Hope moves us forward, together. This was NYSUT President Melinda Person’s message to delegates on Friday when she took the stage in Rochester.
“It is an act of faith that the knowledge and skills we pass on every day will create a future that is more compassionate, more innovative, and more just,” she said.
That belief in a brighter future is what drives New York educators to facilitate groundbreaking CTE programs with limited resources, to nurture unique talents in each student, and to spend their own time and money ensuring classrooms are safe and supportive learning spaces, she said. It is also the crux of union work. Fighting for safe working conditions, fairness in wages, and dignity and respect are battles not just for better contracts, but for a better world.
Person applauded the union’s statewide victories of the past year — made possible by members who show up consistently with both strength and compassion. Those wins included combatting classroom heat, fixes for Tier 6, re-creating the broken teacher evaluation system, protecting student learning from social media and cellphone distractions, and ensuring universal school meals across New York.
She rallied NYSUT members to keep fighting, organizing, teaching and advocating as an antidote to looming challenges at local, state and federal levels. Unions were made for this moment, she said.
“In classrooms across the state, that hope is not just alive—it is being built— brick by brick, student by student, every single day,” she said. “You persist—because you see the importance of your work, not just for today, but for the long-term future of our world.”