​Today, all of us could agree that we work in scary and uncertain times. But even before the coronavirus pandemic struck, the AFT understood the stress and strain that comes with the work our members do to educate, heal, help and serve their communities.
But what happens when our members’ own daily stress is compounded by trauma-inducing events in their own lives? We all know how difficult it is to be fully present for others when we are carrying the burden of our own traumas.
In response, the AFT is offering a free new benefit for members—trauma counseling. (And, yes, in certain circumstances, a member with a coronavirus infection is eligible for this coverage.) The traumas covered by this new insurance include:

• An injury due to aggravated assault, sexual assault, a mass shooting or a terrorist act; this includes victims of domestic violence.
• Witnessing a violent incident at work.
• Bullying, harassment, or the threat or experience of secondary trauma resulting in a mild, moderate or severe mental health condition and an impairment of function.
• Contracting an infectious disease at work—including the coronavirus.
• An injury or infection from a disease during a major disaster, as declared by the National Emergencies Act.

   Starting April 1, the AFT will provide this trauma coverage benefit to all active working members, including those on leave status. We are preparing a “kit” of education materials available to you on Friday, March 27, on AFT All In. If you want to announce this benefit to your members now, we have provided language below to alert your members to this new benefit.
So how does this program work?
The counseling sessions are set up to take advantage of the latest communication technologies—phone, text, video—and to provide help whenever it is needed, wherever a member may be. They are conducted in complete privacy. Members will gain access to the program through the AFT members-only Member Benefits portal. Members will have access to a total of 21 hours of counseling over a three-month period. Everything is confidential. 
What can you do now?

1. We’d love to know what questions you have, so we can add them (and answer them!) to our FAQ. Send your questions here.
2. Update your membership lists regularly. This is a members-only benefit; we want to make sure every member can access the program with an AFT member ID number.
3. Take a moment to alert your members via email about this new benefit.

AFT Secretary-Treasurer Lorretta Johnson, Executive Vice President Evelyn DeJesus and I were planning to announce this benefit at our 2020 convention. But the times we live in call for us to move quickly in hope of helping address some of the profound challenges we now face. Caring, fighting and showing up has become our creed. That is true more than ever today.
We want our members to feel the support of their union in their everyday lives. We hope this new member benefit will help us to meet that need. 
In unity,
Randi Weingarten
AFT President

 03/22/2020
Virginia Myers, AFT Media Affairs
​
   Acting on a clear mandate from the AFT’s membership, the AFT executive council passed a resolution endorsing Vice President Joe Biden for president. After more than a year of member engagement on the endorsement process—with more than 300,000 AFT members nationwide participating in candidate events, town halls, polls, regional conferences and other efforts—new membership polls show strong support for Biden.

