Make Way Meet Maine’s newest educators & the future of the MEA
By the Numbers
45% of MEA members are 52 or older.
In the next five years, Maine schools will lose 18% of all staff to retirement.
9%
of MEA members are 33 and younger.
22% 16
of educators currently employed in Maine schools who are NOT MEA members and are 36 and younger.
Maine Educator • February 2016
“As the daughter of a union teacher, I was always told that when I became a teacher I should join the union as well. I, of course, obliged, but didn't really know why I was doing it. I just knew that all good people listen to their mothers,” confessed Lauren Roy, a 27-year-old 6th grade teacher at Shapleigh School in Kittery. Roy is part of the growing number of younger educators the MEA is working to engage in the Association as the landscape of America’s workforce and population dramatically change. According to recent data from the Pew Research Center, 1 in every 3 American workers is between the age of 18 and 34; they’re known as the Millennial Generation. Millennials are expected to surpass Baby Boomers this year as the nation’s largest living generation, according to the Census Bureau. Millennials are also the largest group of potential members that exist for the MEA, but they make up the smallest percentage of actual members. Perhaps it gets back to Lauren Roy’s question of “why join?” The answer for Roy and more than a dozen other Millennial members came during a conference developed just for younger members, as part of a new group called Young Education Professionals of the MEA (YEP-MEA). “The Sunday River YEP-MEA conference that I attended this past November finally answered the "why" for me. It was a fun-filled weekend that served as a meet and greet with all things union. We learned the structure of the NEA, MEA, and our local associations, how the union can help out young adult members, the importance of bargaining for and protecting our contracts, and so much more. I left Sunday River feeling empowered. Realizing that I had unknowingly entered such a wonderful and influential group of educators filled me with gratitude. The weekend lit a ‘union spark’ in all of us and I can't wait to see the fire that this group ignites for the MEA,” said Roy.
