Two fundamentally different national organizations serve as advocates for educators’ interests. The National Education Association (NEA) is open to all educators, both teachers and administrators alike, and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) represents the interests of classroom teachers only. The NEA, the older of the two, sees all educators united because of their common interest in student welfare. Conflicts among educators are worked out through professional negotiation. The AFT believes the interests of classroom teachers sometimes conflict with those of school administrators and school board members. The AFT promotes collective bargaining between classroom teachers and school boards as the primary method of protecting their members’ interests. The NEA and the AFT have sought to represent Indianapolis school teachers, often with opposite results.
The AFT has never been able to establish and maintain a strong local affiliate in Indianapolis. Unlike teachers in several northern Indiana school districts, such as Hammond and Gary, Indianapolis school teachers have not joined the AFT in great numbers. Indianapolis Local 447 was the first AFT affiliate in the city, having an original membership of ten. The local survived from February to August 1936. A second attempt at organization was made in 1938 with the founding of Indianapolis Local 581, which had an original membership of 40. Local 581 eventually changed its name to Local 500 and had a peak membership of approximately 600 before its demise in the early 1980s. Currently, Indianapolis teachers who belong to the AFT do not have a local representation from AFT Indiana at its 445 N. Pennsylvania Street headquarters. Participating teachers are considered members at large and participate in union activities at the state and national levels.
The NEA has been the more successful of the two organizations. The Indianapolis Federation of Public School Teachers, founded in the early 20th century, and its successor, the Indianapolis Education Association (IEA), is the local unit of the Indiana State Teachers Association (ISTA), which, in turn, is the state unit of the NEA. Until the late 1960s, the IEA was chiefly a professional organization for Indianapolis educators. On May 21, 1969, Indianapolis teachers selected the IEA as their exclusive bargaining agent in collective negotiations with (IPS). Since then, the IEA’s role as a teacher union has been emphasized. The IEA has continued to negotiate contracts every one or two years for all IPS teachers since 1969. About 75 percent of the teachers in Indianapolis Public Schools are members of the IEA. Moving into the 21st century, the ISTA continued to succeed, hitting major milestones such as its 150th anniversary and the launch of its Outreach to Teach program.
*Note: This entry is from the original print edition of the Encyclopedia of Indianapolis (1994). We seek an individual with knowledge of this topic to update this entry.
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