   Dedicated to a transparent process that focuses on the needs of AFT members and the communities they serve, the AFT’s endorsement decision has been guided by three criteria: selecting a candidate who shares the union’s values, who has the support of our members, and who can ultimately defeat President Trump in November. Biden—a long-term partner of the AFT whose wife, Jill Biden, is an educator and whose family through tragedy has come to revere healthcare professionals—meets those criteria.
   Several weeks ago, the AFT determined that three candidates—Biden, Sanders and Warren—shared our values. Over the past several days, membership polls revealed that a majority of members (60 percent) in every AFT constituency now support Biden, who leads his nearest competitor by a 2-to-1 ratio. Seventy-five percent of the Democratic membership supports the AFT making an endorsement in the primary. And in recent weeks, Biden has won an impressive lead in the delegate count. With 60 percent of delegates already apportioned,
he has 1,180 delegates of the 1,991 needed to secure the nomination.
A real leader in a time of real need   The decision to endorse now, in the midst of a global pandemic, was driven by the urgent need for a leader with courage and compassion.
   “Before the COVID-19 epidemic, the 2020 election was about the soul of our country. Now it’s about our soul, our safety, our health, our security and our economic well-being,” says AFT President Randi Weingarten. “Joe Biden is the experienced and emphatic leader our country needs right now. His character was forged getting up and going to work every day and trying to make life better for his family, facing the ups and downs so many of us face; it was tested by unspeakable loss and grief in life; and it was nurtured through public service, a love of people and the belief in the dignity of every human.”
   Highlighting the ways Biden’s priorities match those of the AFT, Weingarten continues: “Biden is with us on investing in public education; making college a reality for everyone; fixing the broken Public Service Loan Forgiveness program; making healthcare a human right, not a privilege for the wealthy; prioritizing clean energy and environmental justice; and building an economy that respects the value of workers’ voices. His whole career has been devoted to building a pathway to the middle class for the millions of people facing an affordability crisis daily. It’s time to give him the chance to do that as president.”
   Conversations among AFT leaders have focused on the urgency of this moment, when the coronavirus pandemic has gripped the nation and revealed glaring weaknesses in the current president’s judgment and leadership ability.
   “In this moment of worldwide crisis, the contrast with Trump is clear,” says Weingarten. “Our country is navigating the greatest challenge we have battled in generations, and it is essential that we rally around a candidate who can show courage, conviction and compassion in the face of uncertainty.
   “Throughout this national emergency, the president and his administration have failed to secure testing and personal protective equipment to safeguard our frontline healthcare providers; have attempted to conceal the severity of the virus and downplay the public health risks; and have refused to deploy the full arsenal of the federal government’s resources, leaving the difficult work of leadership to our nation’s governors. Now more than ever, we need a standard-bearer who is actually looking out for us, and who has a proven track record of steering the country successfully through economic and social upheaval.”
  Throughout the campaign season, beginning more than a year ago, Weingarten has directly interacted with candidates, swinging their focus to issues most important to AFT members, including public education, public healthcare, working families and the public good. The union also created countless opportunities for members to interact with candidates at town hall meetings, to discuss their campaigns at debate watch parties, conferences and campaign gatherings, and to register their own opinions and preferences on membership surveys. In February, the AFT urged members to throw their support behind any one of the three candidates who had surfaced as hewing closest to union values: Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
   “The ‘how’ a nominee was selected was as important as the ‘who,’” says Weingarten, stressing that no one should be left on the sidelines during an election that is widely considered to be the most important of our lifetimes.
With all the pieces in place, and the urgency of replacing Donald Trump driven by deep concern over the safety of our nation, the ‘how’ has come to selecting ‘who,’ says Weingarten: “Given everything that is going on, that person now is Joe Biden.”
   A long-term partner who listens. Shortly after the AFT executive council voted to endorse Biden, council members were surprised and heartened to have Joe and Jill Biden join the council’s virtual meeting. By phone, the Bidens offered their heartfelt thanks and reinforced their commitment to AFT members and the children, families and communities they uplift. Getting right to the matter at hand, Vice President Biden declared that, “I am going to be a president who leads with science and who listens to experts.” Touching on an important update to his education policy platform(link is external), Biden emphasized that college should be tuition-free for families that earn less than $125,000 per year. Jill Biden, a lifelong educator, also expressed her thanks and shared her vision, saying “What makes this nation great is the people who come together with kindness and courage to make it great.”
   Weingarten reminded Biden of the good work they had done together during the Obama administration, thanking him for listening and acting on critical issues like the improper use of student test scores in teacher evaluations. Summing up what she has heard from countless members, Weingarten expressed the AFT’s commitment to Vice President Biden becoming President Biden, saying “With your courage, conviction, compassion and empathy, you will lead this country in a better direction. We are now Team Biden!”

   The safety of our members, their families, and the Montana public is our top priority. MFPE is monitoring the situation closely and has launched a resource page for members and their families.  mfpe.org/covid

   We will update the page as more information becomes available. In the meantime, please use the listed
​ resources and guidelines.

Visit MFPE's COVID-19 Resource Page

by Eric Feaver
   MFPE is postponing its annual conference scheduled to meet here in Helena April 3-4 . 

   Feaver said, "The COVID19 situation is fluid and moving fast to say the least. We await expected information and directions from the governor’s office and office public instruction. We will reschedule our annual conference if at all possible, but we will not wait indefinitely to do so." 
 
   Meanwhile, all local affiliates must register their delegates no later than this coming Friday, March 20.  No local affiliate will be able to register a new delegate after that. If there is a need to name an alternate delegate or if and when we conduct a virtual version or two of our annual conference, MFPE will deal with that on a case by case basis.

BY TAL AXELROD
   The National Education Association (NEA), the nation’s largest union, announced Saturday night it is endorsing Joe Biden for president, a major boost for the former vice president as he battles with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for labor support in the Democratic race. Lily Eskelsen Garcia, the president of the 3-million member strong  NEA, cited Biden’s support for public education:  his plans to boost teacher pay and make schooling more available across the country. 
   “The National Education Association proudly recommends Vice President Joe Biden for President of the United States. Biden is the tireless advocate for public education and is the partner that students and educators need now in the White House,” Eskelsen Garcia said in a statement.
   “He understands that as a nation we have a moral responsibility to provide a great neighborhood public school for every student in every ZIP code. As president, he is committed to attracting and retaining the best educators by paying them as the professionals that they are as well as increasing funding for support staff and paraprofessionals.”
   
