Due Diligence: Philly-born NEA president says education at stake in election

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In addition to the thousands of delegates representing their respective states, there are hundreds of delegates who represent organizations, such as the National Education Association (NEA). Around 200 teachers — NEA members — are serving as “education” delegates, making the NEA presence larger than any state delegation except for California, Florida and Texas.

That makes NEA president Rebecca “Becky” Pringle an important person here in Chicago — plus the fact that, with 3 million members, the NEA is the largest labor union in the country.

Pringle addressed the DNC Thursday night and said, “Kamala Harris and teacher Tim Walz understand that when our public schools are strong, our nation is strong.” She contrasted that with Donald Trump, who she said “will shut down the Department of Education.”

WHYY News had the opportunity to talk to Pringle, and the conversation hit on several interesting points, including her Philadelphia roots, her victory lap after the recent Pennsylvania budget was passed, and the recent strike by the NEA staff union, which upended a presidential visit to Philadelphia.

Philly born

Pringle is a Philly native. She attended the University of Pittsburgh and earned her Master’s Degree in Education from Penn State University. A career teacher, she taught in Philadelphia’s West Oak Lane section before moving to Harrisburg, where she was a middle school physical science teacher for 28 years.

Pringle served on the Board of Directors for the Pennsylvania State Education Association, and moved up the ranks at the NEA, having served as the secretary-treasurer and vice president before the members elected her president in 2020.

While discussing her experience growing up in Philly, she quickly expressed she is an Eagles fan.

“Go birds!” she exclaimed. “I try to go to at least one Eagles game every year. And at our convention, I had a proclamation from the Eagles organization welcoming us to Philadelphia. It was very exciting. I got to see the Eagles win the Super Bowl, and, yes, we’re going to win again.”

Asked to choose between Pat’s or Geno’s, Pringle says neither.

“The best cheesesteak is always from your neighborhood cheesesteak shop,” she said. “Those are always the best.”

Partisan politics

Pringle said the NEA tries to remain non-partisan, and its membership is nearly evenly split between Democrats, Republicans, and independents. The NEA even sent a delegation to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last month.

However, the NEA Advocacy Fund has given the vast majority of its $20 million in contributions so far this year to Democratic candidates and political action committees.

That’s because Democrats are simply better on education, the issue of the NEA’s focus, Pringle explains.

“We’ve supported Republican legislators,” she explained. “If they’re pro-education and pro-educators, we support them. But with so many going to this extreme far right — the MAGA movement, if you will — it’s been incredibly difficult. And you have a president whose sole purpose is to literally destroy public education. You can’t support that. There’s no middle ground with that.”

As president, Donald Trump’s pick to run the Department of Education, Betsy DeVos had argued that the agency she ran shouldn’t even exist.

On school vouchers

The NEA opposes school vouchers, which deliver public funding for students to attend private schools. Advocates say vouchers provide opportunities for students from low-performing public schools to get a quality education.

Pringle says that voucher programs represent a failed experiment.

“When we introduce any kind of privatization efforts, we know that is necessarily taking money out of the schools that the majority of our kids go to,” she said. “And make no mistake, the students that are hurt the most are the ones who are always hurt the most. Those are the ones coming from marginalized communities.

Voucher programs have often been debated in Pennsylvania, most notably during budget negotiations last year – and again earlier this year. Gov. Josh Shapiro, who had publicly supported the idea of vouchers, made a deal with Republican legislators to fund a $100 million voucher program for children in “low-achieving” districts. The Democrat-led House refused to support a budget that included vouchers, and Shapiro line-item vetoed the program to avoid a budget impasse.

However, Pringle says that Shapiro has been good for teachers in public education, and she points to the budget passed earlier this year, which included a record $1 billion for public schools.

“With this budget, they actually put money into equitable funding of schools because he understands that those students from communities that have been marginalized forever, our students living in poverty, our students with disabilities, our Black and brown and Indigenous students, they need more resources to ensure that they have that opportunity and access to live and grow and thrive,” she says.

Lockout in Philly

It might be surprising that the nation’s largest union recently locked out its striking staff union, but that’s what happened recently. The battle spilled into the political world, even impacting a presidential visit to Philly.

Last month, the city hosted the 2024 NEA Representative Assembly. Shortly before the event, however, the National Education Association Staff Organization (NEASO), which represents about 350 members of the staff who work for the NEA, went on strike over an impasse in budget negotiations. The staff decided to stage a walkout.

It was an unprecedented move that threatened a public relations embarrassment for the nation’s largest union, which was made all the more profound by plans for President Joe Biden to speak at the convention. Biden, long seen as a friend to labor and labor unions, wouldn’t cross the picket line and found somewhere else to speak.

In retaliation, the NEA locked its staff out of work.

Pringle wouldn’t say much about the event, likely the result of the fact that the two sides had come to a tentative agreement by then and were under gag order not to discuss it.

“We at the NEA have been bargaining good faith like we always do with our unions, and we now have a tentative agreement and we are excited to focus on the election, on the work of our members, on our mission, and on what our students need for us to do to ensure that they all have what they need and they deserve,” she said, adding that their teacher members have had other opportunities to engage with Biden and Harris.