HOWIE - Key Persons

Jia Lee has been a New York City special education public school teacher for seventeen years and UFT chapter leader for ten years. When mayoral control of public schools effectively dissolved elected school boards in New York City, Jia quickly became an outspoken voice against corporate education reform. In January of 2015, she testified before the U.S. H.E.L.P. Senate Committee on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, on testing and accountability. Jia testified on the harmful impact of high stakes standardized testing that has led to greater segregation and inequity in New York since Jim Crow. She argued for the national, state and local teachers' unions to take a stronger stand against corporate reform at a time when the unions were taking millions of dollars from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to support the Common Core and test-based teacher evaluations. In the 2016 UFT elections, Jia was the presidential candidate for the Movement of Rank and File Educators caucus (MORE) taking just over 20 percent of the vote. She continues to organize with grassroots parent and educator groups across the city to connect the attacks on public education to attacks on all public sector workers and services.