This content was published: September 4, 2009. Phone numbers, email addresses, and other information may have changed.
National head of union AFT visits PCC
Photos and story by James Hill
Randi Weingarten, center, national president of AFT, chats with PCC staffers in a roundtable discussion Thursday on the Sylvania Campus (Photo by James Hill)
Randi Weingarten, national president of the American Federation of Teachers, visited Portland Community College on Thursday to meet with local union representatives.
She was here to visit three schools and to speak with Oregon AFL-CIO leaders as part of the eight-city AFT Back-to-School Tour ’09. Besides PCC, she also visited Rosa Parks Elementary School in North Portland and Lake Grove Elementary School in Lake Oswego.
At the Sylvania Campus, she met with the nursing staff to discuss the need for more instructors and classroom seats to accommodate the growing interest in nursing school.
Weingarten is the leader of a union that represents more than 1.4 million pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade teachers, as well as paraprofessionals and other school-related personnel; higher education faculty and professional staff; federal, state and local government employees; nurses and health care workers; and early childhood educators.
Beyond Portland, her summer tour has included stops in St. Louis, Houston, Baltimore, San Francisco, Kenmore, N.Y., Boston and Philadelphia.
About James Hill
James G. Hill, an award-winning journalist and public relations writer, is the Director of Public Relations at Portland Community College. A graduate of Portland State University, James has worked as a section editor for the Newberg Graphic... more »