Issues

We advocate for concrete change on a number of issues related to learning conditions and educators’ working conditions. We are currently working on a comprehensive document to that end. Contact us if you’d like to contribute.

  • Collective Bargaining - AEA is the collective bargaining agent for non-administrative staff, and we will continue to advocate for a better Resolution to strengthen their negotiating power (even if they won’t). 

  • Compensation and Cost of Living - Any cost of living adjustment that is less than the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is a loss for employees.

  • Growth of the Central Office (Syphax) over student-facing staff

  • Contract hours - In order to quantify the uncompensated labor that APS employees provide, please keep track of your hours for the 2023-2024 school year! Then at the end of the year, we can share how much you exceeded your contract hours, and what your hourly pay actually was. The more who participate, the better. In recent years, APS has increased your time at your work site without an equivalent boost to pay.

  • Professional Development - “Teachers and all educators have a right to help create their own programs for professional growth based on their perceptions of problems and issues in their classrooms, schools and professional lives” (Apple 2007). 

  • Calendar Policy and Preservice

  • Special Education

  • Student Behavior - We applaud APS for budgeting Intervention school counselors for middle and high schools, as well as Deans of Students for addressing student behaviors and restorative practices for the comprehensive high schools and some middle schools. APS should

  • Planning Time

  • Class Sizes

  • Staff feedback - APS leadership treats community feedback as a box to check, and consistently ignores decisive community input (as on the calendar policy). The advocacy of labor organizations cannot be the only way that the School Board hears the voices of student-facing staff.