Support for students, communities and each other

With a warm welcome from Oregon leaders and activists, this year’s PSRP conference offered members three days of learning, solidarity and fun.

School support staff leader Sarah Wofford, an AFT vice president, PSRP co-chair and president of the Oregon School Employees Association, gave shoutouts to union leaders and guests while saving her greatest accolades for the 400 members who traveled to Portland for the conference April 4-6, “Framing Our Future: Solutions for a Brighter Tomorrow.”

Wofford expressed the unease among school employees: “Things are feeling surreal out there,” she said. The Trump administration wants to strip kids of essentials, including Medicaid for autism screenings, dental and vision screenings, immunizations and mental health counseling. These cuts will hurt poor families the hardest.

But every child should get the essentials, Wofford said. “We should feed all kids when they’re hungry. We care about our students, and we care about our neighbors. We will stand in solidarity with the oppressed, and we will not despair. We will not agonize. We will organize.”

PSRP co-chair Carl Williams, also an AFT vice president, acknowledged the challenges facing school and college support staff but reflected on their resilience, too.

“We don’t get the respect we deserve. We don’t get the training we need,” said Williams, president of the Lawndale (Calif.) Federation of Classified Employees. “We’re fighting on all fronts to keep our schools fully staffed and fully supported.”

Despite a nearly universal lack of respect, training and staffing, “we still get the job done,” Williams declared. “We can and we will make a difference.”

He then introduced AFT President Randi Weingarten, thanking her for making the PSRP Bill of Rights a high priority for our union. The two main sponsors of the bill, newly reintroduced in Congress, are Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Jahana Hayes (D-Conn.).

Joy in the fight

Weingarten praised the PSRPs for opening their conference with joy. Powerful people want to crush us, she said. Those people want us to be scared, and the best response is for us to become happy warriors.

But the AFT president didn’t lose sight of what dire times we’re in. She pointed to the tyranny and terrorism before and after the Civil War just to say that the moment we find ourselves in now is unprecedented, with a threat of authoritarianism like we’ve never seen. “We could lose our entire way of life,” she warned.

At the same time, she cited new union contracts in Chicago, Boston and Broward County, Fla., which begin to approach a living wage for people whose work is essential to children. In some cases, PSRPs won higher percentage raises than teachers. In fact, she said, there’s a new feeling of protest in the air, as evidenced by millions of Americans who turned out for the first “Hands Off” protests that weekend.

Weingarten even came home to her New York City apartment one night recently to discover a sign up in the building that read: “Rally. Respect for Paras.”

“My building,” she said. “Someone was organizing in my building!”

Paras’ jobs on the line

The scene in Washington, D.C., right now is “scary as hell,” Weingarten said. Republicans are just getting started with slashing public services for the people who need them most, just so they can give more tax cuts to the wealthy who need them least.

The jobs most under threat are precisely the jobs that most PSRPs do: So many of our members are paraprofessionals whose jobs are funded through Title I, the cornerstone of federal education programs for 60 years. Title I pays for reading specialists, summer reading programs and after-school programs. For the majority of school districts, Title I accounts for one out of every nine dollars spent. It helps create career paths to teaching. And Title I is now under threat, as is IDEA.

“Do you think for one second that RFK Jr. knows one thing about the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act?” Weingarten asked. “And they’re going to move everything to the Health and Human Services Department after he just fired 20,000 people?”

The Trump administration says “No, no, no, we’re not going to hurt children,” Weingarten observed. “But if you happen to teach about the Jim Crow era in your classroom, then you could lose every bit of your Title I money. … How dare they! How dare they do this to people! How dare they try to erase 60 years of history and 250 years of struggle?”

The best thing we can do is keep fighting, she said. “You have to promise me that you’re not giving up! Period. We have to fight together. That’s what community is: opportunity for all and dignity for all.”

Keep pushing for the PSRP Bill of Rights, she urged, adding that whenever we make something a priority for our union, that means it’s a priority every day.

“When we see an opening, we take it,” Weingarten said. “We move. When we organize and we agitate and we are in the field, we create a sense of fairness—that we will accomplish what is right.”

The bill of rights is what we need, she said, and the only way we’ll get it is through the union. “You deserve a PSRP Bill of Rights!” she exclaimed to a standing ovation. “You have a right to a living wage!”

All gas, no brakes

AFT Secretary-Treasurer Fedrick Ingram greeted the PSRPs, complimenting every custodian who slips a hungry kid an extra cookie, every para who might have to use some restraint, and every support staffer who might get yelled at on a particular day. “I have literally loved on PSRPs from the day I became an officer,” he said.

School bus drivers and so many other PSRPs, he said, “get up before dark and do everything for $9.65 an hour. It’s your job to understand what my baby needs. You know what’s it’s about.” Custodians know this, he added: “If the classrooms aren’t clean, then who are we educating? No one.”

Ingram surprised PSRP Carole Gauronskas, vice president of the Florida Education Association/AFT, with the Shelvy Young Abrams Lifetime Achievement Award. Gauronskas became the first support professional elected as an officer of the FEA in 2018. “I am truly blessed,” she said, thanking Ingram and crediting him with helping secure a hike in Florida’s minimum wage from $8/hour to $15/hour by 2026. But of course, she said, it’s not enough and we’re not there yet.

Ingram said he knows that people in power are “otherizing” PSRPs every day. “There are the haves and the have-nots,” he said. “Ask my friends in New Orleans, Florida and Georgia. Ask my friends in Texas. Whose kid is chosen and whose kid is collateral damage? Why do kids have to be collateral damage?”

At the national level, Ingram asked why Republicans insist on shuttering the Department of Education, without even a conversation, when it’s this department that directs funding to educate our most vulnerable children.

