We are a wall-to-wall union, meaning that all classified and licensed APS employees are eligible to join. This includes A-Scale, C-Scale, D-Scale, G-Scale, M-Scale, T-Scale, X-Scale (but excludes principals and administrators at P- and E-Scales).

We believe that all educators who work directly with our students are teachers. Counselors, bus drivers, administrative assistants, food service workers, custodians, mental health professionals, educational support professionals are all intimately involved in teaching students and supporting their growth and wellbeing.

All are welcome and deserve to be a part of the Arlington Teachers Union.

AEA has had nine months to educate staff about collective bargaining, and in our opinion, they have failed. Regardless of your membership status, you deserve to be informed about the key developments around your contract. Now they want to be elected the collective bargaining agent for licensed and classified staff.

We need integrity.

Some of our founders were intimately involved in trying to push AEA toward building the relationships and networks in buildings that create meaningful, lasting power. We came to the painful, unfortunate conclusion that VEA is more concerned with the optics of collective bargaining than with the substance, and AEA’s long-term, problematic culture of deference to authority persists.

We are giving APS employees a new choice because, in our opinion, AEA was complicit in the erosion of our workplace conditions, and its actions under an NEA trustee have not lived up to its stated values around democracy and transparency.

We inquired with AFT, but they are wary of encroaching on NEA’s turf. If members want or decide at a later date to affiliate with a larger union, then it should be voted on democratically and after robust debate.

These dues will cover the necessary cost of being a functioning union: up-to-date website, printing flyers, educating APS staff on issues, as well as consultation with labor lawyer who have only APS staff interest in mind. Dues are necessary because though we are expert educators in our respective fields, we need and benefit from legal representation through the collective bargaining process.

Dues also include an optional liability plan.

Please join and participate in discussions about how to keep costs as low as possible so that this union can be great and as accessible as possible.

Our budget will be posted for members and non-members to see.

When we say teacher working conditions are student learning conditions, we mean that good schools empower their student-facing employees because we are relentlessly focused on and committed to our students’ needs.

And despite this common attack on educators, teachers in Virginia have not had unions with power since the 1970s. Evaluations in most districts involve evaluation criteria unilaterally imposed by administrators. APS should jointly develop evaluation criteria and implement peer evaluation in partnership with ATU. We can and should be involved in developing, raising, and maintaining professional standards.

We are organizing as volunteers, full-time educators, ordinary people. Our strength is in our colleagues, not in a national union bureaucracy.

ATU offers liability insurance.

If elected exclusive representative of one or more bargaining units, we will be able to have payroll deductions through APS.