Mike Antonucci Looks at Membership Numbers After Officials “. . .Tried Every Tactic Imaginable”
NEA hada total of 3,166,761 members of all types, of whom 2,807,332 were active and employed in the public school system. Be aware that these are individual souls, not full-time equivalents. Forty-four state affiliates lost active members in 2010-11.
The following states have nonunion professional educator associations: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington state, and West Virginia. Two national groups also provide this invaluable service: Christian Educators Association International, and The Association of American Educators.
These organizations offer, at the least, comparable benefits to educators, and there are no forced dues to pay for anything – including politics and radical agendas. You may resign your membership at any time. There are no “window periods” and no hoops to jump through in order to resign your membership.
Someone will ask, so note that these numbers are from beforeAct 10 was effective in Wisconsin. And since we have the national numbers for the end of the 2011-12 school year, we can provide a quick breakdown of how things have gone since NEA hit its high-water mark in 2008-09.
2008-09 = 2,905,741 active members (3,234,639 total members)
2009-10 = 2,866,063 active (3,204,185 total)
2010-11 = 2,807,332 active (3,166,761 total)
2011-12 = 2,726,045 active (3,085,999 total)
So in the last three years, NEA has lost 179,696 active members (down 6.2%), and the union is projecting that the worst is yet to come.