MSEAMSEAMSEALogin to Members Only

David Helfman, Executive Director

Excerpted from his speech to the 2009 MSEA Representative Assembly

The first half of this presentation contains slides, and the second half contains video excerpts of the speech.

Executive Director David Helfman,
Convention 2009

 
















 






I’ll let the numbers tell the story. According to them, we’ve hit the trifecta: in membership, in political action and in school performance. Over the last four years our membership growth—at 15 percent—has led the nation among NEA affiliates.

This growth wasn’t simply due to increasing employment levels. The percentage of school employees in our locals choosing not to join us shrank from 27 to 23 percent. In other words, we’ve successfully reached out to one of every seven non-members.

We more than doubled fundraising for our Fund for Children and Public Education. We are the largest PAC in Maryland and are on track to enter the 2010 election with over $1,000,000 available to elect friends of public education.

Without friends of public education in place on our school boards and county councils, in the General Assembly and statewide offices, we would not find ourselves near the top of the national rankings.

This year, we celebrated our #1 rankings by Education Week and The College Board. But whether we’re first, second, or fifth, we have much to be proud of. As we celebrate, we do not rest on our laurels. We are acutely aware of critical unmet needs in our schools.

Four years ago, we established a relationship with a city mayor whose school employees were represented by another union. That city mayor—Martin O’Malley—received your endorsement in the 2006 general election and has turned out to be one of—if not the—greatest friends we’ve ever had.

Who here has taken time to watch the interview tape between President Clara Floyd and Governor O’Malley? It’s playing in our MSEA Activist Center across the hall … and you can watch it while eating popcorn. If you’ve watched any of it, you know how strong our relationship is and how supportive he has been. Who could have expected such strong support when we first endorsed him in 2006?

From the first time we met with candidate O’Malley to discuss his education platform and MSTA member concerns, we’ve worked hard to develop this relationship.

While the formal communications occur between Governor O’Malley and President Floyd, it is supported on an almost daily basis at the staff level, with our executive, government relations, and communications staff interacting with the governor and his top staff. That work, further supported by the leadership role each of you plays at the local level—and the professional job our members do day-in and day-out in their classrooms and worksites—has earned us the governor’s support and loyalty.

Delegates, on September 1st we became the Maryland State Education Association!

How proud I was that our name-change celebration was sandwiched between two other events. The first was a day-long Jump Start program that helped 100 educators interested in applying to the National Board Certification program.

The other was our Achievement Gaps Summit, where close to 250 educators, parents, and community activists came together to learn about the causes of achievement gaps in our schools and begin developing strategies for reducing them back home. These are just two examples of our Association’s resources going to help our members be successful in their jobs.

And true to our more inclusive name, MSEA, our support of professional development for our education support professionals continues to expand, thru both the ESP professional development workshop and local workshops throughout the state.

We know MSEA must be both a strong union, advocating for our membership through collective action, and a strong association, supporting members through school quality and professional development initiatives. An association that neglects either of these two roles is destined to fail in both of them. So by now you’re wondering: we’ve grown our membership. Our political action fund is the largest in the state. We have a great relationship with the governor. We have rolled out an expanded school quality program. What’s so serious?

The answer lies in MSEA’s ability to survive the economic challenges of the next two to five years.

Today, MSEA Treasurer Terry Borneman told you that our Association is in sound fiscal condition. While that is true, it is also true that we’ve felt the impact of the economic downturn. In Fiscal 2007 and Fiscal 2008, we balanced our annual budget. But market losses in our staff pension fund in combination with rigid new federal accounting and funding requirements have actually reduced our ending balance.

In August of 2005 our general fund assets equaled 193 days of operating expense, by August of 2008 this figure was down to 132 days.

Did it decrease further in 2009? We will know once our auditors, who began their work last week, finish their report next month. It’s important to note that our “business” has significant expenses—for instance, this Representative Assembly—early in the year, before dues revenues begin flowing in late October or November. So having this cushion is not a luxury; it’s a necessity.

It appears that we met the membership projections in the 2008-10 budget. But as we drill down into the numbers we discover some very troubling trends.

After three years of growth our membership has flattened out. This year, we picked up fewer than 500 members. And the employment picture is hitting us hard. Our two largest Locals—MCEA and PGCEA—have always carried us. These fair share Locals enjoy a high market share. As employment grows they pick up members. Between 2005 and 2008 they added 1,900 to their rolls. But in 2009, they lost more than 200. With a tightening employment situation in their school systems, the outlook for these lighthouse Locals doesn’t seem to be improving.

Fortunately, other Locals have stepped up to the plate. In Anne Arundel, Howard, and Charles counties fair share has kicked in. Collectively, these locals boosted membership by 300 this past year, offsetting the losses in Montgomery and Prince George’s.

