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NEA Communications 202-822-7200

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 16, 1998

NEW ORLEANS -- Negotiating quality schools is the topic of a National Education Association (NEA) conference to be held here on Thursday, July 2. Meeting in the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, hundreds of NEA members from across the nation will learn about negotiating labor-management partnerships that can lead to greater student success. The Bargaining for Quality conference is one of several conferences that precede this year's NEA Representative Assembly, which will be held July 3-6 at the Convention Center.

"We have yet to exploit the full potential of collective bargaining as a vehicle for transforming schools," says NEA President Bob Chase, who will kick off the conference at 10 a.m. "To tap that potential, we have to liberate bargaining from old assumptions. The Association and management must come together -- confidently, cooperatively, and on equal terms -- to revitalize public education."

Chase has spent much of the last year touting the power of cooperation and collaboration in transforming schools. Under Chase's leadership, the National Education Association has embraced a new kind of unionism, which includes putting education quality issues at the forefront of all of its advocacy efforts, including lobbying and collective bargaining.

At the July 2 bargaining conference, participants will hear from Donald Ephlin, a member of the United Auto Workers negotiating team that produced the first ground-breaking contract with the Saturn Car Company. Also speaking will be Julia Koppich, one of the authors of United Mind Workers: Unions and Teaching in the Knowledge Society.

In addition, the conference will highlight unique contract agreements in areas such as peer assistance and review, professional development, and charter schools, as well as strategies on attaining that first contract or partnership agreement.

The bargaining conference runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Members of the news media may request press credentials to cover the event by calling NEA at (202) 822-7200.

The National Education Association is the nation's largest professional employee organization representing more than 2.7 million elementary and secondary teachers, higher education faculty, education support personnel, school administrators, retired educators, and students preparing to become teachers.

NEA Focus is a weekly online media newsletter with news and information about what National Education Association members are doing at national, state, and local levels to make things better for children, public schools, and America's future. For an e-mail subscription to NEA Focus, type "subscribe medialine" in the body of a message sent to Lyris@list.nea.org.