Posted 7-4-08

NEA Seeks Peace Academy, College, Citizenship for Illegal Aliens

By Penny Starr
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer

Washington (CNSNews.com) - Some of the almost 10,000 members of the National Education Association (NEA) attending the teachers union's annual conference this week in the nation's capital spoke out on the issues they hope their lobbyists will fight for during next year's legislative session, including the establishment of a peace academy, in-state college tuition and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who graduate from high school.

Susie Jablinske, a first grade teacher at Central Elementary School in Edgewater, Md., said children who are in the country illegally should have the same educational rights as American children.

She proposed that the NEA add the following words to its resolution to develop programs to help minority students become college graduates, regardless of immigration status: "Access to higher education and in-state tuition, regardless of immigration status, as well as paths to legalization to undocumented high school graduates," Jablinske proposed.

She said as many as 65,000 graduates from U.S. public high schools are "undocumented," even if they don't know it.

"Many of them actually didn't even know they were undocumented until they started applying for a driver's license or financial aid for college," she said.

Outgoing NEA President Reg Weaver, in an interview with The Hill newspaper in February, said that the NEA - with a membership of 3.2 million - plans to spend $40-$50 million to help get candidates who will help advance its agenda in the 2008 election, including the union's endorsement and support for Democratic candidate Barack Obama.

"We plan to be very aggressive," Weaver said in the interview, citing at least 25 House and nine Senate races around the country the NEA supports.

"We also knew that our commitment to public education would require us to employ new strategies in the political arena," Weaver said in his keynote address at the start of the NEA Representative Assembly of delegates on Thursday.

"So we had the courage to create a campaigns and elections department, which helped us win important battles last year in states like Utah, Kentucky, Virginia, Washington state and others," he added.

Members who spoke at a legislative hearing on Wednesday told lobbyists what they hoped would be priorities in the 111th Congress, including the creation of a federal post-secondary institute devoted to peace.

Ken Curtis, a retired teacher from Missouri, said he wanted to amend the NEA's "Good Public Policy" legislative platform to include a "peace" academy that would hold the same status as its military counterparts, including offering degree programs.

"I've had the good fortune in the last four or five years to visit a number of countries, and I'm disturbed about the image the United States has in terms of being an advocate of peace," Curtis said. "We have somehow developed a reputation that we are not a peace-loving country, and I think that this would be a step in the right direction."

Curtis said a peace academy would send the right message to the world.

"Look, we're in favor of establishing a peaceful community worldwide, and we're trying to do that right here in the United States," he said.

The session's moderator agreed it would be a step in the right direction, but that it would most likely take "a new attitude at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue" to take that step.

Delegates at the conference elected officers and updated its core mission statement, or Resolutions, on a wide range of educational and other issues, including human rights - a topic addressed by one of the delegates at the legislative session in another proposed amendment of the "Good Public Policy" section of NEA Resolutions.

"The NEA opposes torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment of persons in the custody or under the physical control of the United States government, regardless of nationality or physical location," the delegate said.

A 45-page report detailing the NEA's vision for the future of public education also was unveiled at the conference.

"Great Public Schools for Every Student by 2020; Achieving a New Balance in the Federal Role to Transform America's Public Schools," spells out that vision, including a condemnation of the No Child Left Behind policy, a cornerstone of the Bush administration.

In the introduction to the report, William Blakely, chairman of the board of the Council on Legal Education Opportunity or CLEO, offered advice to the winner of the 2008 presidential election.

"The National Education Association has taken a bold step and articulated a brave vision for redefining the federal role in education for the next president of the United States," Blakely said.

"(The report) challenges the nation by outlining a vision for educating America's children and assuring the nation will provide 'liberty and justice' for all. Our next president would do well to heed the words and wisdom reflected in this important document," he added.