VEA Members Launch Political Campaigns
June 2, 2019
June 2, 2019
As more VEA members are seeing how their careers are affected by political decisions, more are becoming candidates for those decision-making positions.
Two examples are in Prince William County, where PWEA member Maggie Hansford and county resident Lisa Zargarpur, a Fairfax Education Association member, will be on the ballot this fall. Hansford is running for the Board of County Supervisors; Zargarpur for School Board.
Hansford, a speech therapist, is disgusted with the fact that Prince William has the lowest paid teachers and largest classroom sizes in Northern Virginia.
“I am running to put our kids first by adequately funding our schools, providing multiple levels of transportation choices so families can spend more time together, and strengthening local businesses and helping attract new ones,” she says.
Zargarpur, a music teacher, wants teachers to have more say in policymaking. “I intend to bring a teacher’s voice to the board, so that when we make policy decisions that impact classroom size, teacher workload, and student achievement measurements, those decisions are made with teachers and students in mind,” she says.
You can follow both candidates on Twitter at @HansfordMaggie and @LisaforColes.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, teachers in Virginia earn 67 cents on the dollar compared to other (non-teacher) college-educated workers. Virginia’s teacher wage penalty is the worst in the nation.
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