2020 MEA Elections Members set the course for the MEA deciding the issues the Association supports and the ways to success for every Maine student. Delegates are elected to speak for the nearly 24,000 MEA members they represent on important issues. MEA candidates may publish a biographical sketch in the Maine Educator according to the Standing Rules. Candidates for the MEA Board of Directors and the NEA Representative Assembly (RA) appear on the following pages. Election info and forms are available online at www.maineea.org/meaelections.
Board of Directors Robert Zabierek Board of Director – District A It has been my pleasure to serve as your MEA Board member for District A for the past three years, as well as having served the final years of our two previous Board members’ terms. In that role, I have advocated for Cafeteria, Janitorial, and Maintenance Workers, Bus Drivers, Educational Technicians, and Teachers; in both good times and bad. I have served as a Board Liaison to the Government Relations and Strategic Budget Committees and lobbied the Legislature in Augusta. I am also proud to have served as a delegate to both the MEA and NEA Representative Assemblies over the past ten years. I serve on the SkillsUSA Maine Board of Directors and am a Past President of ACTEMaine, the Association of Career and Technical Education instructors. Please re-elect me to continue the work we have begun at MEA to raise teacher and education support professional’s rates of pay and continue to improve working conditions. I will work with the Student MEA members throughout our state, as well as our Young Education Professionals, to assure that our MEA conferences provide relevant professional development and encourage veteran educators to share best practices from their classrooms and their schools. Please vote! Tom Walsh Board of Director - District K I have been an active union member for most of my fifteen years as a high school Social Studies teacher including the nine years I have been working in Maine. For several years I served on the MEA's Government Relations Committee, and I am now serving on the MEA's Structure & Bylaws Committee. The MEA honored my organizing work on behalf of the Stand Up for Students referendum campaign by awarding me the Anne Sheehan Political Action Award in 2017. Locally, I have been a Building Representative on the board of the Falmouth EA, and I am now Falmouth EA President. Should I be elected, my work on the Board of Directors will be driven by two main goals. First, I want to help the local leaders of associations in District K get to know each other better and become more comfortable turning to each other for advice, guidance, and support. Second, I want to help the local leaders become more familiar with the resources and support that is available from the MEA. Achieving these goals will help local leaders more effectively serve and support the members of their local associations. 24
Maine Educator • February 2020
Board of Directors Nancy Mitchell Board of Director – District G
NEA Representative Assembly At Large Delegates Jessie Muldoon
NEA Representative Assembly District Delegates Rebecca Manchester NEA RA District 21 Rebecca Manchester, who has been the Latin teacher at Bonny Eagle High School since 2004, has been an active member in her local, Saco Valley Teachers' Association, and in the state organization, first by attending the MEA-RAs and a short time later joining the Structure and Bylaws committee, a committee which she now chairs. Rebecca has been going to the NEA-RAs since 2008, first as a local delegate and later as a district delegate. Rebecca Manchester would be honored to continue to serve her fellow members at the national level.
