Wisconsin Delegates Prepare for NEA RA
More
than 350 teachers and education support professionals from Wisconsin
will gather in Washington, D.C., July 4-7 for the 2004 NEA Representative
Assembly.
The 9,000 NEA delegates will gather at Washington Convention Center
to recommend a candidate for U.S. president, rally around efforts to
fix and fund the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and set policy
for the NEA’s 2.7 million members.
The NEA’s Representative Assembly is the largest democratic,
deliberative body in the world. This year's theme is “Team NEA:
Uniting the Nation for Great Public Schools.”
The NEA Board of Directors passed a motion encouraging all delegates
to wear or bring items on July 4 showing their family members' participation
in or support for the armed services.
Prior to the Representative Assembly, delegates and other NEA members
will participate in a wide range of pre-convention meetings, conferences
and forums, ranging from curing the health care system to closing the
student achievement gap.
Other highlights:
- More than 250 NEA volunteers through the annual Outreach To Teach
program will paint, landscape, clean and make repairs to Longfield
Elementary School in Forestville, Maryland.
- Experts will explore critical education issues, societal trends
affecting students and education employees, the latest educational
research and more at the 19th Annual Joint Conference on Concerns
of Minorities and Women.
- At the Symposium on Critical Issues for Educators, academics, labor
specialists and consumer advocates will address the health care crisis
facing the education community. Also, Ronald Ferguson of Harvard University’s
Kennedy School of Government will discuss policies and practices needed
to close the student achievement gap.
- Thirteen winners, many of them educators, will be honored at the
38th Annual NEA Human and Civil Rights Awards Dinner. The annual awards
commemorate the 1966 merger of NEA and the American Teachers Association—an
historic African-American professional organization—and celebrate
our multicultural roots.
- The 2004 National Teacher of the Year Kathy Mellor, an English
as a Second Language (ESL) teacher at Davisville Middle School in
North Kingstown, Rhode Island, will address the delegates on the importance
of partnerships between schools, families and the community.
- The delegates will recognize Allyson “Sunny” Story,
a teacher’s aide at Grant Elementary School in Cedar Rapids,
Iowa, as NEA’s Education Support Professional of the Year.
- Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children’s
Defense Fund, will receive the 2004 Friend of Education Award for
her tireless efforts to improve child development programs, child
care and health care, and to eradicate childhood poverty.
For more information about the NEA’s Representative Assembly,
visit www.nea.org/annualmeeting.
Posted June 18, 2004