Public Education Matters

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Various student voices 0:08
Public education matters. Public education matters. Public education matters.

Scott DiMauro 0:15
This is Public Education Matters, brought to you by the Ohio Education Association.

Katie Olmsted 0:26
Welcome back to Public Education Matters. I'm Katie Olmsted, and I'm part of the communications team for the Ohio Education Association and the nearly 120,000 public school educators OEA represents across the state, that includes 126 members in the Akron Association of Classified Personnel, AACP, which represents many of the education support professionals who work in Akron Public Schools. I'm not going to lie, AACP members face a lot of challenges in their schools and community right now. But in the face of these challenges, AACP members are trying new things, to find new ways to connect with the community and each other. They've started new community events, yes plural events, several of them over the last year or so, and they're finding new ways to empower their members to beat forces for change too. We sat down with Lola Booker-Brewer a few weeks ago to get more information about what they've been doing and why.

Lola Booker-Brewer 1:38
Okay, hi, my name is Lola Booker-Brewer. I live in Akron, Ohio. I have four children. I have 10 grandchildren, one great grand. But my job title, I'm administrative assistant at a high school. I am the Vice President of the Akron Association of Classified Personnel. I'm also on the executive committee. I also serve on the negotiations team and the communications, and I am proud to say that I love working for my union.

Katie Olmsted 2:07
Why do you love working for your union?

Lola Booker-Brewer 2:09
Because I like to inform people, because I feel like knowledge is power. Bible tells you that all the time, just recently, at our New Year's Eve bash. My question is, how they won prizes was coming from the actual contract that we had, because we got a lot of our members that don't read the contract. And I try to specify you got those that are going out the door getting ready to retire, but I need to say you got those that are in the middle, and then you got those that start. So I feel like with everybody you know from one end of the spectrum to another, you have to be updated on what's going on in your contract, and know your contract, that is the most important thing to me. I've been preaching it. Um, what got me involved in actual union parties when I first started this job in 2002, yes, I'm about to be 23 years in, there was a lot of commotion going on between the board itself and the AACP. It was terrible. So I'm like, I gotta get involved and find out what's going on behind the scenes. And once, a our former Donna Marie, a co worker of mine, became the president. First thing, she said, we went into negotiations. This would have been my first negotiations. She said, You gotta remember, you're working for AACP. The board is working for their members. Don't take anything personal. They're doing what they could do for their side. We're doing we could do for our side. The goal is to negotiate and get a contract. So I've always went with that. It just gave me a whole different perspective. Instead of, you know, you hear, you hear, you hear that got me involved, and I've been rolling ever since.

Katie Olmsted & Lola Booker-Brewer 3:57
And, and it's not just that you work for AACP, which you do, obviously at the negotiations table, but AACP members work for the students in yes and Akron schools would not run without the education support professionals like you and like your members, yes, do every single thing every single day. Yes, I agree. Do you think the wider community really understands your role?

Lola Booker-Brewer 4:25
Um, well, in my building where I work at I know they understand my role. It's just it's so funny, like situations come in where a parent is there, or even someone from an outside business coming in. Wow, you just did seven things at one time. Do you realize you did that? Ain't no way I could do your job. And, you know, I said anybody could do my job. It's just a matter of how you what I want to say, organize your life. Because I feel like if I'm not doing seven things at a time, it's a problem. Some may get done somewhere so and then, I guess I been in it for so long. I literally, when I was going to school, I took the business profession in high school, came out with the University of Akron. So I've been doing this since I was like 17, 16 years old.

Katie Olmsted 5:14
And you do have a pretty public facing role in your specific school. I think there's a lot of education support, professionals who maybe don't interact with the community quite in the same way you do, talking about the custodians, to some extent, bus drivers, all the people who are really just like in the schools, food services, all of those, right? But AACP really takes the time and makes an effort to really engage the community. What can you tell me about some of the things you guys do?

