Yearly Archives: 2020

NEA-NH: There Are Far Too Many ‘Shoulds’ in the School Guidance Document to Keep Our Students and Staff Safe

The Governor’s new document on guidance for school reopening does not go far enough to assure us that schools will be safe for students and staff to return to this fall.  We believe the Governor’s recommendation falls short in keeping kids and staff safe.  These guidelines are designed to be practical and flexible – they are not designed to promote uniform student safety.  “Three to six feet of social distancing is recommended by the guidelines,” said Megan Tuttle, NEA-NH President. “But the Governor goes on to say that if it’s not practical, he’ll leave it up to each school to […]

NEA-NH Applauds Committee’s Action and Urges Commissioner to Spend Less Time and Effort Diverting Funds from NH’s Neighborhood Schools

Today the Joint Legislative Fiscal Committee made the fiscally responsible decision to leave the DeVos charter expansion grant on the table. With all of the uncertainty around what local school and the state budget will be going forward due to the pandemic, it would be irresponsible to commit to a doubling of NH charter schools, all of which would be an unknown cost to tax payers for years to come. Commissioner Edelblut and Governor Sununu should be concentrating on shoring up the needed funds our existing public neighborhood and charter schools need in order to safely return in the fall […]

NEA-NH Legislative Update: Session Wrap-up

Introduction This legislative session has certainly been one of the strangest and most memorable ones I or anyone else have experienced. The pandemic essentially shut down the New Hampshire legislature for the better part of 3 months and the Governor issued 58 emergency order under the state of emergency we are still under and a legal and constitutional battle remains over the checks and balances that the executive is operating under during this unprecedented time. The legislature despite social distancing restrictions and opposition from the minority in the House still managed to salvage several initiatives. The state senate merged hundreds […]

NEA-NH to DeVos: We will fight every effort to open unsafe schools

July 9, 2020 – CONCORD, NH – No one wants to see our children back in schools more than us. No one. But the same instinct that moves a teacher to go to any length to protect their class, is also telling us that rushing our children back into classrooms, hallways and buses until we know it is safe, is clearly not the best thing to do. So, we stand up and we speak up for our kids. “We will not be bullied by the President of the United States and his Secretary of Education to open our schools before […]

Trump, DeVos Ignore Educators on What it Will Take to Reopen Schools Safely

Administration only offers radical agenda of voucher schemes to privatize public education WASHINGTON – July 07, 2020 -President Donald Trump today held a roundtable discussion on reopening school buildings. The following statement can be attributed to Lily Eskelsen García, a sixth-grade teacher who serves as president of the 3-million member National Education Association: “Educators want nothing more than to be back in classrooms and on college campuses with our students, but we must do it in a way that keeps students, educators and communities safe. The reality is no one should listen to Donald Trump or Betsy DeVos when it comes to what is […]

NEA-NH: Schools Are Not Designed For Social Distancing

Frank Edelblut, New Hampshire’s Education Commissioner, selected school administrators and school boards representatives for his official Task Force. NEA-NH, and the 17,000 professional educators we represent, was not invited. “We were instead offered a place on a workgroup, meaning the voices of those in the classrooms, hallways, buses, cafeterias and offices – the frontline for any return to school – were not given a chance to vote on the final recommendations going to the Governor,” said Megan Tuttle, NEA-New Hampshire President. Since the Commissioner chose to ignore them, NEA-NH surveyed our members to be sure their voices were heard. We asked […]