NACEA and ISTA part ways

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) - Teachers in Northwest Allen County have decided to go in a new direction. That direction is away from the Indiana State Teachers Association and the National Education Association .

President of the Northwest Allen County Education Association Alan Bodenstein told NewsChannel 15, they’ve been talking about it for about a year. He said it came to a “perfect storm” of a lot of different issues that finally made them vote on it.

“The financial piece of it, there’s always the political part of it, but I think for me, the biggest part was our membership was starting to dwindle and we needed to figure out a way to build a stronger local,” he said.

There are about 150 members right now and the vote Thursday night was 111-17 in favor of the separation. But even after a strong vote, Bodenstein said emotions are still running high.

“Worry. Fear. A lot of emotions. We don't know what’s coming down the road,” he said. “We don't know what the governor's going to do and we don’t know if we can help in those situations.”

According to Bodenstein, there are 12 other districts in the state that take this approach so he’s been getting a lot of advice from them about what to do.

Nate Schnellenberger, the president of the ISTA, said obviously he doesn’t agree with the decision. He calls it a risk.

“I hope for their sake that they have the resources and the expertise to deal with the challenges that they're going to see, but I think it's a very short sighted decision that they made,” he said”

So now the teachers in NACS will negotiate their contracts on their own as an independent bargaining unit. Schnellenberger said that could be a tougher task then they know, especially with all of the new legislation out of Indianapolis.

But Bodenstein said he thinks as long as they get more members, they’ll have more unity and more power.

“If our numbers go up locally our administration will have to listen a little bit harder to what we're saying,” he said.

Teachers can still join the ISTA individually if they want and both sides agree the split didn’t cause any real ill feelings between them so if they want to negotiate down the road, both sides are open to it.