News
'We All Face the Same Issues!'

Georgia drivers to lobby for safer school buses, better compensation.

They're underpaid, get a pittance for a pension, and are shut out of discipline and safety decisions by administrators. And until recently, a certain group of school bus drivers in rural northwestern Georgia thought nobody else knew this or cared.

But then these education support professionals met Jill Travis, an 11-year driver from Rockdale County in the populous Metro Atlanta region.

To the drivers' surprise, Travis knew their issues well and could speak about legislation now being proposed by the Georgia Association of Educators/NEA to address those concerns.

"You thought you were all alone out here," this suburban driver told her rural colleagues. "But you see you're not alone. We're all facing a lot of the same issues, and we can either address them through many little whispers or one big voice."

When they're not behind the wheel, Travis and other driver members of GAE's statewide ESP Committee take this unity message and a GAE membership appeal to transportation employees across the Peach State.

ESP organizing isn't easy in Georgia's non-bargaining environment, but it is producing real momentum.

That movement is evident in everything from the reinstatement last spring of an unfairly terminated North Fulton County bus driver to the consensus that has emerged from GAE-run "best practice" conferences and occupational meetings for ESP across the state.

"Best practice" feedback on the needs of all kinds of ESP--from paraeducators to food service employees--has given the ESP Committee an incredibly strong sense of direction.

Now that panel, chaired by Travis, aims to put its data to work through legislative initiatives on behalf of each ESP constituency group.

First at bat: GAE's growing force of bus drivers. The committee has worked with GAE staff to draft a proposed Safe School Bus Act, and it has found a supporter in Lieutenant Governor Mark Taylor, who will introduce the bill in the state Senate in January.

In broad terms, the proposed legislation addresses:

• Better pay and benefits for school bus drivers. To recruit and retain safe, dedicated drivers, Georgia must pay these professionals what they're worth.

  At present, drivers only get a retirement benefit of $12 per month. "That's just $360 a month after 30 years," fumes Travis. "What's left after taxes and health benefits are taken out?"

• Strong bus safety standards. Georgia drivers are calling for improvements like uniform disciplinary standards and procedures, student codes of conduct, maximum seating capacity, and monitors on buses with high rates of student discipline.

  "A big complaint," reports UniServ Director Mark Perez, "is that when drivers go to administrators with disciplinary problems, they get little or no support. Too often these professionals are considered 'just drivers' who have nothing to do with educating a child."

  "Metro Atlanta drivers are particularly concerned about safety," adds Jill Travis. "They deal with a lot of traffic and car drivers who 'can't see' a school bus. And too often, a child who's a model student inside the building can become disruptive when he's stuck for 20 to 40 minutes on the bus with an audience. We'd like input in discipline."

• Better bus equipment, from automatic mirror defrosters to air conditioning. On a breezeless summer day under the hot Georgia sun, the interior of a school bus can reach 125 degrees, even with doors and windows open. "Special needs children definitely need air conditioning," Travis says, "and older drivers just can't deal with that intense heat."

• Driver access to critical student information like prior disciplinary records and medical needs. "Drivers now don't have the right to know about a child's ailments because administrators think they'll gossip about them," notes Perez. "But these professionals can be held just as accountable for confidentiality as teachers."

  "I'm not going to share that confidential information. I just need to know," stresses Travis. "What if a child is prone to an asthma attack during an emergency bus evacuation? I need medical details to give EMTs, so they can check on certain kids in an emergency."

• Non-retaliation guarantees for bus drivers. Across Georgia, Travis hears about retaliation against drivers who complain to superintendents or transportation directors about bus safety problems.

  "Some drivers," she laments, "get tired of all the intimidation and leave. They were just trying to do a job safely for the children they carry."

Will Georgia drivers gain everything from better pay to air-conditioned buses in the next legislative session?

"Rome wasn't built in a day," Travis tells doubting non-members. "Drivers may not be the top priority in the next education budget, but we may get some things immediately.

"We're building an initial foundation so that we can come back each year with our priorities--and start to make positive changes for all ESP."

And the bigger the Association membership, the faster those changes will come.

To read GAE's proposed Safe School Bus Act, go to www.gae.org/teamesp. To contact Jill Travis, send an E-mail to jilljtravis@aol.com.

Kudos to. . .

