Empowering Paras to Raise Standards

Empowering Paras to Raise Standards

Taking on the Issues, Tackling the Challenges in Our Schools

Chapter I58 Member Linda Palmer Appealed to Tolland School Officials to Make Better Choices than Costly Hearings to Resolve a Contract Dispute with their Paras

Our members working as paraprofessionals, instructional assistants, classroom aides, tutors, and in other support positions in public schools face many challenges on the job. From reaching out to children in larger classrooms, to coordinating instruction for students with special needs, they play a vital role in the educational experience.

Members of several of our Paraprofessional Council chapters have demonstrated the value of building community alliances among teachers, parents, and advocates to create powerful change. They have organized rallies and speak-outs at local Board of Education meetings to generate public support for our efforts to close the achievement gap among students -- and the economic gap among paraeduators -- in Connecticut's public schools.

For example, our Union has proposed legislation that would reverse years of inequity for paras and allow them access to family and medical leave protections. With our members' support, the State Senate passed the bill before the 2010 General Assembly adjourned in May, but the clock ran out before the House could take it up.

Though we will mobilize once again to advocate for the bill's passage in 2011, we have an opportunity to choose Connecticut's next governor, and it will be critical that we elect someone who believes that paraprofessionals deserve family and medical leave, too.

At the same time, as opinion-leaders blame the public education workforce for the economic crisis gripping our state's communities, we are standing-up for the respect and dignity our members deserve.