Ingram pumped up the crowd with a story about a driver whose car battery died. The driver was offered a ride instead of jumper cables.

“My PSRP friends, we don’t need a ride—we need a boost,” he said. “All gas and no brakes.”

Workshops, awards and honors

The presence of all three national AFT officers at this year’s conference provided an opportunity for AFT PSRP to honor two other local leaders as well.

AFT Missouri President Carron “CeeJay” Johnson, as both a PSRP and a state federation president, won the Ruby Newbold Leadership Award for demonstrating union power in collective bargaining, leadership and action on pressing issues including mental health, gun safety, school security and equitable access to public education.

The winner of the Lorretta Johnson Solidarity in Action Award was Rainah Chambliss, co-president of the Faculty and Staff Federation of Community College of Philadelphia. Chambliss shows gut-level solidarity through her efforts to address underfunding. Those efforts have resulted in an incredible contract: a minimum wage of $20/hour for staff, plus smaller class sizes and benefits like free public transit passes for students and the reopening of a child care center on campus. Chambliss also helped launch the Labor for Higher Education Coalition.

AFT Executive Vice President Evelyn DeJesus praised the winners and reviewed the rights guaranteed to everyone in America.

Speaking to her “union familia,” she described how excited she was to join them on April 5, the first day of the “Hands Off” mobilization to protest the spread of authoritarianism, the attacks on basic public services and the takeover of government systems by Elon Musk’s hacks.

That said, she reminded them that the AFT had launched its first national day of action nearly a month before with over 2,000 local events nationwide, and that the AFT was first because members saw what the Trump administration’s actions were already doing to our immigrant students and neighbors. We were first because we are a union, and unions have always defended democracy against authoritarians.

DeJesus reminded the crowd that the last time ultraconservatives attacked the union movement, workers rose up to overcome the Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in Janus. “Even though the right wing mobilized to ‘defang and defund’ the teachers unions, we grew in the years after Janus,” she said. “We saw Janus coming—and we didn’t agonize, we organized!”

Education, not deportation

The AFT’s human rights staff briefed PSRPs on how Trump’s re-election has unleashed a wave of racist, anti-female and anti-immigrant attacks. As we always do, AFT members are standing up for immigrants in defense of the First Amendment right to free speech and the Fifth Amendment right to due process.

Among the worst of Trump’s illegal actions so far are three executive orders, including one on so-called protection against invasion. Two other orders attempt to rescind birthright citizenship, clearly guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, and to expand an immigration detention system and start a national registry that promises a path to citizenship. What we’ve seen since the PSRP conference is that even immigrants here in the U.S. legally have been abducted and held in a brutal prison in El Salvador.

The AFT is offering many tools to help immigrants, including Know Your Rights cards, which can be found on the AFT’s immigration website. Under the 1982 Supreme Court decision in Plyler v. Doe, every child in America, even undocumented kids, has a constitutional right to receive a free public education. If you see violations, go to the AFT immigration website and document them. Every child deserves education, no matter where they come from.

Under other federal laws, schools and colleges must remain safe havens. School districts and higher education institutions are responsible for ensuring the safety and well-being of all students. A few weeks ago, Chicago public schools were alerted to a threat of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents showing up at school; it turned out to be a false alarm but it tested school protocols. In Washington, D.C., recently, ICE agents could not make an arrest because school employees asked for a signed judicial warrant.

Finally, AFT staff warned members to beware of notario/immigration fraud: providing illegal services, such as charging for free documents or offering legal services for which the person doesn’t qualify.

During the general sessions, attendees took part in variety of exercises, including making “Hands Off” posters reflecting their own jobs supporting schools and colleges. A few of the many signs read: “Hands Off Title I” and “What’s more important? Children or eggs?” Also: “Treat Our Children Like Your Children,” “Support Free Lunch for All Scholars,” “Kids Are Not Collateral Damage,” “Respect, Equity, Fairness, Power,” and (maybe our favorite) “PSRPs = Provide Support, Respect Students.”

Dozens of workshops in four time slots gave participants the opportunity to learn new skills and share their expertise. These ranged from higher education sessions on artificial intelligence to safe handling of medically fragile students.

In the workshop on safe student handling, participants discussed the design of classrooms for safe lifting; adequate staffing ratios for school nurses; the necessity of training staff on infectious and communicable diseases; proper handwashing and use of personal protective equipment; and the importance of having a school safety committee.

Conversations often spilled into the hallways on such sensitive topics as the right to refuse deep tracheotomy feeding, sterile catheterization, do-not-resuscitate orders, and rules on administering prescription medications. Members swapped notes on their CPR and emergency training.

Solidarity Night lives on

Now a tradition for decades, the PSRPs’ famous Solidarity Night was emceed by AFT Secretary-Treasurer Fed Ingram and PSRP co-chair Carl Williams.

In addition to skits by several local affiliates and the AFT PSRP headquarters staff, the night featured the amazingly talented and well-rehearsed singers in the PSRP Solidarity Chorus, who led the packed room in union songs.

Music dominated the evening, in fact, with the smooth gospel stylings of paraprofessional Reggie Colvin from the United Federation of Teachers in New York City and the high energy of “Motown Diva” Lynn Marie Smith, who wrote and sang the parody songs she performs across the country, cheerleading for the union cause. Smith directed the PSRP chorus over several workshops, teaching nervous new singers that there are many ways to use your voice for your union. And she encouraged more than just singing, giving several members the confidence to perform solos and comedic bits.

Throughout Solidarity Night, Smith roamed the ballroom clad in star-spangled splendor, covering the room in music from Detroit, the Motor City.

[Annette Licitra]