   Biden later responded to the endorsement in the statement from his campaign obtained by The Hill. 
“I am honored to have the support of the National Education Association — not only America’s biggest union, but a preeminent and powerful voice for public school educators and students across the country” Biden said. 
“I know what it’s like to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with a teacher — I’ve been doing it almost my whole life. That’s why I will continue to stand with educators every day on the campaign trail and in the White House. Together, we are going to beat Trump, replace Betsy Devos, and appoint a Secretary of Education that parents, students, and educators deserve: someone who has worked in a public school classroom,” he continued.
   Biden has made concerted efforts to cast himself as a staunch ally of public education, often citing his wife’s career as a teacher, releasing sweeping plans to boost school resources, triple funds for Title I schools, make higher education accessible, and attending three of NEA’s presidential forums.
   The endorsement came after NEA voted on which candidate to back. The union is also the largest organization to endorse a candidate in the primary thus far.
   The NEA’s support is the latest boost to Biden, who is riding a wave of momentum from a week-long winning streak. The former vice president has cemented his status as the primary field’s front-runner over Sanders after wins in 10 of 14 Super Tuesday states as well as several states this week, including a key win in Michigan.
   Biden is also expected to perform well Tuesday when Arizona, Florida, Illinois and Ohio hold their primaries. 
Biden and Sanders are fiercely competing for union support as they each seek to burnish their bona fides among white working class voters that voted for President Trump in 2016. 

   This invitation is extended to all union members to participate in an opportunity of supporting and learning more about the importance of the Great Falls Public School District's levy.
   Not only will KEY present information about the levy and respond to people's questions, but this will provide a  time and place  where people can provide recommendations to KEY about how to pass this levy in the school district.
      As KEY vice-chair Jeff Gray said, "Let's work to come together because Strong Schools and Strong Unions build Strong Communities."

   When:   Mar. 24, 2020, 5:30 p.m.
   Where:  Great Falls Labor Temple
  Address:  1108 7th St. S.  
             (Next to the Job Service building) 
   

SKYLAR RISPENS
Great Falls Tribune
   It was standing room only as community members gathered to to attend a rally in support of school funding for the upcoming school levy election at a Spring Hill Suites conference room on Wednesday afternoon. 
Administrators, school board members, students and parents took turns to share testimony about why they believe Great Falls Public Schools deserves the community's support in the levy election that is slated for May 5. 
"About five hours from now and 63 days we will be announcing the celebration of the new era of Great Falls Public Schools," said GFPS School Board Chairman Jan Cahill to kick off the event. 
   Over the last decade, the school district has experienced nearly $10 million in budget cuts which has resulted in the loss of over 100 educators. According to the speakers, the impact of those losses can be felt in district classrooms and beyond. 
   "There is an absolute link to the business climate in our community, a strong business climate in our community, and a strong school system in our community," said Brion Torgerson, a local parent and business owner. "Strong schools equals strong business and you cannot reverse that order."
   Voters will be tasked to make the final decision on the $1.3 million elementary levy, which is estimated to have a $12.40 tax impact annually on a $100,000 home. 
   Funding for public schools is a complex equation, but it boils down to 80 percent of the district's funds are supported by the state, while the remaining 20 percent falls on local participation. Right now, local participation is supporting 17.3 percent of the elementary district's funding, the $1.3 million levy amount would bring fund the maximum budget allowed for the district.
   "What I'm here to say to you today is they deserve not 80 percent, not 70 percent, not 90 percent. They deserve 100 percent of our support," said GFPS Superintendent Tom Moore. "So this levy is about getting to that elementary levy cap and supporting our students and our teachers in this school district to 100 percent, and when we've gotten there, then we can say we've done our part.So let's get it done."
   In 2016, voters handily approved the high school and elementary district bonds totaling nearly $100 million for facility improvements. The difference between a bond and a levy is that money for a bond is allocated for school buildings such as new facilities or modernizing older ones. On the other hand, levy funds support programs, teachers and other operational parts of a school.
   Or more simply put, bonds are for buildings, levies are for learning.
   Shane Etzwiler, president of the Great Falls Area Chamber of Commerce, told community members at the rally that the chamber voted in full support of the operational levy last week. "Strong schools go right hand in hand with strong businesses in our community," said Etzwiler.    The levy support event was hosted by Kids' Education Yes!, a community led, non-partisan political action group that has been in Great Falls since the mid 1990s. The group is running a campaign in support of the levy by educating community members about how the levy may begin to alleviate the challenges the district is facing after a decade of budget shortfalls. 
   "I've spent a lot of time with many of you in this room talking about the cuts, and the heartache and the loss and what are we going to do," said Jamie Marshall, the chair of KEY! "Today, I am really excited to stand in front of this phenomenal group and say we have the next 63 days to make this look different."
More: GFPS school board unanimously agrees to send levy to voters in May

