{"id":16655,"date":"2013-02-12T10:24:30","date_gmt":"2013-02-12T15:24:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/?p=16655"},"modified":"2013-02-12T10:30:28","modified_gmt":"2013-02-12T15:30:28","slug":"what-the-nea-president-wants-to-hear-in-tonights-state-of-the-union-address","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2013\/02\/12\/what-the-nea-president-wants-to-hear-in-tonights-state-of-the-union-address\/","title":{"rendered":"What The NEA President Wants To Hear In Tonight’s State Of The Union Address"},"content":{"rendered":"
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NEA Public Relations\/flickr<\/p>

NEA President Dennis Van Roekel represents more than three million members.<\/p><\/div>\n

The president of the National Education Association<\/a> (NEA) expects to hear a few things from\u00a0President Barack Obama during his\u00a0State of the Union address tonight.<\/p>\n

Dennis Van Roekel leads the 3 million member labor union, which represents public school teachers and college and university staff.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Obama] really talked about opportunity in his inauguration speech and that it requires an economy that works for everyone,\u201d said Van Roekel. \u201cHe mentioned that opportunity begins with great public schools for every student.\u201d<\/p>\n

Van Roekel hopes the speech will include talk of early childhood education and college affordability.<\/p>\n

He says research and experience show that funding early childhood education is \u201cthe most important investment we can make.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard, I think, for policymakers to come up with a solution and make an investment that doesn\u2019t show the results in one, two or five years. It\u2019s down the road, but it is the right thing to do,\u201d Van Roekel said.<\/p>\n

As for college affordability, \u201cThe cost of college is just driving the amount of loans way out of whack,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to make sure that college doesn\u2019t become something only a few can afford.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the coming months, Van Roekel is most concerned about federal cuts in spending and the debt ceiling debate.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose across the board cuts that will happen in education are devastating,\u201d Van Roekel said. \u201cThose will come toward the end of March and that\u2019s when school districts have to issue pink slips if they\u2019re not going to rehire teachers for the following year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Van Roekel has heard from districts that are looking at cutting 20 percent of their workforce if the feds don\u2019t take action.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe federal programs that will be across-the-board cuts are Title 1<\/a>, special education, all programs that are designed and serve the interest of kids that have been left out of the overall system,\u201d Van Roekel said. He said schools can\u2019t take another hit on class size<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you lay off adults in schools, all the students are still there,\u201d Van Roekel said. \u201cSo class sizes go up, programs are eliminated, special programs for specials needs of kids are eliminated. That is not the way to invest in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The president of the National Education Association (NEA) expects to hear a few things from\u00a0President Barack Obama during his\u00a0State of the Union address tonight. Dennis Van Roekel leads the 3 million member labor union, which represents public school teachers and college and university staff. \u201c[Obama] really talked about opportunity in his inauguration speech and that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18],"tags":[1013,1030,722],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16655"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16655\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}