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In focus are five of the glass Education Champion Awards, presented to AFTPA members on Saturday, July 12, 2025. Each award is inscribed with the AFTPA logo at the top, the award name in cursive below, the recipient's name in large capital letters in the center, and a description of the award at the bottom. The awards are octagonal, and are set on a table with a black tabletop. The background is blurred.

Our tradition every year is to honor the outstanding work of local union leaders, educators, paraprofessionals, and school staff with awards recognizing their excellence. In 2023, we hosted our first-ever AFT Pennsylvania Education Champions Awards Celebration, and the 2025 awards were presented on Saturday, July 12, 2025. Read more about the awards here.

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Did you know you can take discounted online courses to meet your professional development needs? For $275, you can take up to three online graduate courses (nine credits) per year, offered through a partnership with Misericordia University and Virtual Education Software (VESi).

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What unions do

In AFT President Randi Weingarten’s latest New York Times  column, she describes what it is exactly that unions do. Though unions are the most popular they have been in decades, anti-union sentiment still thrives in red states and across the nation. “Several years ago, The Atlantic ran a story whose headline made even me, a labor leader, scratch my head: ‘Union Membership: Very Sexy,’” Weingarten writes in the column. “The gist was that higher wages, health benefits and job security—all associated with union membership—boost one’s chances of getting married. Belonging to a union doesn’t actually guarantee happily ever after, but it does help working people have a better life in the here and now.” Click through to read the full column.

On Tuesday, along with the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers and March for Our Lives, we held a vigil in front of Senator Pat Toomey's office to demand commonsense action on gun safety policies.

Below is a round up of the coverage we received. Special thanks to AFT PA Executive Vice President Nina Esposito-Visgitis, March for Our Lives Co-Founder David Hogg, Allegheny/Fayette Labor Council Chaplain Reverend Torrey Johnson, and PFT400 VP for Middle Schools, Robert Mitchell for assembling our group and speaking so powerfully.

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PHILADELPHIA—For the second time, the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers (PFT), the American Federation of Teachers Pennsylvania (AFTPA), and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) filed an amicus "friend of the court" brief in support of the landmark school funding trial.

Access our newly filed brief here. Access our 2015 brief here.

Since before the trial's inception and throughout the years of preparation and court hearings, our unions and members have been staunch advocates for the fair funding of public education. Indeed, collectively with the plaintiffs, lawyers, advocates, and so

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Plymouth Meeting, PA, February 8, 2022—On behalf of its 36,000 members and 64 locals, AFT Pennsylvania President Arthur G. Steinberg on Tuesday released a statement on Governor Wolf’s proposed 2022-2023 budget:

“Once again, Governor Wolf has shown that he is serious about fully and fairly funding public education in Pennsylvania, and we applaud his proposals for his final year in office. Substantial increases in funding are needed for basic and higher education in our commonwealth, and the Governor’s budget makes huge investments toward those goals.

“With potentially once-in-a-lifetime funding

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