 Feb. 28, 2020
THOM BRIDGE,
Independent Record​
   Democratic governor candidate Lt. Gov. Mike Cooney on Friday announced a familiar face for his running mate — state Rep. Casey Schreiner, who was also running for governor until earlier this month.
  Schreiner is a four-time state representative and was minority leader in the state House in 2019. During his bid for governor, he highlighted what he said was meeting all the Democratic priorities he laid out at the start of that session, from a bill that continued Medicaid expansion in Montana to breaking an infrastructure logjam.
   At an announcement from the Capitol rotunda, Schreiner said he understood the struggles of many Montana families, having navigated the loss of his teaching job and the premature birth of one of his sons.
   "Montana families deserve somebody in Helena who's willing to fight for them, that understands first hand the challenges," Schreiner said.
" … These are the things people need to know about when they're governing, not from a poll or survey but because they live it and breathe it every day."
   Cooney said that Schreiner has shown from his time in office that he can champion Democratic priorities.
"I've spent my career in public service fighting for Montanans, earning their support," Cooney said. "Casey is also a fellow fighter who has earned your support. With Casey at my side, I know that together we're ready to lead, we're ready to fight for Montana."
   When Schreiner left the race as a governor candidate, that left Whitney Williams, a Missoula business owner who comes from a well-known Montana political family, as Cooney’s only other opponent in the primary. Democratic former state Rep. Reilly Neill, of Livingston, left the race in January. Williams has yet to announce her choice for lieutenant governor.
   On the Republican side, Attorney General Tim Fox has picked former state Rep. Jon Knokey of Bozeman, and state Sen. Al Olszewski selected state Sen. Kenneth Bogner of Miles City. Republican Greg Gianforte has not yet announced his running mate. 
   In their announcement, Cooney and Schreiner both emphasized their focus on keeping the governor's office in Democratic hands and specifically named Gianforte as their expected opponent. 
   Cooney said in addition to his life experience, Schreiner brings a younger perspective to the ticket and can help the campaign in Cascade County, an area where whoever wins the general election must perform well. The two men also emphasized their experience working with a Republican-majority state Legislature, which is expected again in 2021.
   Before running for governor, Schreiner was a work-based learning director at the state Department of Labor and Industry. He also worked as a science teacher.
   The deadline to file for office is March 9. 

