Bargaining prep, bargaining sessions, grievances, arbitrations, fact findings, professional development programs, editorial board meetings, legislative roundtables, PSEA-PACE fundraising.

This is a partial list of the work that PSEA has been engaged in recently. Behind the scenes, we are supporting you, promoting you, protecting you, and helping to ensure that you get the salaries, benefits, and working conditions that you deserve.

Consider this.

In January of 2020, 238 PSEA locals will commence bargaining with their employers. At present, approximately 100 locals are still bargaining contracts either from this year or years past.

Bargaining is one of the primary supports PSEA is best situated to provide our members.

We know you depend, like most people, on your paychecks to support yourselves and the people you care for.

That is why your staff focuses on supporting local contract negotiations. Our Research staff studies approaches to salary schedules and health care, a compensation committee composed of researchers and Field staff share best practices and compare notes. Our legal team backs them up with legal analyses and legal briefs.

This is the team approach that we use every day – pooling the experience and expertise of staff members from across the state to get the best possible contracts for you and your colleagues. In fact, much of this information was shared with local officers during the recent President’s and Collective Bargaining Conference in Hershey.

But that’s not all.

In the past several months, your PSEA staff team has lobbied the Legislature to round up votes for an educator evaluation reform bill. We’ve worked together to organize editorial board meetings about this and to remind Pennsylvanians why moving away from standardized testing and toward classroom observation is the best way to evaluate educators.

We’ve assisted in setting up a series of town hall-style meetings on special education policy, launched a new set of digital commercials promoting the “lightbulb moments” members experience in our schools and classrooms every day, and rolled out a new series of webinars and book discussions as part of our free professional development program – the Center for Professional Learning.

PSEA’s staff is proud to provide all of these supports and services.

We’re privileged to do this work, because we know that what we do allows you to focus on what you love to do – teach and serve Pennsylvania’s public school students.

At the end of the day, you and your 181,000 fellow members are PSEA. You make this Association.

Thank you for letting us work alongside you. 

Email Jim Vaughan: jvaughan@psea.org