Educator Day on the Hill

As an educator and member of our United Teaching Profession, I am pleased and proud of what our UEA and DEA lobby teams do for us. Without this valuable service provided by our association, we would be totally at the mercy of our lawmakers without any recourse for the far-reaching influence they have in what happens to us as employees personally and in our classrooms. I have seen this service first-hand.

Friday, March 5, I was on the hill and left encouraged by the wonderful support we have from a number of our lawmakers and the friendly way they treat us. Others I feel see us as "over-educated peasants" who should be seen in our classrooms and not heard advocating for our students. As we approach caucus time we need as many educators elected delegates as possible so that our voice is heard in a much more influential way. Your elected representatives will respond to you in a totally different way if they know you are a delegate in their senate or house district. The only way we can increase our "clout" as teachers is to be responsible for electing education-friendly legislators in the actual general election--county and state party conventions.

Richard Heath
DEA Executive Board

Tomorrow is the final UEA Educator Day on the Hill. We have five teachers currently planning to attend. Thursday is the final day of the legislature. As it closes, we will begin to get a picture of the total funding for next school year.