Article by Sara Vowell
   Scrutinizing the avuncular sphinx Chief Justice John Roberts throughout the impeachment trial of President Trump, I kept wondering whether he will preserve or ransack the legacy of the framers we revere — framers like the Republican Betty Babcock and the Democrat Dorothy Eck. It’s the question on all Americans’ minds: Do Mr. Roberts and his eight co-workers fully appreciate the public-spirited grandeur of the winter of 1971-72, when 100 Montanans, including housewives, ministers, a veterinarian and a beekeeper, gathered at the state capital, Helena, for the constitutional convention, affectionately nicknamed the “Con Con”?
 The question haunts the current Supreme Court case Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue. This newspaper has called the dispute over whether state tax credits can apply to donations for scholarships to private religious schools “a proxy battle over school choice.” However, the back story is so clumsily specific to Montana’s small population and immense geography that the case doesn’t entirely translate to states where people outnumber cows.
   The novelist Ivan Doig wrote that in the scruffy Montana of yore, “When you met up with someone apt to give you trouble from his knuckles, the automatic evaluation was ‘too much Butte in him.’” When, as the grateful graduate of a Montana public school, I was determining whether I had a duty to stick up for the Con Con framers regarding the Espinoza case, I spotted a sequence in the web address of an article about it in The Atlantic that read “montana-bigoted-laws.” At that moment this Bozeman girl had too much Butte in her. Dorothy Eck wrote no “bigoted” anti-Christian laws — she was a blatant Methodist!
   Before it ended up at the Supreme Court, the Espinoza ruckus started with a $150 tax credit. Montanans will make an appellate-level stink about chump change because that’s the only available change. The tiny tax base is basically eight coal miners, a couple of ski lift operators, that family in Belgrade making organic goat cheese and Huey Lewis.
Kendra Espinoza counted on scholarships to help pay for her daughters’ tuition at Stillwater Christian, a private school in Kalispell. No wonder. At up to $8,620 per year, ninth grade is more than $1,000 higher than undergraduate tuition at the University of Montana. What we called a “band room” at Bozeman High, Stillwater considers a “conservatory.”
School choice partisans pounced when Ms. Espinoza and other private-school parents sued to overturn the State Supreme Court’s ruling that the tax credit for scholarship donations violated the “no-aid” clause for sectarian schools in the Montana Constitution. They argued that it was time to erase “antiquated” anti-Catholic laws against public funding for private religious education. The subtle former state senator Matthew Monforton denounced the law as “Jim Crow for Christians.”
   It is worth pointing out that the eighth word of the ’72 Constitution is “God.” In the first draft of the preamble, some wistful Jeffersonians tried to thank the “Spirit of the Creator” for “the quiet beauty of our state.” They were shot down in the Bill of Rights Committee because “not mentioning ‘God’ specifically would be unacceptable” and so they “voted unanimously to retain Him in the Preamble.” The framers included a priest from Great Falls, Mitt Romney’s cousin Miles, the self-proclaimed “first Roman Catholic ever elected to anything in Yellowstone County,” and enough Presbyterians to warrant their own photo op.
   While the ’72 Constitution’s no-aid clause looks similar to its predecessor in the 1889 original, the update was motivated by fortifying public schools, not shunning people of faith. Rethinking education was, along with open government and the right to individual dignity, part of the Con Con’s crusade to take a stand that no one dared dream of at statehood: that Montana would be a state in a republic and not an exceedingly wide company town.
“We were known as the state that wore the copper collar, controlled by the Anaconda Company,” Ms. Eck once said. A swashbuckler for the League of Women Voters, she referred to the copper company lording over the “richest hill on earth” and thus the newspapers and politicians. “There were stories of how their lobbyists would sit in the balcony at the legislature and do thumbs up and thumbs down of how people should vote.”
   The Con Con delegates, who arranged themselves not by party but alphabetically, were so preoccupied with the public interest that they agreed public funds could be spent only on public agencies. During deliberations on the no-aid clause, the pastor of Helena’s Plymouth Congregational led the charge of “preserving our public school system,” preaching, “that’s what this issue is all about. I don’t think we ought to dilute that in any way.” (Diluting that is the aim of Espinoza.)
   Article X, Section 1, of the ’72 Constitution proclaims that it is the duty of the state to “develop the full educational potential of each person.” That is an expensive ideal in a desolate wasteland. Public schools are supposed to be a volume business, but tell that to the Great Plains. The state of Montana has about 60,000 fewer inhabitants than the number of students enrolled in New York City’s public school system. I have volunteered in that epic system, which is to say I have had to excuse myself from a struggling student to go cry in a bathroom, so I sympathize with an urban kid who might eye a parochial school as her best chance.
   That school choice logic doesn’t apply to Montana, where the poorest schools often have the smallest class sizes. The Montana Free Press reported that out in Prairie County, “Terry High School’s sophomore class has just five students this school year.” Starting in first grade, my friend Genevieve would ride her horse Croppy to the Malmborg School near Bozeman Pass; one year she and her brother Pete were half the student body.
   When USA Today asked Ms. Espinoza if she had any qualms about what her case could mean for public schools, she insisted, “They have plenty of money.”
   How I wish that were true. Last year, the public school district in Kalispell announced $1.7 million in budget cuts, Great Falls recently lost almost a hundred teachers, and Billings just announced about $4 million in cuts that mean canceling fifth grade orchestra and band.
   A Supreme Court decision on Espinoza is expected in June. If the justices rule against Montana’s voters, tax credits for private school scholarship donations could surge. Revenue that might revive the Billings fifth grade band program could underwrite the fifth grade band at a pricey Kalispell private school.
Kalispell is the seat of Flathead County, which between 2000 and 2015 added more than 15,000 jobs just as rural Choteau County was losing more than 300. Overturning the no-aid clause will shovel more money into the cities (where most of the private schools are) and kick Choteau while it’s down, thereby thwarting the framers’ plan to spare needy districts from taxing “their residents three or four times as much as rich districts to provide less than half as much money per student.”
   The public schools the framers conjured ask the taxpayers to splurge on fairness, not privilege, to pull together, not away. That beekeeper, those clergymen and moms chartered a state in a republic where a first grader on horseback is supposed to be as big and important as the mountains. As the Supreme Court justices ponder whether to upend all that over what appears to be a $150 trifle, I’ll pass along this lesson of Montana winters: A collapsed roof starts with a single snowflake.