Lola Booker-Brewer 5:43
Okay, we started last year our president, Rhonda, she started what was called Our Toy Giveaway. It became humongous. And what we did was we solicited the community to donate gifts. They had to be new coats, perfumes. We did it ages kindergarten all the way up through 12. This was our trial run. So when parents of those kids came down, they registered so we could get their email addresses, and they went around to different stations to pick their prizes. We didn't wrap it or anything, but, I mean, excuse me, their gifts. Then we turned around and did what's called Our Grandparents Day, which is coming up soon, where a lot of people don't realize there are a lot of grandparents taking care of their kids as well. I mean, overwhelming amount. So what we did was we reached out to buildings grades K through 12, asked the family liaison in each building to nominate a grandparent or grandparents that they will want to nominate for grandparent of the year. And what we did, we had them write a bio, and then we had the kids that of the the students of the grandparents, we had them actually record a video to say why they felt their grandparent was good to them. So we were able to play the video. We had Leah Bibb as our commentator. It was amazing, amazing. So then we did a trunk or treat for the first time this year, you know, it invited them down to, you know, secure. We did it in the building. It was warm enough outside, but we did it in the building so that, you know, we were scared it was going to rain, but it was amazing. The parents were dressed up. We dressed up. We set up stations where they're getting, like, popcorn oranges. They were actually making the popcorn. That was amazing to some of the kids. And they literally came around and we had, what is the name of that? The black and white character. Oh, God, I can't think of him. Not that cat. And I had, he was, ah, he had the long tail. He had a girl. He wore the black and a white I can't think of what it was, but one of our members dressed up as that and had the long tail and everything it was. I mean, the kids just loved it. So we just, you know, doing different things, trial and error, trying to get out, to let the community, you know, we support them. We want to be the positive face of Akron Public Schools, because there's so much negative going on, we're going outside of that to do positive things so that we stand out the no, it's not always negative going on. There's positive as well.

Katie Olmsted 8:24
There's a lot of positive, and that positive is being led by AACP. It occurs to me that all of those things you mentioned, you said, we just started, we started last year. That's a lot to take on, all at once. Is it intimidating?

Lola Booker-Brewer 8:40
Nope, nope. Because what, what it is, is with trial and error. How myself, Rhonda, is very creative, and I'm the one that pushed behind to make sure we keep with dates. So the thing she comes up with, she creates this big picture. So it's up to me to try to bring the picture to life. You know, stay behind her. Hey, we gotta do this. Hey, we gotta do that. We had AACP Christmas shirts that we ordered so everybody could wear around Christmas. The entire district ordered them. So it was amazing to see everybody with the different we had three different types of shirts, sweatshirts and hoodies to see everybody wear them and just represent AACP. So to I don't want to say we're trying to be in the forefront, but we're just trying to promote positive so the community knows that, hey, we're just not secretaries here, or, like you say, account clerks or bus drivers. We are literally education support professionals. We support behind the scenes.

Katie Olmsted 9:40
And, and showing, I mean getting out front, showing them who you are and what you do, and how it's not just your job title, but all of the things you do to support your students in your community. How does that help in terms of just building support for this, the students in the community, for public education in your community, for the future of Akron?

Lola Booker-Brewer 10:01
I'm hoping it brings a positive there, like I said, it's just so much, especially now there is, I mean, the negativity is overwhelming. I mean, we're talking email, we're talking rumors, we're talking board members, so by us standing up to let them know. Okay, yeah, we work in this, but we're not part of this. That's what's more important to us, because we still gotta stay united. There's five different unions within acro public schools, so we try to let them know. Hey, you know, just because there's a disagreement between the unions and the board doesn't mean that we're still not a community. The world's not perfect. Everything doesn't run what I want to say, spick-and-span, you know, it's getting over that adversity that lets them know that, hey, they really stuck that out through there and they're still standing so that's what's more important to me.

Katie Olmsted 11:00
We're talking a lot about that visibility in the community, but these events are also, I, I'm sure, have a lot to do with visibility for your own members and sort of building that capacity within your membership. Have you seen that?

Lola Booker-Brewer 11:16
Um, yes, and no, okay, the problem is, you got a lot of what I want to say. I call it in the air intimidation, because it's like, hey, you know this is going on, but I don't want to say nothing, because I don't want to make anybody mad. My biggest thing is to get my members to stand tall and know that we support each other no matter what. So that is my big push. We just started this thing called World Cafe. Oh, my God. Allison was our trainer. It is amazing because it allows all the members to be involved in the negotiations piece how everything is going. Because in the past, it was like, oh, you can't say what we're doing at the table, or you can't do this, or you can't do that, or my my thing wasn't even. Nobody even talked about my thing. Nobody even talked about what I mentioned. This way everybody is accounted for, and knowing that your voice was heard, that's the biggest thing. We want. All of our members voices to be heard, and they're trying to find a way to put it into a category where that member knows, hey, they heard what I said, and they went to the table and did what they had to do. So this is, again, something new World Cafe, but oh my god, I'm so excited to get it started. I don't know what to do. And Allison is our LRC, she's heading it. Wow. So that right there, I'm thinking that's gonna literally, like, glue us together the way we need to be, so we can stand strong with each other,

Katie Olmsted 12:54
And so you can stand strong and support your students and support, yes, unity. And it sounds like you're really doing this on all the different fronts. It's not just focusing on one project at a time. You're doing all the things all the time. Yes, how are you finding the energy for this?

