July 8) from the NEA:

The Child Nutrition bill is  legislation directly affecting millions of students and thousands of food service workers in the public schools. These are the folks providing healthy meals to students so they can focus and learn better in the classroom. Our support for a good bill that continues to provide resources workers need to do their job is critical to students achieving in their lessons successfully.

The story to date: The Senate passed its version of this bill out of the Agriculture Committee in March. Our letter on the Senate bill can be found here…  http://www.nea.org/home/38662.htm . The NEA fact sheet is here...

One of WEAC’s priorities is school funding reform. This spring (Yep, it is spring) locals are engaging their communities and legislators to educate them on the need for school funding reform. We want to “Move Education Forward” by reforming the school funding system. And while I know that ESP members across the state believe in this concept, I’ve heard from some of you that you don’t know if or where you belong in this campaign.

 

If you haven’t heard it before, you are hearing it now, YOUR involvement is critical to the success of school funding reform.

 

Why does school funding reform matter to ESP?

 

Well, I ask you this question, “What happens if you don’t get involved?” I hear all too often that ESP members are the first to get cut when layoffs arrive. This instills some fear in all of us, I know. But if ...

The following news release was issued by the National Education Association from the ESP Conference in Las Vegas:

Helen Cottongim, a school bus driver from Florence, Kentucky, was honored as the National Education Association’s 2010 ESP of the Year.

America’s nearly 3 million education support professionals—more commonly known as ESPs—comprise 43 percent of the public school workforce. There are nine types of ESPs who work ‘behind the scenes’ at the country’s public schools and higher education institutions.  From bus drivers and teacher’s aides to food service workers and custodians, ESPs keep schools and colleges clean, safe and healthy.

“Education support professionals are the glue who hold our public schools together,” said NEA President Dennis Van Roekel.  “Without them, education in America’s public schools would come to a screeching halt.  The school doors would be closed and a student’s options in life would be drastically limited. Helen Cottongim is a shining ...

From the Editor's Blog

WEAC members attending the NEA ESP Conference March 12-14 in Las Vegas will have the opportunity to attend a Social Media workshop that includes hands-on instruction on the use of Blogger, Twitter, Facebook and more. Some participants will even have the opportunity to serve as reporters, posting videos and photos of the conference, tweeting from workshops, maybe recording an audio interview or two.

For those lucky enough to be attending the conference, the session is scheduled from 8 to 10 a.m. Saturday morning.

If you are unable to attend, you still can follow conference news through the links below.

For those familiar with the use of Twitter hashtags, the conference will be using #neaesp.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=10150100363400245

http://neaesp2010.blogspot.com/

http://twitter.com/neaesp2010

By Marie Knutson
NEA ESP At Large Director

When you first look at the title of this blog entry you are possibly saying, “What are National Classified School Employees?” This is another name for Education Support Professionals (ESP) that is used in a number of other states. There is a bill being introduced, H.R. 2377, the National Classified School Employees of the Year Award bill, that recognizes the hard, important work of often unrecognized professionals who transport, feed and keep our students safe, who clean our schools and keep them running, etc.

Take Action! Find out who your House member is and contact him or her. Or call their office (Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-3121) and ask them: Will you support H.R. 2377?

Wow! When I first heard about this my thought was, “Do you mean someone will know I am part of the education team?” I have ...

Applications for the 2010-2011 NEA ESP Leaders for Tomorrow program are now available. The first session will be held July 21-25, 2010, in Minneapolis. The second session will be held November 12-15, 2010, in Washington, D.C., and the third session (which includes attendance to the NEA ESP National Conference) will be held March 6-13, 2011, at a location to be determined.

All applicants must have a letter of acknowledgement signed by the State Affiliate President or Executive Director. This letter is not an endorsement of the candidate, but rather an acknowledgement by state affiliate leadership that they are aware of who is applying. Applications be received in the WEAC President’s office by March 15, 2010, for acknowledgement and submission to the NEA by their due date.

Leaders for Tomorrow is open to any NEA ESP member – from K-12 and Higher Education – who is currently an ESP member and ...

Health Care Reform: Should we tax current health benefits?

By WEAC ESP Organizer Kim Wiemer Noyce (courtesy of the Health Care Reform Workgroup)

As part of health care reform, Congress is considering taxing individuals with health benefits with premiums costing more than the threshold determined by Congress. Many ESP members have bargained to maintain their quality health benefits, some at the cost of wages.

If an excise tax was imposed, what impact would that have on your household finances?

It's clear to us that the excise tax would have severe, unintended consequences. It would harm our members by taxing higher-cost health care plans.

An excise tax will not control health care costs and would cause workers to lose health benefits without compensatory salary increases. Our negotiations experience tells us that benefits would be cut if the tax proposal became law.

The excise tax will hit retirees hard since those between ...

By Kim Wiemer-Noyce

You may or possibly will be hearing about Race to the Top money. You might be thinking, “What is it Race to the Top and how does it impact me, an Education Support Professional?” Well, the ESP Blog is here to help.

Background on Race to the Top
Race to the Top (“RTT”) is one of the competitive grant programs funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, under which the federal government will award $4.35 billion in funding over the course of 2010.

Although every state is eligible to apply for the Race to the Top grant money or “award,” only a small subset of states (10) are expected to receive the grant money. The decision on which states receive the grant money will be made on a competitive basis by grading each state’s applications on a 500-point scale. It’s possible that Wisconsin will ...

The SLUE ESP Committee, from left to right: SLUE ESP Committee Chair John Linneman, Mary Anderson, Jan Jecevicus, WEAC Secretary-Treasurer Betsy Kippers, Arlene Braden, and SLUE UniServ President Ron Brandt.

What better way to celebrate Education Support Professionals (ESP) Day than by sharing your ESP victories? Southern Lakes United Educators' (SLUE) ESP Committee set the stage for a wonderful ESP Day program with more than 120 members in attendance all celebrating the year’s successes on the local, state, and national level.

WEAC Secretary-Treasurer Betsy Kippers began the evening recognizing all ESP members across the state and various ESP victories. Betsy highlighted the efforts of all ESP members across the state in making huge strides in ESP Retirement Equity so ESP members are treated more fairly under the Wisconsin Retirement System. She continued on to comment on other changes ESP members help encourage.

“I’m pleased to say Wisconsin has new rules about ...

Last week's National ESP Day was a huge success that focused well-deserved attention on the Education Support Professionals who play such a key role in making our public schools great. Schools throughout the state and nation paid special tribute to ESP as part of American Education Week.

One of the more interesting national tributes came in the form of a video produced by Indiana member Mary Neylon. The video is called simply A Day Without ESP.

The approach is simply to imagine what a day without Education Support Professionals would be like. No bus drivers, no custodians, no food service professionals, no secretaries, no paraprofessionals, no school nurses. It illustrates just how important every education support professional is to the daily lives of our students and our schools. "ESPs play a vital role in children's lives," according to the narration. "They are the first people parents and students see in ...