Hollidaysburg Area EA Runs Successful PACE Campaign
“A buck a paycheck.” That’s the campaign that the Hollidaysburg Area Education Association, Central Region, is using to ratchet up their PACE contributions. The campaign has been a great success with HAEA’s PACE membership increasing to more than 70 percent of the total membership.
Local PACE chair Todd Russell says that just four years ago PACE contributions were on a steep decline, so the association leadership decided that promoting PACE membership was an important goal for the association, which has 284 members.
The HAEA kicked off the “A buck a paycheck” campaign, which was run at each school by the building representatives. This campaign resulted in many new PACE members. Currently, two of the five schools have almost 100 percent PACE membership. The goal is to get the number of non-contributors down to single digits in each building.
When the local association underwent a large retirement two years ago, the HAEA PACE team started a PACE drive with the 41 new members. Russell and HAEA President Jim Murphy made sure that the newer members become PACE contributors when they signed their membership forms.
“Just since 2005 we have picked up 70 to 80 new PACE members. When we talked to new members, we really focused on the importance of PACE and what it has done for the organization and the profession,” Russell said. “Like most associations, there are about 20 of us who do the work, so we tell that the rest that the least they can do is give some PACE funds to do their part.”
Russell also put together a list of those members who were not contributing to PACE and asked building representatives to talk to them about the importance of contributing to PACE. Each building representative was given material about the important achievements of PACE in improving and protecting public education.
Another important part of the HAEA PACE campaign is the annual “PACE-maker Anti-Social,” which was aimed at getting all members to attend a political social event that includes food, prizes, music and political guests such as education friendly school board members and members of the state House of Representatives. Members look forward to the event and turnout is great each year.
“It is important for our members to understand that politics is the way the game is played and we need to be part of the game,” Russell said.