Paraprofessionals & School Related Personnel
The Paraprofessional and School-Related Personnel (PSRP) division of the American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO, represents more than 300,000 school support staff in K-12 districts, colleges and universities. Our jobs include office employees, custodians, maintenance workers, bus drivers, instructional paraprofessionals, food service workers, school nurses and health aides, technicians, groundskeepers, secretaries, bookkeepers, mechanics, special education assistants and hundreds of other job titles.
The AFT has organized school and college support staff since the early 1930s. Our first local affiliate of support staff was the Education Secretaries of Chicago. The work of the department is directed by the PSRP Program and Policy Council, an appointed leadership group of 28 members from around the country. This group provides guidance and advice on new programs and services for AFT PSRP members.
In some parts of the country we're called classified school employees; in others, we're called school support staff. No matter what name we go by, we're all proud to be members of the AFT, part of the team--along with our teacher and faculty co-workers-- that provides a quality education.
The AFT PSRP division is affiliated with:
WHAT’S THE VERDICT ON NCLB FOR PARAPROFESSIONALS?
NCLB brought about a lot of changes for paraprofessionals. The most obvious are the education requirements. Less well-known is the addition of language describing the types of responsibilities paraprofessionals can be assigned in the classroom. The law and the Department of Education regulations say that paraprofessionals should provide instruction ONLY while working under the direct supervision of a teacher.
In November 2006, the AFT conducted a Web-based survey of paraprofessionals to determine whether this rule was being followed at the school level. The results show that paraprofessionals do continue to provide instruction, but a closer look at comments also shows that this type of work is nearly always done under the direction of a teacher, even if the teacher isn’t always physically present.
The more pressing concern is the number of paraprofessionals who are called upon to substitute—either for the teacher with whom they normally work or in another classroom. While the practice has become less common since 2001, there are still significant numbers of paraprofessionals asked to substitute. The most important finding is that across every subgroup, 93 percent to 97 percent of paraprofessionals ONLY do this work when they are asked to do so, dispelling the notion that paraprofessionals self-assign.
The results were recently mentioned in the AFT’s NCLBlog. Add your comments: http://www.letsgetitright.org/blog/2006/12/paraprofessional_survey.html.
To take the survey, go to http://www.aft.org/topics/nclb/paras.htm.
To view the survey results, visit http://www.aft.org/psrp/topics/download/NCLB2006ParaSurvey.pdf.
NATIONAL SCHOOL BREAKFAST WEEK - MARCH 5TH - 9TH
GET YOUR PASSPORT READY FOR A WORLD OF BREAKFAST!
The month of March brings us St. Patrick’s Day and spring. It also brings National School Breakfast Week, the week of March 5-9. NSBW was launched by the School Nutrition Association (SNA) in 1989 to raise awareness of the School Breakfast Program (SBP), and to draw attention to the link between eating a good breakfast and cognitive growth. The School Breakfast Program is a federally assisted meal program operating in more than 82,000 public and nonprofit private schools and child care institutions, and serving more than 9.3 million students.
This year’s theme is “A World of School Breakfasts.” The week is a chance for students across the country to sample the breakfast foods their peers around the world eat every day. This also is a great way to engage students in nutrition and geography lessons. NSBW sponsors, the SNA and General Mills Bakeries and Foodservice, have collaborated to make available a world of resources on a newly launched NSBW 2007 Web site that includes official NSBW '07 menus, activity sheets, logos, a press release and toolkit to help you prepare your special events and promotions in your school.
