Register Here

You are cordially invited to the first role alike meeting for local leaders of 2022. We will be joined by our special guest, Ray Gaer, President of the ABC Federation of Teachers in Southern California. This local is a pioneer in labor management collaboration. During this meeting, Ray will share his experiences using collaborative practice to build a strong, advocacy oriented local followed time for questions and conversation. We do hope you will join us!

About Our Guest Speaker:

Prior to becoming the President of the ABC Federation of Teachers, Ray was a general education and a special education teacher for the first 14 years of his teaching career. Ray has been active in the union and has served on ABCFT’s Executive Board as the Vice President At-Large and has served the negotiating team for two decades. As co-chair of the Innovation Grant Committee, he helped to bring $425,000 in mini-grants to ABC schools in the form of teacher/administrator created programs that focused on the needs of individual schools and used labor-management partnership methods in designing their programs. Some of these programs developed into programs that were awarded GoldenBell Awards and help sites to qualify for California Distinguished School Awards. Before becoming a local president, he served as a PAL Survey CommitteeChair, ER&D teacher trainer, and PAL Planning Committee Chairman, positions all focused on better waysto increase teacher participation in the governance of their school sites through partnership. Ray has been President of the ABC Federation of Teachers for the past ten years and he has presented the ABC labor-management model at the Center for School Improvement in New York; the National School Board Convention; the California Federation of Teachers Convention; the Association of California School Administrators; New Jersey Labor-Management Conferences; multiple CA LMI Conference meetings and at numerous local districts in California. Ray comes from a family of teachers and is married to an administrator so labor management has become a way of life in a household with their two kids. Ray feels he is fortunate to have discovered that being the President of a teacher YOUnion is just another way to teach, which is his greatest passion.