Thoughts from NEA Directors
Jesse DeHay & Ryan Anderson

Since this is the first time this school year we’ve had the opportunity to submit an article for the UEA Action, we thought it may be good to recap what we do as NEA Directors and as full-time educators, and to summarize some of our recent experiences in representing all of the NEA members in Utah.

We are the only Association officers who are elected by all the NEA members in Utah, and we represent the 19,104 members of the Utah Education Association (UEA) as well as the 5,895 members of the Utah School Employees Association (USEA) – a total of almost 25,000 members in the two Utah associations which are affiliated with NEA.

Ryan Anderson teaches English and Art at Grand County High School in Moab, and Jesse DeHay is a school counselor at Fairfield Jr. High School in Kaysville. What we do as NEA Directors is above and beyond what we do as full-time educators; we are not employees of the Association, and we are not paid for the Association work we do, although we are reimbursed for our expenses while we are on Association business.

We attend five meetings of the NEA Board of Directors each year, four times in Washington, D.C., during the school year, and once in the summer just prior to attending the annual NEA Representative Assembly (RA). We are also voting members of the UEA Board of Directors, and at least one of us attends the USEA Executive Board meetings, except when we are out of town attending NEA meetings.

Our primary responsibilities are to communicate the views of the UEA and USEA members to the NEA and to communicate back to the UEA and USEA the views of the NEA in all issues regarding education. It is often challenging and always time consuming, but we thoroughly enjoy what we are privileged to do, and we consider it an honor to be able to do it.

When we travel to Washington, D.C., for NEA Board meetings, we always make time to visit the offices of our two senators and our three congressmen from Utah to discuss any legislative actions which may affect any aspect of education. Just prior to these visits to their offices, we receive detailed updates from the NEA staff regarding the current legislative issues, as well as a list of suggested topics to discuss with elected officials. During our September visit, the hottest issues we discussed included proposed pay-for-test programs that mandate teacher pay based on student test scores, the use of single standardized assessments in reading and math as primary measures of school quality and student learning, class size reduction, the Social Security Fairness Act, and vouchers. We summarized these discussions and the topics covered during the NEA Board meeting to the UEA Board, the UEA Council of Local Presidents, and the USEA Executive Board.

One of the most impressive and pleasing developments during our most recent visit was the support from across the country for Utahns for Public Schools and the anti-voucher fight in Utah. The NEA staff and your education colleagues from across the country were overwhelmingly behind us, both in verbal expressions of support and in cold hard cash donations. This is not just “the union” in Washington, D.C., expressing support; it is our education colleagues, regular folks just like us across the country.

If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or suggestions for us about any education issues, we want to hear from you. Please contact one or both of us: Ryan’s e-mail is kumquatry@hotmail.com , and Jesse’s is jdehay@dsdmail.net.