+ Nine of 10 NEA Delegates Want Gore for President. There was never any doubt that the RA delegates would concur with NEA’s endorsement of Al Gore. But the yardstick by which to measure their enthusiasm was the 91 percent concurrence they gave Bill Clinton in 1996. Gore exceeded expectations by receiving 89.5 percent of the delegate vote. Gore’s campaign is struggling with other core Democrat constituencies. The NEA vote cements teachers’ unions as Gore’s most loyal backers. The vote has wide implications for the presidential campaign, but not so much for the vote itself. NEA’s own surveys showed that Republican nominee Bob Dole got 31 percent of the teacher vote in November 1996, which is roughly equivalent to the percentage of Republicans among the membership at large.

+ "Billion-a-Minute" Riley Opens the Candy Store. U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley addressed the convention. While his speech contained a little bit of everything, it contained A LOT of money. In a 20-minute speech, Riley proposed over $32 billion in new federal spending on public education -- $1 billion for after-school programs, $24.8 billion for school modernization, $1 billion for teacher recruitment, and on and on. "The NEA knows how important these programs are and we can only hope that the majority in Congress will come to acquire the same wisdom that you have," said Riley. "I have to add that they have not so far."

Riley hit all the usual applause lines, including the OVD, but when he proposed reconstitution as a measure for schools that failed after getting additional help, he was met with a silence similar to that accorded Hillary Clinton at last year’s RA, when she praised charter schools.

+ NEA Spells Out Its Position on Privatization. After a long, confusing debate, the RA approved the final report of the NEA Committee on Educational Privatization with only a minor amendment. The 28-page report and the five-page policy statement can be summarized this way: Privatization is only acceptable when there is no similar public service available, funds are never used (even indirectly) for sectarian purposes, and the privatization never negatively impacts public employees. If all these conditions are met, NEA then defers to the local or state affiliate on the matter. Some of the delegates saw this as weakening NEA’s position against privatization and argued strongly against it. But the report’s supporters prevailed when an effort to delete more than half the policy statement was defeated.

There are two other items of interest in the report. The committee passed on the idea of having a formal policy regarding privately funded school voucher programs, such as those created by Children First America and the Children’s Scholarship Fund, but the report does provide this remark as a footnote: "The Committee believes that privately-funded private school voucher programs are undesirable, and that NEA and its affiliates should attempt to educate the public about the pitfalls of such programs."

Secondly, the committee recommended -- and NEA President Bob Chase intimated he would follow its recommendation -- that a similar special committee be formed to produce a report on charter schools for next year. If the privatization report and debate are any indication, such a committee would only further cloud NEA’s already muddy stance on charters.

+ Merit Pay Language Already Contentious. The RA will debate the union’s new resolution on merit pay tomorrow, but there are already three camps emerging. The first faction backs the language adopted by the Resolutions Committee, which allows additional compensation for national certification and for other performance-based systems that meet specific minimum criteria. The second faction is represented by a minority on the Resolutions Committee, which favors additional compensation for national certification, but is opposed to merit pay, no matter what criteria is used. The third faction is opposed to any change in current policy. It’s interesting to note that NEA’s commitment to higher pay to solve teacher shortages does not extend to subject-specific shortages. Both the majority and minority in the Resolutions Committee approved the statement, "The Association opposes providing additional compensation to attract and/or retain education employees in hard-to-recruit positions."

+ NEA Officers Can Still Cross Picket Lines. NBI 7 directed "that a policy be developed to ensure that no officer of the NEA or staff of the NEA cross any union strike picket line. Any alleged violations of this policy shall be investigated and reported to the RA." The item was submitted by Laura Kirchner of Kentucky, inspired by wholesale crossing of the Kentucky Education Association Staff Organization picket line by some attendees of NEA’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference last January. NEA President Bob Chase and Vice President Reg Weaver both addressed that conference. The news of the picket line circumvention by NEA’s top leaders was reported exclusively by EIA and picked up by the Wall Street Journal.

When asked what NEA’s current policy was, Chase directed General Counsel Bob Chanin to answer. "I don’t believe that we have an official written policy," Chanin said, then proceeded to criticize NBI 7, saying it "would not allow NEA any flexibility to make determinations on a case-by-case basis."

The item was defeated, though it received significant support, particularly from the New Jersey and New York delegations.

+ Bad News for Mumia, and Other NBIs. Delegates have submitted a total of 77 new business items, and an unusually large number of them are devoted to fringe issues and victim politics. Continuing the trend of recent years, the RA seems less inclined to pass the most controversial of these. RA delegates voted overwhelmingly to not even consider the omnipresent NBI to push for a new trial for convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal. The RA also resoundingly defeated an NBI to call for a national moratorium on the death penalty. Another NBI, calling on NEA to investigate discrimination of "Garifuna" people, was referred to the Executive Committee. One speaker actually spoke of the "plight" of gifted students. Her NBI passed.