Although fair share certainly helps, many locals without it have seen impressive gains. ESP locals in Allegany, Anne Arundel, Calvert, Caroline, Frederick, Garrett, and Washington Counties have grown more than 2 percent this year as have teacher locals in Frederick, Garrett, St. Mary’s, Talbot, and Washington Counties.

Will we be able to sustain this growth if these school systems also cut back on their staffing levels? What if state and local tax revenues continue to decrease and school employees are subjected to layoffs, furloughs, or pay cuts? Will this hurt our recruiting efforts?

There’s no doubt it can happen. Nationally, NEA anticipates a reduction of 30-50,000 members this year. In California more than 16,000 teachers have been laid off; the number of ESP job cuts appears to be as significant. The California Teachers Association is responding by cutting its own budget and eliminating staff positions.

These losses are impacting finances in all state affiliates. NEA has notified MSEA and other affiliates that it is holding 2009-10 state program grants until it gets a clearer picture of national membership levels and will probably need to reduce those state grants. Annually, we receive between $125 and $150K in program grants. Between now and the 2010 Spring RA, we will be crafting and passing a 2010-12 MSEA budget. It promises to be the most challenging budget in our history. You—the delegates in this room—own this budget. You are the ones who will gather in the spring to set our spending and dues levels for the next two years.

With membership flat, operating costs increasing, and revenue from sources like NEA decreasing we are left with three choices: cutting spending, increasing dues, or growing our membership.

Let’s talk about spending. We have been scrutinizing budget appropriations and have been cutting back where we can. But we’re mindful that cutting in the wrong places will hurt us.

For example, the new website we’re developing will bring our member communications into the 21st century and allow Locals to maintain their own websites at no additional cost.

Our television and radio advertisements generate pride in the Association among members, respect for the work of public school employees among taxpayers, and support for protecting school funding in the General Assembly. Activities around the MSTA-to-MSEA name change are linked to our organizing efforts. I believe these significant short-term expenses are in our long-term interests.

During the budget process we usually hear calls to keep current programs, increase grants to locals, and add staff. I think we have a great staff at MSEA. And I find it encouraging when Locals ask for more staff; it shows how important the service we provide is to our Locals and members. We’ve already received formal requests for additional UniServ staff from locals in Howard, Washington, Prince George’s, and Frederick Counties. We rarely hear recommendations for ways to curtail spending. As a result, paring back spending is a difficult task. Perhaps the key to balancing our budget is through increasing dues.

This may come as a surprise to many of you, but when we look at our dues level it is clear how seriously your board and staff take our stewardship responsibility toward our members’ dues dollars. We are running a lean operation. Delegates, we’ve heard that Maryland is the wealthiest state in the nation. We know we rank tenth nationally in average salary.

In contrast, our dues level is 40th in the nation, $64 below the median and $90 below the mean.

Our MSEA Bylaws limit dues to one half of one percent of the prior year’s average instructional staff salary. And, in truth, our current dues level is $22 or $23 below the cap.

It is never easy to increase dues. It is especially difficult in the current economic environment. School systems are digging their heels in when it comes to increasing salaries; they are concerned about falling off the so-called cliff in funding when the federal stimulus dollars stop flowing.

So salary increases have been hard to come by. If members are not receiving increases and dues increase will they maintain their membership? If they don’t…we’re exacerbating the problem, not solving it.
Let’s step back and scan the environment:

In the words of Billy Joel, “There’s a storm front coming.”

Delegates, MSEA is in sound fiscal condition. But we’re also at a crossroads. We can pull through the recession by cutting spending and raising dues or we can reduce the reliance on those strategies by focusing on growth.

Near the beginning of these remarks I made the following inaccurate comment; perhaps some of you caught it.

I said, “The percentage of school employees in our Locals choosing not to join us shrank from 27 to 23 percent.” In fact, most of these non-members did not actively choose not to join us. Nobody approached them, explained the importance of their active membership, and personally asked them to join. And we got by without their support.

But in the next two to five years, their support is critical if we want to have the leverage necessary to protect public school funding and our member interests. These current non-members can provide us shelter from the storm.

In order to succeed in reaching them, we’ll need to activate our Association Reps. Many of our UniServ staff will need to be working the buildings more and the Local Association offices less. And we’ll need the support of the Local presidents and activists in this room, as we more often shift staff to work organizing blitzes in lower market-share locals.

The next two to five years are going to challenge MSEA. But our members need us the most when we’re facing this adversity. Last year, you changed our name to be more inclusive. A year from now, will our membership numbers reflect that we indeed are, or will the change be in name only? The answer to this question will drive our success for many years to come.

I look forward to working with you to meet that challenge. Thank you.