Pictured here speaking at a student-led climate change rally in 2019, RUHS teacher Tev Kelman is running for president of Vermont’s chapter of the NEA. (Herald File / Dylan Kelley)

Tevye Kelman, a social studies teacher at Randolph Union High School, is running for president of the Vermont chapter of the National Education Association (VT-NEA).

Kelman, currently the vice president of the local Orange Southwest Education Association, goes up against first term incumbent Don Tinney in an online election that runs from March 22 to April 4.

Kelman said he wants to bring a more activist approach to the state’s largest union, which represents more than 13,000 teachers and staff at public schools across Vermont.

Kelman and Tinney, the incumbent and a retired English teacher from North Hero, agree that the pandemic has been a pivotal time for Vermont teachers. Teachers and staff sacrificed time, energy and sometimes their safety to keep schools going, while financial pressures to cut benefits and protections increased.

“My vision for the NEA is to make us a force that is putting pressure on politicians to have tough conversations about how they’re going to raise revenue.” Kelman said. “And to make it clear that you can’t do it by cutting into working people’s retirement, cost-shifting health care, or cutting people’s benefits that they need to recover.”

Kelman said the “last straw” that pushed him to run was when Vermont treasurer Beth Pierce recommended “pretty savage” cuts to state pensions in January. “I thought that was outrageous.”

After decades of declining membership and influence, unions across the country are again embracing bolder, activist approaches. The Vermont AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations), the state’s second-largest union, gained new leadership in 2019 elections, and president David Van Deusen has steered the organization in a more progressive direction.

Kelman, who cites a “background in labor history,” wrote in a statement that Vermont should learn from “Chicago, West Virginia, Arizona, LA, and Oakland” where successful teachers strikes happened recently. When he returned from a leave of absence spent organizing with the Vermont Workers Center and Migrant Justice in 2017, Kelman was disappointed by the lack of action in his union.

“I didn’t see the VT-NEA behaving the way that I think of unions during the Great Depression, or in other times in American history … as being a force for justice and equality,” he said.

Calling his candidacy a “serious” but “long-shot, grassroots effort,” Kelman said that he cares more about trying to expand what is possible for the union than unseating current leadership.

“My goal is to try to raise people’s expectations both of what kind of resources, and what kinds of dignity and respect public education should have,” he said.

The father of two young children, Kelman has been at RUHS since he was a student teacher there in 2008. “It’s the only school I’ve ever taught at,” he said. Kelman is certified to teach English and social studies and has done “a bunch of different gigs with the school over the years,” including teaching all four high school grades, leading project-based learning classes, and offering electives on topics such as climate justice.

The union president is a full-time job that involves advocating for policy change and fighting for members’ benefits, according to Darren Allen, the communications director for the VT-NEA. The president serves three-year terms and can be elected up to three times.

“Usually, recently, the presidents have been retired teachers” like sitting president Tinney and his two predecessors, said Allen. The position does offer “full-time release” from normal duties, which would allow Kelman to leave his position at RU should he win.

In addition to the proposed pension cuts—which would eliminate cost-of-living adjustments, and make employees contribute more and wait longer to access pension benefits— they said that health care is a looming issue for Vermont educators.

“The only place where there is fat to trim is health care,” Kelman said. Rather than asking each local to negotiate “skyrocketing private insurance costs” with the school board, Kelman wants the union to advocate for comprehensive reform that treats health care as a public good and finances it in an “equitable way.”

To permanently protect things like pensions and health care, Kelman said the VT-NEA needs to be pushing a tough political conversation about “how to raise revenue from this small number of people who are doing way better than everybody else.”

“That’s the kind of culture change I’m trying to move along,” he said. “If a bunch of people start demanding that, it doesn’t really matter who’s president.”