NEA conservatives seek family-planning change

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LOS ANGELES -- Conservative delegates at the National Education Association convention have asked the about 9,000 delegates to amend the union's policy on family planning to say school staff should "encourage compassion and respect for all living things," mimicking language found in the group's policy on classroom use of animals.

The change to the NEA's 407-page policy manual overwhelmingly was rejected without discussion Saturday by the union's resolutions committee, but supporters said they would bring the issue before the full convention this week.

Keith Gudorf, a seventh- and eighth-grade computer-technology teacher from Celina, Ohio, offered the change to the NEA's family-planning policy, which calls on governments at all levels "to give high priority to making available all methods of family planning to women and men," including school-based health clinics.

Mr. Gudorf, a first-time delegate, spoke at a pre-convention NEA resolutions hearing Friday, saying union members "run the risk of contradicting ourselves if we say 'teachers encourage compassion and respect for all living things' in regards to the use of animals while failing to state this in regards to family planning."

The union policy supports "the right to reproductive freedom," which NEA leaders have said at past conventions includes distribution of contraceptives to students and the right to abortion without parental notification.

"I feel we'd better represent the whole [NEA] membership with this amendment" stating 'compassion and respect for all living things,' which would include unborn babies and brain-damaged people," Mr. Gudorf said.

Conservative delegates also are pushing resolution changes to allow NEA members, as "a matter of conscience," to choose that none of their union dues be spent on political activities of any kind.

Another proposal calls for an expansion of the union's policy on academic and professional freedom for teachers and students to protect the rights of those with conservative as well as liberal ideological views.

However, an NEA official called delegate Randy Jackson of Washington state from his seat on the convention floor to seek changes in the wording shortly after he submitted the policy change.

"I knew we would face opposition, but I didn't know it would be within 20 minutes of submitting it," he said.

In his keynote speech yesterday, NEA President Reg Weaver rallied delegates to "stand together [and] walk in unison" against what he called "the negative, mean-spirited, contrived attacks aimed at undermining and derailing the great institution of public education while advancing an agenda of privatizing, charterizing and voucherizing for personal gain."

A growing number of moderate and conservative public school teachers ran for NEA delegate seats for the union's annual business meeting, which started yesterday, said members of the NEA Conservative Educators Caucus and other caucuses that dissent from the union's liberal-leftist positions.

"I'm extremely glad to see these people here ...," said delegate J. Michael Riley of California. "[I]t brings overall policy balance back to the NEA, which has been overwhelmingly liberal and has that reputation on issues which are far beyond the scope of education."