May 9 is National School Nurse Day

By Robert McNeely School nursing requires much more than just than applying a band aid on a student’s scraped knee. Ask any student or teacher and they’ll tell you school nurses are more than a human first-aid kit, which is why they’re being honored for their commitment to health and safety on National School Nurse [...]

Judy Near From Colorado Named NEA 2012 ESP of the Year

By John Rosales The humility, drive, and dignity that Judy Near is famous for in Colorado’s Canon City School District was evident Friday night at the NEA Education Support Professionals (ESP) Conference in Memphis, Tennessee, where Near was named the National Education Association’s 2012 ESP of the Year. As Near approached the dais at the Marriott Downtown Hotel [...]

Education Support Professionals On the Front Lines in Fight for School Modernization

By John Rosales After a particularly snowy night in January, paraeducator Lynn Witts found herself zigzagging around water buckets the next morning as she walked the hallways at Polson High School in Montana. “The snow melted and we had buckets everywhere,” she says. While winter brings it share of snow and ice to challenge the [...]

Healthier Lunches Coming to Schools

By John Rosales New standards for school meals released on Wednesday  by the U.S. Department of Agriculture will help ensure healthy nutritious food served to every public school student in an effort to bolster their health and academic success. This effort was kicked-off with an appearance by First Lady Michelle Obama at Parklawn Elementary School [...]

A Boot Camp to Promote Healthy Food in Schools

By John Rosales The rigorous culinary training that Donna West attended in Aurora, Colorado, involved much more than cooking classes. West is a lunchroom and child nutrition manager at Brownwood Elementary School in Scottsboro, Alabama. For five long days spent in a high school kitchen and classrooms, West and two dozen other public school food [...]

School Bus Drivers Put the Brakes on Bullying

By Teal Ruland Bullying happens in stairwells and in cafeterias, in the classroom and on the playground, but it also takes place beyond the school grounds as buses pull away from the curb. According to the U.S. Department of Education, in 2006–2007, one-third of U.S. students ages 12 through 18 reported being bullied. Of those, [...]

The Persistence of Privatization

By John Rosales Person by person, block by block, school by school. Since Spring 2009, about two dozen custodians from Maine School Administrative District 75 (MSAD 75) have beat back the lingering threat of privatization. They have sat with one neighbor at a time, spoken at numerous school board meetings and labor organization events, started [...]

NEA Leaders Wrap Up Back-to-School Tour, Salute Education Support Professionals

By Sara Robertson and Alain Jehlen Education Support Professionals (ESPs) in Orlando, Florida, are being crushed financially, caught between state mandated salary cuts and increased health insurance costs. Yet despite their economic plight, student safety is still a major concern. Those are the messages NEA President Dennis Van Roekel heard from some 60+ Orange County [...]

Leadership In a Small Town

By Alain Jehlen Before Sam Phillips started fighting for grown-ups, he fought for students. Phillips is an American Indian and a utility maintenance employee in the Potter Valley Community Unified School District, a rural K-12 district with fewer than 300 students 130 miles north of San Francisco. His own daughter had disabilities and he felt [...]

Bullying Prevention: It Can Start with ESPs

By Meredith Barnett From her post in Leslie Middle School’s office, Debbie Pavon knows what to do when she spots one of her “frequent fliers.” That’s what this education support professional (ESP) calls students who land again and again in the principal’s office for being disruptive. Sometimes, they’re bullies. Other times, they’re the ones who [...]

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