Bus drivers, special education and pre-school teachers, cafeteria employees and other education support professionals known as classified employees now have the greenlight to unionize at Aurora Public Schools following a district board vote on Tuesday, February 17.
“I feel very happy, because it’s now been a long time, about three years, since I heard about the union, and I’ve been persisting at the meetings since then,” Maria Simental, a cafeteria worker at Rangeview High School and one of dozens of classified employees who attended APS board meetings to call for a union, said after the approval. “This feels like a victory.”
The APS Board of Education voted unanimously in favor of a resolution on Tuesday that laid out the process of an election for “an exclusive collective bargaining unit” for APS classified staff that will negotiate with the district and a third-party. Classified employees still need to hold an election for union representatives at each work site, school and administrative office…