. . . Education support professionals in The Dalles, Oregon, who have finally become part of the NEA family after three representation election attempts over 11 years. By a 68-18 margin, they voted in the fall to affiliate with the Oregon Education Association.

It wasn't a hard choice to make. The ESPs' old bargaining agent had offered them neither solid information nor a real voice during their own contract talks, while OEA-represented Dalles teachers were steadily becoming more empowered and assertive.

"Support professionals were saying, 'We'd be where teachers are right now if we had OEA training and representation," notes UniServ Consultant Catherine Alexander.

Now The Dalles ESPs will have their chance to grow. At press time, they held their first real union meeting, formed elections and by-laws committees, and received Association training to represent themselves effectively at the bargaining table. Stay tuned.

. . . Nurses in the Delaware Division of Public Health and Delaware Hospital for the Chronically Ill have negotiated a non-salary agreement that improves, among other things, the hours of training, disciplinary rights, and malpractice reimbursement. Moreover, public health nurses have prevented the imposition of a longer workday and workweek, while DHCI nurses have doubled their annual uniform allowance--from $75 to $150--and made the holiday selection procedure both fair and equitable.

Your dues did it
South African Educators Spread Wings

NEA continues tradition of aiding new teachers' union.

It's tempting to say that the South African Democratic Teachers Union has accomplished as much in its 11 years of existence as NEA has in 144 years. Today the 215,000-member SADTU, which represents two-thirds of South Africa's public school teachers, is a tough negotiator at the public sector bargaining table and the key player in national education debates.

But SADTU's biggest accomplishment is its role, as part of a political/labor coalition, in peacefully dismantling apartheid, a legislated system of racial segregation that brutalized South African society from 1948 to 1991.

Apartheid was bolstered by the country's public schools, which were funded unequally and administered through 13 separate national education departments, divided along lines of race or ethnicity.

Black students, funded at one-eighth the level of white children, were instructed with a curriculum that included little math and science and focused on rote learning. The goal: create a passive class of manual laborers.

Teachers, too, were trapped in apartheid's web. "Non-European" educators received one year less of training than their white counterparts, and the entire teaching force was splintered among dozens of small, weak unions.

But what a difference a decade makes.

In 1990, South African teachers merged many of their unions into SADTU, the "first unitary, non-racial, non-sexist national union" for educators.

SADTU went on to help elect a democratic, multiracial government in 1994, which quickly created one single national education department and school system.

What does this little history lesson have to do with you?

"NEA was always there to support us, even in the darkest days of apartheid," stresses David Segweng Moreothata, a SADTU negotiator.

Before 1991, NEA frequently participated in protests at the South African embassy in Washington, D.C., testified in Congress for sanctions against the apartheid regime, and played a leadership role in an international anti-racism coalition.

NEA also paid for the legal defense of South African teacher leaders and even helped fund the founding meeting of SADTU.

Today, SADTU stands on its own feet and pays its own bills. But it faces challenges that would daunt our 144-year-old Association.

SADTU is working to reverse the legacy of apartheid. It's pushing for goals like spending equity, better professional development (one-third of South African teachers are still underqualified), and a curriculum that balances knowledge and skills with values like tolerance, democracy, and human rights.

This young union knows it'll age quickly if it tries to reinvent the wheel. That's why a four-member SADTU delegation, headed by Moreothata, recently conducted "best practice" research in the United State on issues ranging from professional development to gender equity.

These visitors found a willing guide in a longtime friend--NEA.

The South African delegation met with NEA program staff, visited public schools, and attended NEA's Priority Schools Initiative conference in Atlanta.

Shermain Mannah, a SADTU education expert, says she's been intrigued by American professional development schools linked to higher ed institutions and NEA's work on "public conversations" designed to build community support for public schools.

"We're finding from school visits and talks with professional development staff," Mannah concludes, "that our two countries have a lot of similarities regarding issues of language, equity, and professional development. There's a lot we can learn from here."

Delegation leader Moreothata has been inspired by NEA conference discussions on ways to teach students in struggling schools. The message he'll take home: "You must put your personal interests aside and extend more to the child before you 'label' him--and make the curriculum more interesting and fun."

"I wish the director of our national department of education would come to NEA!" laughs Mannah.

Our door is always open.

For more on the South African Democratic Teachers Union, go to www.sadtu.org.za.