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In the latter half of 2007 and early 2008, WEAC officers crisscrossed the state to talk with members about the issues they face every day, and how we can all work together for meaningful change on a statewide level. From Rhinelander to Milwaukee, from Platteville to Cedarburg, several themes came up time and time again.
School Funding. Health Care. Professional Development and Licensure. Achievement Gaps. Member Engagement.
These are WEAC’s 2008-2010 Strategic Priorities – the areas on which the organization will focus its efforts. The priorities weren’t developed randomly. They are the direct result of feedback from members across the state, as well as spirited debate by WEAC committees, UniServ representatives and ultimately the Board of Directors.
The five priorities are all of equal importance. They tie together past efforts of the union with aspirations for the future, with a clear focus on moving members to action.
President Mary Bell and Executive Director Dan Burkhalter sat down together to explain the priorities you will be hearing a lot more about in the coming months and why they are important to WEAC members everywhere. Below is a summary of the conversation.
 Mary Bell |
Q: Why do we need priorities?
President Bell: Priorities are at the center of all we do. Our priorities determine our actions as an organization and what we put our efforts behind. Priorities direct us as to how our time is best spent and how we talk about what we stand for as a union.
Q: How did you choose five priorities?
President Bell: In the past, it wasn’t uncommon for WEAC to have more than 20 priorities identified for a two-year period. We had to decide – together as a union – what it is that we are really after. The officers, Board of Directors, WEAC staff, local leaders and UniServ representatives sat down and talked about what we heard from members after meeting with them in their own communities. We looked at who we are and what we can collectively accomplish.
From our first conversations, it was clear these five priorities are areas that need to be addressed in order to make a difference for our members. There were endless hours of meetings and thorough debates by the Board of Directors to determine what we mean when we talk about these priorities.
Q: What are the hopes for focusing on School Funding Reform as a priority?
President Bell: It is evident to each of our members that school funding is broken. It’s been the center of what we’ve talked about as we moved from local to local.
This broken school funding formula forces new members to choose between staying in the profession and having jobs that can support their families. The WEAC Board of Directors has identified measures of success for school funding reform, and they include offering a comprehensive education to kids and fair compensation for members. Our members should not be made to feel guilty about their profession or the service they provide. They shouldn’t be made to feel that the health insurance they get pushes another member out of a job or takes a program away from a student.
Through the School Funding Reform priority, WEAC is calling for high quality comprehensive public education, funded through a fair and equitable tax system, to be provided to all Wisconsin citizens, with authority for local decision-making, adequate resources to meet the needs of students and competitive professional compensation.
Q: Why choose Health Care Reform as a top priority?
President Bell: We know that under the Qualified Economic Offer we’ve been sacrificing salary increases for health insurance. But our commitment to Health Care Reform is much bigger. Our members care deeply for kids and their families because we all know that health care is also a learning issue.
Through broad support from a well-informed WEAC membership, public, medical and business community, Wisconsin’s model health care reforms will control costs while providing a baseline of coverage for all citizens with provisions for additionally bargained coverage.
Q: Who benefits from making Professional Development & Licensure a priority?
President Bell: Everyone. Clearly, in the last few years new laws have required educators to focus more attention than ever on these areas. We have a new generation of teachers and support staff dealing with these new laws, and under revenue controls many school districts cannot be as supportive as they should be.
As a professional organization, we are stepping up to provide quality pre-service education through meaningful professional development and licensing support. This includes programs for education support professionals and higher education members, too. For instance, more than 8,200 members have completed the WEAC Professional Development Academy’s ESP Certification Program since its inception.
This priority symbolizes the profession taking charge of the profession. Your professional development should belong to you, with support from your union and financing from your district.
Q: What can the union do about the Achievement Gap?
President Bell: Plenty, in partnership with community, family and schools. We can advocate for the resources required to allow all children to become 21st century citizens to pursue and achieve their dreams regardless of gender, ethnicity, race, disability or economic status.
