If you work in a school district, are you part of the union

When I was in public school I was a union member. It’s not necessarily very helpful here in Texas, but I felt it was important.

I'm a teacher and have been in the union since I started 34 years ago. The union is very helpful in lots of matters, not just salary issues.

I've worked for two different school districts over 20 years. In my first position, I was in a union, and in my current position I am not.

I was the union president for 10 years.

I’ve been teaching for 35 years and I’ve always been a member.

Since unions for public schools are illegal in Texas, that would explain ineffectiveness.

Not an educator (I didn't get the patience gene from my generations-of-teachers parents), but I worked in our state NEA office's legal services group my last year in law school and first year after graduation, and I saw so much of the good that they can do, from legislation to negotiations to helping individual teachers.

Many years after I went to a different job, a friend's husband who's a teacher in the same state had what I believe boiled down to a personality conflict with his administration (I don't recall details, but I know it wasn't a "bad touches" thing), was suspended, and the school board wanted to fire him. When I found out, I reassured her she didn't need to worry, the office handles this sort of thing all the time and will help him. But, she said he wasn't a member of the union because "he thinks students' interests should come before teachers'," implying that the only reason to join the union is if you want more money (which he no doubt accepted as a result of the contract the union negotiated on everyone's behalf). Well, all righty, then. He did retain his job, but it cost them a LOT of money, and I believe took much longer than it would have if they'd had the experienced (all the same people I'd worked with 15+ years prior) folks I knew advocating for him. And you just never know when you might need someone to stand up for you. No matter how squeaky clean you are, it can and does happen.

Starting my 20th year as Lunch Lady. My district (small, rural) in NW Arkansas is not unionized, but not sure about bigger districts in he state, such as Hot Springs or Little Rock.

Hi!

You're doing amazing work, so you're not "only" a PT preschool teacher. You are necessary!

You raise a good question. The Janus v. AFSCME case out of Illinois made it all the way to the Supreme Court, and the result of that decision was that public union members cannot be made to pay what is called "fair share," which means that they do not have to pay dues to the collective bargaining agent, but are still covered under the contract. (No one was ever required to officially join.)

This means that a union is required to represent all parties covered under the bargaining agreement in order to protect the agreement. However, non-union members have NO VOICE in the contract issues. If a teacher decides not to join the union, we cannot protect that individual teacher with our legal resources should a non-contract issue arise. For example, we carry up to 1 million dollars in liability insurance through the IEA. Also, any EEOC complaints are not contractual (age, sex discrimination, for example) and thus we would not be able to provide legal assistance to non-members. In my state, that also means they wouldn't have access to free professional development, discounts, loan programs and more.

While there is financial obligation (and that's usually more challenging for our education support personnel because they're still generally wildly underpaid), we hope people understand that we're stronger as a collective organization. 

Definitely a union member. One of the things we bargained for was to have class sizes capped at 26. Other districts in our area have no class size cap so they have classes of 35 or more. This is awful for students. I am grateful for a lot of things we negotiated for, including pay, but the class size cap is a huge win for everyone.

I've been teaching for 12 years and have always been a union member. I know several teachers who don't believe in joining the union because they will never need anything from them, but they also don't understand the purpose of the union and what it does other than negotiate salaries.

This sucks. Our contract commits us to one staff meeting weekly after school.

I left my school, long story but mostly due to an incompetent staff member, and went to a new one last year and the superintendent's secretary was someone I have known for years. I went in to do my paperwork and I questioned the salary. She said, sign the paper and we'll change the salary after I talk to the super. Well, the superintendent refused to give me credit for both of my master's degrees and I was stuck with a salary that wasn't right. I should have taken that as an omen to the way the district functioned. As soon as school started, I went to the building rep and my salary was changed at the next board meeting.

Needless to say, I left that school and went back to my former school.  They fixed the reasons I left and so I feel good about it and I'm so happy to go back to a place with an excellent administration and that actually focuses on education and not parent pleasing.

I wasn't. Our dues were really expensive when I started and no way could I have afforded them on my beginning salary. After that, I just heard bad things about our union.

Last year, when I was volunteering, they had four reps in the lounge talking to teachers and you could hear them trying to get people to join and they were using fear tactics by using worst case scenarios and I couldn't help but think that sometimes people shouldn't be in the career and having them leave is a good idea.