FRANKFORT — The Kentucky Education Association's merger with a growing but lesser known union for “classified” school employees gives the teacher union a needed membership boost.

        It also gets the KEA out of hot water with its national organization.

        Kentucky was the only state in which its teacher union had failed to do what the National Education Association requires in its constitution: Give full voting rights to classifieds — in this case, the 3,100 members of the Kentucky Education Support Professionals Association.

        “Kentucky was the only state not in compliance. We've been keenly interested in getting that done,” an NEA spokeswoman, Kathleen Lyons, said last week.

        It got done this month at the KEA's annual meeting in Louisville. Two previous merger proposals were defeated, though most had favored it. However, they failed to muster the two-thirds super majority needed to change the KEA's constitution.

        Had the issue failed a third time, KEA delegates might have been refused seating at the NEA's convention in Dallas in July, Ms. Lyons said.

        The state organization also was at risk of losing some types of funding that comes through NEA, said Steve Neal, executive director of the Jefferson County Teachers Association, which got a $2,000 grant from NEA to help promote merger.

        In one respect, it was a shotgun marriage between partners who have sometimes had competing interests. But Ms. Lyons said: “We have a lot more in common than we do apart.”

        The merger's immediate effect is to give the KEA the prospect of added weight and numbers that go well beyond the smaller union's official membership.

        Kentucky school districts have about 48,000 classified employees. They include classroom aides, bus drivers, custodians and cooks. Many are part-timers. Many literally work for nothing but their family's health insurance.

        “Even though we have only a small membership, we have a huge grass-roots lobbying effort,” said Nancy Toombs, president of KESPA.

        “Our people back home will call every legislator. In that aspect, we can benefit KEA. There are very few legislators who don't know the name of KESPA,” Ms. Toombs said.

        They also know KEA's name, and know it well, but the union's membership is on a slight decline. It has over 27,000 members, but the total has slipped by about 300 in the last year.

        KEA President Judith Gambill attributes the decline in part to districts' increasing use of retirees who come back to work on limited contracts. Ms. Gambill estimates there are 6,000. She calls them ”100-day wonders.” They take up a teaching slot but don't join KEA.

        Ms. Toombs, the KESPA president, says of the two unions: “We're better together.” But her organization had to overcome elitism. Teachers are required to have advanced degrees. It took a sales job to convince some of them that they had much in common with cooks and custodians.

        “We were able to come back and say that we all have to have some certification to hold our jobs,” Ms. Toombs said.

        A bus driver must have a commercial driver's license. Food handlers are certified, as are heating and air conditioning specialists. “We tried to tell them, even though their certificates were in different fields, we all had a place in the education field,” Ms. Toombs said.

Priests: Sex no longer a taboo topic in seminaries
Priests: Entry requirements
Priests: Homosexuals not necessarily excluded
Priests: Hundreds more claim abuse in Boston area
Priests: TV ads pulled
BRONSON: Porn pushers
Some Good News
You Asked For It
Jailed anti-abortion activist continues fight from behind bars
Ohio in new lottery as sales fall
Proms return to downtown
Racial profiling settlement 'not the end-all'
Cities consider helmet laws
Council studies mall site
Dayton bus decision due
Death of convenience store owner underscores job risk
King weighs in on Roach hiring
Mall developer temporarily backs off getting aid
Yavneh Day students go to D.C.
Tristate A.M. report
Kenton rolls out skate park plan
Man charged in sheriff's slaying
Owners fighting to keep farm from sanitation district
Teacher union merger ends NEA pressure