The nation’s largest teachers’ union will support Vice President Kamala Harris as she begins her bid for the White House in November.
National Education Association President Becky Pringle said in a statement that it was “an easy decision.”
“The choice for the nation is clear: We can elect a president who will make sure our students can live into their full brilliance by prioritizing our public schools or a president who will demonize them and corporatize our schools, minimizing who has access and opportunities,” she said in the prepared statement, released Tuesday.
The union’s PAC Council made the recommendation last night, which was approved by the NEA’s board of directors. Officially, the union can now put its political cash behind Harris and support get-out-the-vote efforts like door-to-door canvassing, although it had already endorsed President Biden for reelection in 2023.
Both the NEA and the American Federation of Teachers—have now both quickly rallied behind Harris and have begun the work of galvanizing educators to the polls in November.
One of Harris’ first campaign speeches will be before teachers, as she’s expected to speak at the AFT’s 2024 convention in Houston on Thursday. The AFT was among one of the first organizations to endorse Harris.
“Vice President Harris has fought alongside [President] Joe Biden to deliver historic accomplishments and create a better life for all Americans,” AFT President Randi Weingarten said in a statement. “She has a record of fighting for us—fighting to lower the costs we pay, for reproductive rights, for worker empowerment, and to keep communities safe from gun violence.”
Earlier this month, the NEA’s Pringle sought to rally members during this year’s Representative Assembly, a four-day conference that brings together thousands of delegates from across the country to vote on the union’s priorities and budget for the year.
There, she called on delegates to “win all the things” in November’s election, imploring them to defeat former President Donald Trump, saying that in 2020 they “worked hard to rid ourselves of a tyrannical, deceitful, and corrupt White House.”
“The reality is that the seeds that were sown during that horrible season continue to germinate,” she told the delegates earlier this month in Philadelphia. “Today, they sprout as vitriol toward our profession; increased marginalization of Black, brown, [Asian American and Pacific Islander], and Indigenous communities; rising hatred toward our LGBTQ+ siblings. The seeds of hate manifest themselves as attacks against our freedom to teach and our students’ freedom to learn.”
The union had voted last year to endorse Biden and Harris for reelection, and Pringle called the Biden administration the “strongest champions of public education, of educators, of the labor movement in the history of this country.”
Biden was expected to address delegates on the last day of the assembly, but he declined to cross the picket line after staff members walked out and halted the assembly.
(The Washington-Baltimore News Guild, which represents eligible staff of Education Week, previously issued a statement of support for the NEA staff union. Education Week is an independent, nonpartisan media organization whose newsroom managers retain editorial control over the content of articles.)
