Educators Lead the Charge to Elect Public Education Champions

This summer Eugene Johnson, a high school social studies teacher from Lancaster County, Penn., achieved a long-time goal: to gain turf-cutting experience.

No, his goal had nothing to do with landscaping. Through his union, the Pennsylvania State Education Association, Johnson learned to use political campaign technology to create lists of likely voters by neighborhood that his team of door-knockers should speak with about the election. In addition to canvassing himself, Johnson served as the southern region team leader.

One of the most productive canvassers on his team is also his wife: Emily Woodhouse, an English Language Arts teacher at Lancaster County’s Donegal High School.

Woodhouse wanted to step up her participation in this election more than ever before. Like millions of other educators across the country, she knows that the stakes in this election are incredibly high for the future of public education.

“A lot of these conversations gave me the opportunity to share my experiences as a teacher, and kind of peel back the curtain and give people a sense of what really goes on in public schools and why funding is so important,” she says.

During weekly check-ins, Johnson’s team of roughly 20 educator-canvassers shared how many doors they had knocked on and how many conversations they had. In just a few months’ time, they had made 7,500 attempts and engaged in more than 2,100 conversations with voters in the southeast region.

The educator-canvassers also shared anecdotes about being invited into voters’ homes or sitting on front porches to talk about education over water or lemonade, and hearing bits and pieces of people’s life stories.

“Once you separate the conversation about education from the culture war issues, there’s just so much common ground that is not partisan,” says Johnson. “That’s powerful.”

A High-Stakes Election for Public Education

Every election is important for public education, but the stakes in 2024 are sky high, starting with the presidential election. 

The difference between the frontrunners could not be more stark: Vice President Kamala Harris pledges to support public schools with the funding schools need to educate every student who comes through their doors; to support unions and collective bargaining; to make higher education more affordable; and to maintain policies that improve equity and access for students. She chose former educator and union member Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota to be her running mate.

And what would a second Trump presidency mean for public schools? According to the plan laid out in the 900-page Project 2025 document, Trump intends to gut federal education funding, divert taxpayer dollars to private schools, and sanction discrimination against LGBTQ students. He would execute devastating long-time goals of the far right, beginning with eradicating the federal Department of Education. 

“I really want people to do the right thing for our students in this election, and to realize that if we keep defunding public education, we’re going to have even more serious problems,” says Chelsea King, a 5^th-grade math and science teacher in Atlanta Public Schools. That’s what has motivated her to become deeply involved in the 2024 election cycle.

This is King’s second year as a certified teacher. Before that, she served for seven years as a paraeducator in special education, where both state and federal funding have a profound impact on how well schools can meet student needs.

She and her fellow educator-activists talk to voters about down-ballot races, too, says King, who serves as a team leader for the Georgia Association of Educators’ political work. Elected leaders at the state and local level make decisions about everything from school funding to educator pay to what schools can teach.

Part of King’s role in preparing educators to phone bank and canvass is helping them get used to tough conversations.

‘Sometimes people hang up on you, and sometimes you can’t change people’s minds,” King says. “But then other times you’ll have a conversation where you can really help someone understand how public education is affected by elections, and that reminds you why it’s so important to talk to voters,” King says.

One of her favorite conversations happened just a few weeks ago with a first-time voter. “She was really excited to talk to me and find out more about Vice President Harris,” recalls King. 

No matter how a given conversation goes, King is happy to be doing the work her union prepared her to do. “Lobbying at the state capitol, making calls, canvassing—I really enjoy doing the work, and knowing that I have found my power,” she says.

Forging Connections from Afar

Some educators want to find other ways to get involved during elections that don’t involve going door to door or hitting the phones. New Jersey educator Michael Dias has a fun and effective suggestion for how to do that.

“NEA’s postcard initiative is a great way that lots of educators can feel comfortable getting involved,” he says. 

Dias has been an active union member throughout his career, including 18 years as a building representative for the Belleville Education Association. After 15 years as an elementary classroom teacher, Dias took on the role of dean of students, a non-administrative position that is included with the local teacher step guide.

Election work is nothing new to Dias, but this year instead of knocking on doors, he decided to take part in and organize postcard writing campaigns.

“We call it Pizza and Postcards,” says Dias, who attended one event and hosted the next one. He gathered roughly 20 fellow educators at a local pizza parlor where they filled out nearly 300 postcards that were mailed to other union members in high-stakes battleground states like Arizona, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. 

The postcards were provided by NEA, and the design on the front came from Wyoming member Paige Gustafson, an art teacher from Wyoming who entered and won NEA’s get-out-the-vote postcard contest. At postcard-writing events around the country, members come together to add hand-written messages asking their fellow NEA members to be sure to vote for pro-public education candidates.

“It’s a really special connection to make with other educators, to think that your note is going to reach them at this critical time,” says Dias. He says the people who joined him were “ecstatic” to realize how far their messages would travel—that a teacher in a small rural town in the southwest desert would receive a postcard from a teacher from a major metropolitan center in New Jersey, for example.

“We have a profound connection through our profession, and how much we all care what happens to our students,” says Dias. “But we’re also connected as Americans who are about to exercise our freedom to vote. It’s time to make our voices heard.”