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Earning Respect Through Numbers

With grassroots lobbying, Kentucky ESP win new supporters--and passage of eight key bills.

Educational support personnel in Daviess County, Kentucky, were awestruck. There on a video--made by their NEA state affiliate-- was state Representative Larry Clark openly clashing with lobbyists for Kentucky's school boards and administrators.

The setting: a winter legislative hearing on an Association-backed bill to give ESP the same 12-month retirement credit enjoyed by Kentucky teachers.

The video showed one of the lobbyists grumbling that the retirement bill's 16-year, $29 million price tag was a "sizeable, immediate, unexpected, and unprepared-for cost to school districts."

"We heard two years ago you didn't have the money, and we heard it two years before that," shot back Representative Clark.

"If you needed big raises for superintendents, you'd be here to find the money somehow," the Louisville legislator snapped. "We have discriminated against classified employees long enough. Well, you're going to have to find the money this time!"

After viewing this and other video clips of Kentucky lawmakers speaking out for ESP earlier this year, a roomful of Daviess County support staffers "started cheering," reports school bus driver and local affiliate President Martha Hall.

"Those legislators were talking about how important we are and how, without us, the schools wouldn't run--we never hear that," Hall says. "Recogni-tion is sometimes worth as much as other things."

But you can't feed a family on recognition alone. That's why the 4,000-member Kentucky ESP Association teamed up with lawmakers earlier this year to pass eight bills that build on the momentum KESPA started in 1998--when it won 10-month retirement credit for classified employees and an ESP job security law that has since produced a 90 percent decline in terminations.

This year, KESPA closed the ESP benefit gap with teachers on using and banking sick leave. The NEA affiliate also won on retirement eligibility, gaining 12 months of service credit for ESP and ending the unjust requirement that classified employees must work 27 years to receive 20 years of credit and retirement medical benefits.

Grassroots KESPA lobbyists also won legislation that promotes student transportation safety, salary equity at Family Resource and Youth Service Centers, and tuition-free college education for ESP employees in "secondary area technology centers."

Finally, KESPA persuaded state lawmakers to create an Interim Joint Committee to study "inadequate and non-competitive" ESP salaries and report back during the next state legislative session in 2002.

"We'll testify before this committee," says KESPA President Nancy Toombs, "and bring along stubs of 13-cent and $6 paychecks that were eaten up by health care premiums, to show that our members--many of whom are single parents--can't survive on full-time salaries of $8,000 to $11,000.

"Our goal," adds Toombs, head custodian at South Heights Elementary in Henderson, "is to get the legislature to earmark money for adequate ESP raises, the same as it does for teachers."

KESPA has registered big progress legislatively in 2000 despite a daunting challenge: For the first time in 100 years, Kentucky's House and Senate are controlled by different parties.

"There was tremendous infighting and many bills were dying daily," notes KESPA Executive Director Dick Dickerson.

How, then, did a union of underpaid, under-recognized school support staffers successfully move eight bills?

Some clues:

• KESPA ran a bipartisan lobbying campaign. In both houses of the divided legislature, this NEA affiliate solicited bipartisan support.

  "For quite a while, we've been cultivating pro-education people in both parties," says Dickerson. "We attend every Republican and Democratic event to which we're invited, and we've made it clear that we will meet and work with people in both parties--even if they're anti-collective bargaining. KESPA is not a single-issue organization."

• KESPA grassroots lobbyists won the respect of legislators. "Legislators responded to the down-to-earth approach of our folks and our message that classified employees are underpaid, overworked, and frequently treated unfairly," Dickerson stresses.

  "Lawmakers were quite impressed by the statistics we were able to garner to back up our need for legislation," adds KESPA lobbyist Betty Watson. "Some legislators came on board when they realized that pressing ESP needs existed right in their own districts."

• KESPA knew how to turn on the heat. Through a finely tuned communications network--including bill monitoring via the Internet, phone trees, and a daily hotline--KESPA members knew exactly when to apply pressure in Frankfort, the state capital.

  Once alerted by staff monitoring the legislature, KESPA local affiliates in the Frankfort area dispatched volunteer lobbyists to committee hearings and even the Capitol cafeteria.

  Locals in outlying regions, meanwhile, deluged legislators with phone calls and E-mail messages.

  Even the 80 members of Daviess County KESPA made themselves heard.

  "We called Frankfort every day and night and some drivers E-mailed with their computers," says local President Martha Hall. "We had the switchboard glowing!"

  Better yet, Daviess County KESPA members "got non-members, friends, and relatives to inundate Frankfort with phone calls saying that we needed and deserved a 12-month retirement bill," Hall notes. "Many non-members who were active as lobbyists are now joining as full-fledged members!"

• KESPA knew the power of numbers. Martha Hall contends that something besides a sense of justice prompted legislators to respond to the needs of ESP, who comprise 60 percent of Kentucky's school employees.

  "When a politician talks to me, he sees five votes, and thinks 'Five votes for each phone call can make or break me,'" she points out.

  "It's amazing," concludes KESPA's Betty Watson. "Now that politicians are recognizing the contributions of ESP, this attitude is filtering down to administrators. They're finally saying, 'Maybe we haven't been treating these people as they should be treated.'"

  For more info on the Kentucky ESP Association, see www.kea.org/supportPersonnel/ or call 888/226-3500.

Kudos To ...
ESP Grievance Rights Saved in Idaho

. . . The Louisiana Association of Educators led a broad coalition--including the Associated Grocers, Inc.--in "shutting down" a bill authorizing school boards to use state dollars to contract out food services. "We did so much damage," says LAE President Mary Washington, "that the Senate vote to table the bill was overwhelming!"

. . . The Connecticut Education Association and its partners in the statewide Citizens Alliance for Public Education have derailed Governor John Rowland's proposal for a $500 tuition tax credit, which would have funneled state support to private schools and high- income families. Rowland's tax plan died this year thanks to CAPE's lobbying and media campaign. But it'll be back in 2001.

. . . Through intensive lobbying, cooperation with other unions, and a mass rally, the NEA-affiliated Hawaii State Teachers Association and University of Hawaii Professional Assembly have helped defeat legislation that would have gutted public sector bargaining.

. . . Lobbying by the Colorado Education Association and its allies has killed a provision in the state's new "education reform" law to abolish due process for newly hired teachers. Elimination of teacher due process is a top priority of Governor Bill Owens. He has pledged to pursue this goal in the 2001 session.