This issue is very close to the hearts of our members. There’s not one who doesn’t have a story about the kids for whom they’ve made a difference – and the kids they can’t. The frustration of not being able to meet the needs of all our students drives us to do more, to do better. And criticism that fails to recognize the unique challenges faced by children in poverty drives us to fight for needed resources and to bring that issue forward into a public conversation.
This is a poverty gap. Our communities, our corporations and our state government all have to help us in stepping up to the plate.
Q: How can we get members involved?
President Bell: To strengthen our efforts toward progressive change in the educational and political arenas at local, state and national levels, our union must pay close attention on how to serve our members and what members value. We must bring into our union people who might not understand the union’s important role in their daily work. We must focus on the groups who are already organized, as well as those groups who are not yet organized.
It’s critical that we look at the number of members we have in the state because it affects how we pay for services and programs. Our Board and committees told us that most members understand that the union offers support for bargaining and grievances, but many members don’t identify the union as a place to go for other support.
We want to make sure that people understand what’s available to them and why being involved is so important. There’s great history in the battles that our union has won – such as due process and retirement. These were critical needs of members. We now need to identify the critical needs of the future and make sure we are all working together to fight those new battles.
Q: Who could possibly move all of these priorities forward?
President Bell: Together, we can. We are very optimistic in what we see in our members and what we hear when we talk to business, government and political folks. They understand the desperate situation many of our schools are in and the absolute need to invest in education for economic development more than ever.
But it’s going to take the voices of our members in their communities with opinion makers. It’s members who must tell the story of why it matters – over and over and over again. Turn out for elections. Talk to everyone you can to reinforce why you care about these things and want to act on them.
 Dan Burkhalter |
Q: What is WEAC doing internally to drive these reforms?
Executive Director Burkhalter: WEAC’s organizational principles help drive the priorities: it is through the principles that the organization can deliver on the priorities. We consider these principles as part of everything we do. WEAC has worked hard to build a foundation for moving to action on the five priorities, all based on our principles.
The principles are:
Q: What are examples of these principles in action?
Executive Director Burkhalter: The calls the WEAC officers are making to presidents of UniServs and locals are examples of these principles – they are working to be sure WEAC is a healthy organization and supporting locals in any way they can. The feedback the officers are receiving is remarkable. We want to be sure local leaders know they are not out there alone and that they are WEAC, so their ideas are important.
Another example is developing relationships for common goals such as WEAC’s work with coalitions like the Wisconsin Way, Healthy Wisconsin and the School Finance Network.
Q: I’ve heard about Local Activist Meetings. How does that fit in?
Executive Director Burkhalter: This is an example of building strong locals. We all know that grassroots efforts are important, and these Local Activist Meetings bring together our members in their own communities, helping them to see what they can do to forward WEAC’s five priorities locally.
Q: Why do we need to be concerned with developing the right power relationships, especially in the political sense?
Executive Director Burkhalter: Public education, by its nature, is political. It’s public. If our voice isn’t added to the political process, others will make their voices heard. We can’t just be in our classrooms, because there is a larger arena. If we don’t raise our voices for our profession and for children, somebody else will fill that vacuum. We’ve seen who that is – supporters of privatization and vouchers.
Q: Is there a timeline for accomplishing the goals we’ve set out to achieve?
Executive Director Burkhalter: There are two timelines that drive our policy reform agenda. The first is the 2008 Election Partnership Plan, designed to elect candidates to the Legislature that share our values. The second is the next legislative and state budget session, between January and July next year, when school funding reform and health care reform must be considered.
Q: I know members across the state are being urged to “Move to Action.” Where are we right now on our priorities?
Executive Director Burkhalter: The WEAC Board of Directors has set our union’s priorities and now the Representative Assembly has set our union’s budget. Now we are working with UniServ governance, along with state and local activists, to design an action plan to advance our policy reform agenda, kicking off that action at the start of the school year in the fall.
Posted May 1, 2008