NEA Convention 2011: Why NEA Is Having Budget Problems

posted at 3:17 pm on July 1, 2011 by Mike Antonucci
[ Education ]   

I’m blogging all weekend long live from the National Education Association Representative Assembly in Chicago.

I’ll have all the details in the next post about NEA’s strategic plan and budget for the coming year, but I think I may have identified where the problem lies – it’s in the new math. Take a look at this slide from the NEA budget committee hearing:

It shows the assumed membership numbers for each category in the budget adopted in 2010 for use in 2011-12, and the assumed membership numbers today, to be used in a modified 2011-12 budget. You’ll note that each line-item is the same, save for the projected difference of 60,000 active teachers.

Then how does the total membership add up to 9,211 more members?

I’m pretty sure this was just a PowerPoint screw-up, since the money numbers cited reflected a 60,000-member loss.

The rest of the numbers, as you’ll see in the next post, are not so easy to fix.

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