MEMBERSHIP MATTERS
VEA-Retired Spotlight
Walton Looks Back in Gratitude by Kathy Davis Dot Walton learned the importance of Union membership as a beginning teacher in North Dakota when her local went into binding arbitration over salary issues. She ended up with a nice raise which, she notes, was not equaled when she moved back to Virginia despite having two years of experience. Back in the commonwealth, she became a member of the Fluvanna Education Association, later moving to Charlottesville and eventually becoming CEA’s president and a VEA Board of Directors member, working with five different VEA presidents. Along the way, she met and became fast friends with Princess Moss, then a Louisa County Education Association member, now NEA’s vice president, with whom she’s pictured here. As a retiree, Dot now serves not only as chair of C-PACE (Charlottesville Political Action Committee for Education) and as a VEA Fund PAC Director, but also as the administrative assistant in the Blue Ridge UniServ office, a position she’s held since 2017. “I cannot begin to tell you what belonging to the VEA has meant to me,” Dot says. “I have been so fortunate and blessed to have been mentored, supported and surrounded by VEA leadership, who gave me the opportunity to serve in roles I never imagined I would hold.”l
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Bookin’ It in Henry County Thanks to savvy and committed local association members, kindergartners in Southside Virginia are getting a reading jumpstart. The Henry County Education Association sought and received a NEA Community Partnership Grant for $7,500, applying jointly with Henry County Public Schools, and used the money to purchase a book for every kindergarten student in the county. In this photo, Heather Byrd, HCEA Co-President (r), and Judy Edmonds, principal of Meadow View Elementary School, show off some of the new reading material.l
Fairfax Leaders Speak Out “We must compensate those who continue to drive our county forward…The word ‘pivot’ is used often with nonchalance about what it takes to make that pivot possible. I submit that your public school employees have pivoted more than most, upending our own lives to meet the needs of so many others.” — Fairfax Education Association President Kimberly Adams, to the county’s board of supervisors “Stand shoulder to shoulder with us on ordinance and resolution language needed for the return of collective bargaining. With additional funds from the federal government, invest in our education workforce, broadband, and work to address our overcrowded facilities.”l — FEA Vice President Carla Okouchi, testifying at the same meeting
Mahendrakar Joins VEA Staff Shweta Mahendrakar has joined VEA as a data analyst and comes to our headquarters staff from the Education Advisory Board. Prior to that, she worked for the Virginia Employment Commission and Virginia Community College Services performing data collection, data management, and visual representation of data for better decision-making.l
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PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE
Pittsylvania, Fairfax Members are Finalists for Presidential Award
Negotiating Contracts is Best Way to Have a Voice by Dr. James J. Fedderman There’s a long list of reasons that VEA members have fought so long to regain the right to negotiate our contracts. The one I want to talk about here, though, is first and foremost among them: Being at the table with school division leaders is our best way to have an effective voice and help create the vision we have for the kind of great public schools Virginia is capable of having. The kind of schools our students and educators both deserve. You know all too well that decisions about how our young people will be taught and how our schools will be run are made, far too often, without sufficient input from the professionals who know best, the educators who are in the school buildings, with children, every day. Contract negotiations will change that—and that’s why I’m so excited about making them happen. One of the best ways to get us closer to being at the table, if you’re a local president or in another leadership position, is to make it a priority to listen to your members and find out what their top issues are. Learn what they most want to see happen, and share with them how contract negotiations can help turn wishes into reality. You don’t have to be a lone wolf
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in these efforts, either. Your UniServ Director stands ready to help support your local’s efforts in a variety of ways— training, pulling together resources, information-gathering, and serving as a sounding board, to name a few. Everyone can help spread the word that contract negotiations are a win for all of us. A contract isn’t just a binding legal document, it’s a shared set of values that guides us in creating the best learning environment we can for our students and the best working environment we can for our educators. We haven’t had a defined process for that in many years. Negotiations, because they take place locally, are also our best way to address issues that may be unique to your community and your schools. For example, before the Virginia Supreme Court decision in 1977 that took away our contract negotiation rights, Virginia educators had used them to accomplish goals such as additional reading, art, and music teachers, the setting of school calendars, fairer discipline policies, and more. Let’s get back to that kind of bargaining. We’ll all be better for it.l
Two VEA members are finalists for the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching, the nation’s highest honor for math and science teachers. Tracy Cabacoy, a Fairfax Education Association member and math resource teacher at Providence Elementary School and Cathleen McGarvey, a Pittsylvania Education Association member and science teacher at Stony Mill Elementary School, are finalists, based on their excellence in the classroom. The Presidential Awards, which alternates each year between K-6 teachers and 7-12 teachers, are overseen by the National Science Foundation on behalf of the White House. Governor Northam has appointed these three Union members to statewide positions: • Anthony Swann of the Franklin County Education Association, Virginia’s 2021 Teacher of the Year, to the Virginia Board of Education. • Anita James Price of Roanoke, a VEA Re tired member and former Roanoke vice mayor, to the Virginia Board of Juvenile Justice. • Former VEA president and current NEA vice president Princess Moss, to the Board of Visitors at the University of Mary Washington. Kristen Thrower, a high school librarian, and Lisa Signorelli, a middle school reading specialist, both Chesterfield Education Association members, were featured on a Richmond television station for their efforts to keep their students out of a “book desert” during COVID. They collect books through donations and places like Goodwill and then deliver them to students studying virtually. Prince William Education Association member Bobby Donaldson received the Excellence in the Diploma Programme Award from the Mid-Atlantic Association of IB World Schools. Honored for his work as an anthropology teacher, he was chosen from IB teachers in Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.l
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