Lola Booker-Brewer 13:10
Um, because we space it out. Um, we do what's called a timeline. So once something like now our, we're working on our grandparent timeline. So we know this month we gotta make sure we got our got our speaker. We know that we use the schools. We have a culinary department. So last year we used book, tho, where's where I was employed at. This year we're going to use Garfield. They have a restaurant management to allow the kids to come serve the parents at, I mean, the grandparents at our grandparents day. So we try to use what's in the school to also let that be seen. You know, we have a culinary department. Why should we order outside of that? Give the money to the school for the culinary department so they can learn how to serve customers. So that's what they're pursuing when they get out.

Katie Olmsted 13:57
What's your favorite thing about this Grandparents Day? It sounds like such a wonderful event

Lola Booker-Brewer 13:59
Um, to hear the stories. Some of the stories are sad, some of the stories are happy, but just to know that there are still people out there that care, because it could be what I raised my kids. I don't need to get involved with that, but the fact that grandparents literally take on that role as if they're starting over again. I'm talking about from infants all the way up to teenagers. Or you got a teenager that might not get along with the mom, so now that teenager is homeless, when we got this grandparent, or the aunt, you know, that comes in and like, hey, you know, I can help you best I can, and just make it a community thing. And through a public schools, we have a actual department that handles those teenagers that become homeless. Um, so that itself is amazing, and we try to help where we can, like, if we get a grandparent that come in and say, hey, you know, I took custody of my kids or, or we just got here from Texas, or something like that. You know, I'm trying to make a better life for my grandkids. You know, we give them the direction, we give them the right department to go, to try to help them get their kid enrolled and make the process as smooth as possible, because of the simple fact they already got barriers in the way. So we try to make it as smooth as possible, at least, to get the kid in school and educate.

Katie Olmsted 14:40
And in part, I have to imagine that these community engagement events, the gifts, the trunk or treat, the Grandparents Day, all of that's about removing barriers between the families that you serve and the people who work in the schools who serve the students.

Lola Booker-Brewer 15:38
Yes, yes, yes, yes. That is very, very true, because of the fact that, you know, they think, Oh, well, a secretary just sits behind the desk or Account Clerk. All they doing is doing the money. It's more to it than that, because you can't be involved in a, what I want to say, a job setting, like they said, If you love your job, you'll never work. That's me. I never work because I love my job. I love what I do, especially being impacted on so many different kids, different I mean, like now we have a we have a influx of swahilis. So it's just the cultural change is this cultural is just changing, you know, time after time again. So to get to try to know them, we also have a what is that called? Starts with an "S". I can't remember what the name of his family is, but I understand them. A lot of people don't. So what they'll do is they'll take their phones, they'll talk to their phone, and it translates English back to me. This is like far beyond anything I would ever dream. I used to work at Jennings, and most of those kids over there were Nepali.

Katie Olmsted 16:49
A lot changing in the community, a lot changing with the technology. Any other big changes ahead for AACP, any other big events that you've been just dreaming of that, hey, let's try it out.

Lola Booker-Brewer 17:01
I would like to get all we have 126 members. I would like for all of them to experience some type of training outside of APS, as far as like, going to a mega conference, or going to an ESP conference, going to a bargaining conference, I want them to see that there are other people in other states, even countries, that go through the same thing we're going through there, just in a different area. It's not just us. I would love for each and every member of my union to be able to experience just one time. That's my biggest thing.

Katie Olmsted 17:41
Makes your union stronger, which makes your community stronger, and that's what all this engagements about. Well, thank you so, so much for taking the time to talk with us.

Lola Booker-Brewer 17:50
Aww, you're welcome.

Katie Olmsted 17:54
If you want to help tell your local story, send me an email at educationmatters@ohea.org, we would love to spotlight the good work of the educators you know, on a future episode of this podcast, new episodes drop every Thursday this season, as we continue to talk with the people who are shaping the education landscape in our state every day, because in Ohio, public education matters.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai