To the editor:
On behalf of the Eastern Aroostook Education Association, let me introduce our organization and its members. The Eastern Aroostook Education Association (EAEA or (EA)2) represents the teachers, other professional staff, educational technicians and school secretaries in the Eastern Aroostook RSU No. 39 in employment and other related matters.
When the school departments of Caribou, Limestone and Stockholm merged to become the EA RSU 39, two new bargaining units were formed as part of the reorganization process. Those two units are under the umbrella of another newly-created organization, the Eastern Aroostook Education Association which was the result of the merger of the Limestone Education Association and the Caribou Teachers Association. The previous LEA was comprised of two bargaining units, the teachers/professional staff and ed techs/secretaries. The former CTA represented teachers/professional staff.
When the Maine School Reorganization Law was enacted in 2007, it required that bargaining units have one voice. So, a little over a year ago, with guidance from the Maine Education Association (MEA) UniServ Director Nancy Hudak, a committee formed from the officers of both previous Associations that worked to combine the old constitutions and by-laws to create this new Association. Our purposes include:
• To work for the welfare of school children, the advancement of education, and the improvement of instructional opportunities for all.
• To improve the condition of its members by negotiating better salaries and wages and working conditions and developing a higher degree of efficiency in the education profession as the bargaining agent for the employees, in their employment relations with employers.
• To develop and promote the adoption of ethical practices, personnel policies, and standards of preparation and participation for professional and support educators.
• To unify and strengthen the education profession in general and to secure and maintain the salaries, retirement, tenure, professional and sick leave, and other working conditions necessary to support education as a profession.
• To enable members to speak with a common voice on matters pertaining to the education profession and to present their individual and common interests before the Board of Education and other legal authorities.
• To hold property and funds and for the attainment of these purposes.
Teachers and other educational staff work diligently every day to create a safe learning environment for the students of the Eastern Aroostook RSU 39. Our Association strives to provide a safe and productive working environment for us in which to teach and support the students. You may see Association members wearing yellow Association T-shirts at school functions, meetings and in public.
If you have any questions about the EAEA, please send them to Nancy Hudak at the MEA office in Caribou. She will pass them along to the appropriate EAEA officer for a response.
Thank you for supporting the students and staff of RSU 39 as we do our best to create a healthy, safe and beneficial learning environment here.
president EAEA
