'We Want Some Kind of Say'

Arizona support professionals create a local from scratch. Their formula: numbers, leadership, and vision.

Photo by Saul Loeb

It's a Southern Arizona portrait: a mining town—San Manuel—with a closed mine and little to show but near-empty stores and $8-an-hour jobs. But look beyond the smokeless smokestacks of BHP Copper, once the nation's largest underground copper mine, and you'll see something truly beautiful: the Galiuro Mountains, the stands of cactus, and a rock-solid local community in which neighbors help neighbors in need.

There isn't an education support professional (ESP) in Mammoth-San Manuel Unified School District #8 who didn't feel the shock waves of BHP's abrupt shutdown in 1999, which threw some 3,000 people out of work. But this economic tsunami never washed away San Manuel's union tradition or its community spirit. Both live on in the Arizona Education Association's (AEA) newest affiliate, the Mammoth-San Manuel ESP Association (MSMESPA).

Like their resilient community, which has reinvented itself as a retirement destination, MSMESPA members have dusted themselves off and built an Association from nothing, independently of teachers. They organized last December, and by March MSMESPA was at 60 percent of potential membership and still growing.

The odds against success were high. Arizona's a right-to-work state, in which ESPs are legally "at-will" employees without the right of due process (an AEA legislative priority). Worse yet, at the beginning of each school year every San Manuel ESP must sign a "letter of intent" declaring that he or she can be terminated "with or without reason, with or without notice."

But MSMESPA members, who are fast approaching their first goal of formal school board recognition, have much going for them: guidance and training from AEA, a positive relationship with the administration, and assertive leaders with lots of vision. "We've been through a lot of insecurity in this town," says MSMESPA President Judy Dykes, a once-unemployed BHP Copper receptionist who became the school district warehouse manager. "We want to make an impact on our future, we want open communications and proper information from the district, and we want some kind of say."

Local Secretary Linda Corona, a transportation/maintenance department secretary, reiterates: "We'd like to establish a good working relationship with the superintendent and school board to make sure our members receive fair wages and working conditions."

This new NEA local affiliate is already down that road. Superintendent Ron Rickel invites MSMESPA input on concerns such as bus driver hours, and the school board now pays more attention to the issues of everybody from para-educators to cleaning staffers.

"When we show up in big numbers at school board meetings," says Corona, "things aren't voted on so easily. They take a second look!"

—Dave Winans

More ESP stories in this issue:

• NEA members mourn death of Tennessee ESP
• New Mexico ESPs testify for a living wage
• ESPs share success stories from the school year