Take It to Your Union Leader--She's Just Down the Hall

Photo by Matt Ferguson

An Illinois local affiliate takes the members' pulse and gains influence in its district.

NEA Local Affiliate:
Indian Prairie (Illinois) Education Association (IPEA).

The Numbers:
IPEA has signed up 99-plus percent of eligible teachers, tripling in size over five years to about 1,830 members.

Where This Local has come From:
Spread over a fast-growing Chicago suburb, this NEA local affiliate could have been plowed under as quickly as the old prairie farmland that has sprouted 34 school buildings. During 1995 contract talks, IPEA's relationship with the preK-12 Indian Prairie Community Unit School District 204 was poor and its communications with members pitiful--they rejected a tentative agreement. One legacy of that bargaining round: Teacher pay remained low and staff turnover was high.

Where This Local has Gone:
Today, IPEA is a "real player" in District 204 and teachers want to stay--and learn. Through a joint campaign in 2001 with parents and the community, IPEA members won referenda to boost teacher pay and build new schools. They then bargained a three-year contract with a 20 percent increase in the first year.

This year's pay scale ranges from $36,500 for a beginning teacher to $90,439 for a Ph.D. with 23 years of service. "People are going back to school in droves," marvels fifth-grade teacher Mary White, the IPEA president. "We have a lot of master's and Ph.D.s!"

How They Got There:
The 1995 contract package was only improved when IPEA began to really listen to its members, creating a Building Network Team with representation from every school. Quite simply, says White, the team "gave better bargaining information to members and got their feedback."

IPEA steadily gained influence by extending the network team's approach--lots of communication and consultation--beyond union members to district administrators. In 2001, the local and district bargained a joint Teacher Administrator Communications Team (TACT) to address "items of mutual concern" on an ongoing basis, with "input and feedback on the issue at hand" from IPEA members.

A Union 'President' in Every School:
Gathering that input is something quite unique to IPEA: a 35-member Senate. Each senator "is well-informed about key issues and serves, in effect, as union 'president' for members in his or her building," says UniServ Director Deana Welch.

The senators, who are all elected, are "accountable and work closely with the members," adds local President White. "We encourage them to bring problems to local leaders and to ask for strategies to help them through 'situations.' We also encourage them to meet with their principals to resolve issues--and let us know the results."

Solutions to Situations:
"If teachers have a problem, be it something regarding the contract or something interpersonal, they usually come to me or the principal advises them to come to me; she and I are usually able to solve things in the building," says gifted resources teacher Emmy White, a senator at Welch Elementary.

White and Association Representatives Joanne Hanley, Jill Hodel, and Karen Ringas use IPEA's constant stream of e-mails, fact sheets, and newsletters to keep members, especially new teachers, aware of their rights--in every area from transfers to tuition reimbursement. "It's important that members know what's going on in the broader sense, especially at contract time," Senator White stresses. "Our new teachers get good support, even when it's an answer to a question about benefits for a husband who has lost a job in this economy."

A Real Say in the Association:
IPEA leaders have "done a wonderful job in creating a system to manage tremendous growth," concludes Alice Vandersteen, field services director of the Illinois Education Association-NEA. "By making senators at the grassroots level responsible for working things out with principals, they've gotten this local affiliate 'deep into the buildings' and given members a real say. Sure, there's a lot of process--both consultation and meetings--but District 204 administrators don't do anything without checking first with the IPEA leadership."

--Dave Winans

Fore more, contact IPEA President Mary White at Mary_white@ipsd.org.