Jesse's mother, Amy Hagopian, was on the School Board when we were in middle school. He's probably got a pretty good idea of what he is undertaking.

This is great news! It's about time we got a slate with some backbone into the leadership of our union. Jesse and SEE have shown they are willing to ask the tough questions and stand up to the district and the state to do what works for students.

Fantastic news !! SEE has done a tremendous job in raising issues of racial justice, opposing corporate education DEFORM and defending the teaching and learning conditions of students and teachers. Jesse was a founding member of SEE and a leader in the MAP test boycott, which has had national and even international ramifications. Marian Wagner and Dan Troccoli have been prominent in the union and in organizing SEE. Their efforts have been instrumental in organizing SEE's work. For the good of the union and the future of the struggle against corporate education deform, we should hope that the SEE/Respect slate wins the election.
Join SEE activists , parents and students to celebrate the MAP test victory and to launch the SEE/Respect campaign:
4:30 PM , Garfield Community Center , Thurs. Jan. 30.
See you there!

Teachers' unions all over the country will be watching this race and supporting Jesse. His movement to eliminate the indiscriminate use of inappropriate assessment has wakened teachers to the possibility of regaining power to decide how to teach and assess students based on their individual needs, not the one size fits none approach dictated since NCLB.

John Knapp is good people, but this could be a hard race for him to win.

The election of Jesse Hagopian could mean that the pendulum has reached an apogee and will start swinging the other way.

Jesse is a firebrand and he has proven to be a good organizer around single issues. It might be that jesse's extremism will fire up more much needed solidarity in the SEA. Solidarity has always been weak among teachers in part because the SEA is such a scrupulously democratic association. SEA happens also to be sort of a union, because they bargain the contract Workforce Contract collectively with the Seattle School District, an agency with no authority over how much money it has to reward their workforce. Unity of mind and solidarity in the face of wealthy privately funded campaigns and wealthy privately influenced opposition has almost always been relatively weak in the teachers union. It remains to be seen whose approach will serve the Teachers better. John Knapp has represented a very democratically defined popular will of an often too un-militant Seattle Teachers Association or Jesse's approach of blazing and defining a more aggressive path as a tool to popularize SEE's vision of change.
Betting on firebrand leadership did not win the day for teachers in Chicago.